Spot the difference

[formerly known as hf]

I cant help get the feeling that you are ridiculing me Hallucinatingfarmer.

not yourself exactly, but what you said, and it was with lashings of good-natured humour, a fair amount of sarcasm, and no spite whatsoever.

[nitefyre]

(Many people use anonymous proxy servers outside of China. Every website you visit records your IP address, every search term on any search engine gets recorded alongside the address, every gmail e-mail received is recorded with your IP address, and the US authorities can ask for those lists of where you've visitied, what you've searched for, and read your e-mails without having to get a warrant once 6 months have passed. Which means, if you have 'bomb' of 'al qaeda' etc. somewhere in anything you search for, or any e-mails you receive (even if totally innocent), someone in the FBI will be reading every single e-mail and every single search term that you get and use...)

If I'm not mistaken, the reason Google stock prices fell several days ago (maybe weeks now) was because they refused to reveal said information, unlike Yahoo and the other big names. However, if they caved in, etc, then well...I guess the government will enjoy reading our Webzine submissions

[formerly known as hf]

The laws are kinda strange in the US. After 180 days, a Subpeona, not a warrant, is required to access google's data (or the data of any other company of that kind)
The story I think you're referring to was a situation where google refused to release information because there was no warrant.
There have been recorded cases, however, when they have released infomration requested after a subpeona. It is much much easier for the US law authorities to request a subpeona rather than a warrant.

180 days may seem like a long time. But, consider this. Google's cookie - which records your IP (which can be used to identify you) alongside the time and date of search terms, as well as which links you click - does not expire until 2038! This means that unless you manually remove the cookie, every single search term, every single link you choose after using google for the first time is recorded, for the next 32 years...

As for gmail. When you 'delete' an email, it is not deleted from the google servers. It will stay on the server for 12 months. Which means there is ample time for authorities to get a look at them.

It might seem a little paranoid, as the CIA often say, they're not going to start checking everyone... But it's not all the improbable. Collecting all the cookies is not difficult, we might be talking about millions, but they're tiny pieces of information. It would not be difficult to scan google's records for certain search terms. You could be searching for info on that old favourite - bomberman - and you'll be under surveillance...
Whatsmore, it's not just the US authorities, google is used throughout the world, and many other authorities have less strict rules on this matter. Google's privacy policy has gaping holes in it. They indicate nothing about data retention - as far as it seems, they might just hold all your e-mails and all your details indefinately. And there's not a single mention about dealings with non-US governments, and nothing to suggest that they wouldn;t hand over information if requested by government authorities rather than other corporations.

I'm not one of those 'we're all be watched' people - but I strongly believe in the importance of privacy. And google is utter crap at maintaining that.

[Coramon]

/me immediately switches to altavista search.

[formerly known as hf]

Try these:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 5001034711
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 5945369026
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 3762050424
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 4589316707

I'd be interested to know who can see them and who can't (and where they live)
I can't see the last two

Also, anyone got any ideas as to why?

It's obvious that the first two are recordings of US military 'operations' and as such are probably censored in the US because of that (funny how they censor these, frankly boring, videos, and not the recent torture photos...)

[deadboy]

same, in england, cant see last two

[formerly known as hf]

same, in england

I'm in the UK... Scummy Leeds to be prescise (pinning for the fjords... wait... no... that's not right... pinning for London I meant)

[Nixit]

I can't see any of them.

[AoM]

I'm in the US, and I can't see any of them. The message claims that the provider, not Google, has disallowed viewing of this video.

Say, farmer, how exactly does one go about getting these proxy servers?

[west]

Google Video is set up so that the provider can prohibit viewing by country.

[Oasis]

I can see all of them. Go Canada Go!

[Phalynx]

So what are the last two..............


This sucks big time!

[Phalynx]

Actually on reflection:
"We're sorry, but the provider of this video, not Google, has chosen to disable playback in your location."

This may just be a copyright issue
This is a docu about the first world war, nothing in it can be that sensitive!

[formerly known as hf]

That's kinda weird
They changed the message overnight.
Yesterday it read "This video is not playable in your country"

I'd be interested in seeing the upload process and if such a feature exists for someone to block per country, or if it's an 'indirect' ban by that person (i.e: someone has given info about its ocntents and google bans it based on that)

Either way, google do censor things on behalf of the UK, US, France, Germany (and of course China) as they've publicly stated.

Some credit has to go to google - they have finally reacted to the huge pressure and started to update their privacy policy agreements and respond to criticisms.

Unfortunately, their response happens to be an admitance that the criticisms were right...
(all these quotes are from http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html and relevant links from there)
They have admited to keeping deleted e-mails - this allows them time to fall into the subpeona timeframe and are more easily accessible

Google keeps multiple backup copies of users' emails so that we can recover messages and restore accounts in case of errors or system failure. Even if a message has been deleted or an account is no longer active, messages may remain on our backup systems for some period of time.

They have admited to keeping personally identifiable server logs (the cookies have an expiry date of 2038)

These "server logs" typically include your web request, Internet Protocol address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser.
Here is an example of a typical log entry where the search is for "cars", followed by a breakdown of its parts:
123.45.67.89 - 25/Mar/2003 10:15:32 - http://www.google.com/search?q=cars - Firefox 1.0.7; Windows NT 5.1 - 740674ce2123e969

What they are effectively admitting is that your search terms are kept on their server logs (they give no indication that they ever expire) alongside your IP address and other information that can identify the search term to your computer - even if you delete the cookie - hence, a quick CIA request for old logs (easily done) could mean they are acanned for various 'terrorist' searches - and you'll find they keep your IP under surveillance.

On link clicking

When you click on a link displayed on Google, the fact that you clicked on the link may be sent to Google. In this way, Google is able to record information about how you use our site and services.

So not only does google keep an eternal log of your search terms, but it also keeps an identifiable log of which sites you visit. If you use google as your main portal into the web, it is likely they have an entire history of every web page you've visited.

Google toolbar and google accelerator

Some of our services, including Google Toolbar and Google Web Accelerator, send the uniform resource locators ("URLs") of web pages that you request to Google. When you use these services, Google will receive and store the URL sent by the web sites you visit, including any personal information inserted into those URLs by the web site operator.

Basically, if you use a private site and have google toolbar or accelerator, then if those private site URLs have your addres, or part of it, username (very common) or any other personal details - google will keep it.

google destop - has got a lot of bad press recently - basically because it allows google to keep an index of all your e-mails (gmail or not), chat logs and web history

The Google Desktop application indexes and stores versions of your files and other computer activity, such as email, chats, and web history.

But, of course, you're safe. Google would never give your information to anyone else except authorities. Yes, that's true, but they do regularly give information out on subpeona. Oh, and they'll hand over your information to authorities in other countries if they request it. When you sign up for google

You agree that Google may transfer and disclose this information, including personally identifiable information, to third parties for the purpose of approving and enabling your participation in the Program, including to third parties that reside in jurisdictions with less restrictive data laws than Your own. Google may provide any of the above information in response to valid legal processes, such as subpoenas, search warrants and court orders, or to establish or exercise its legal rights or defend against legal claims

So, it will hand over personally identifiable data to a third party in a country with less restrictive laws (and they don't have to tell you) - so, basically, if google decided to hand information over to someone in China, that 'third party' would be able to publicly list all your personal information, and make it available to the Chinese authorities (replace china and chinese with other zero data privacy law countries)

Even if you think it's unlikely that the CIA/FBI will ever be so blatant, there's nothing to say that the Chinese authorities, or any other country, hasn't asked for this infomration and is using it - and according to google's terms of use, they would comply with requests, even if the authorities are from a different country than the one you live in.

Yahoo! Isn't much better by the way, they have even shoddier privacy policies, keep just as much info, and have been known to hand out information more regularly

[formerly known as hf]

If you want an anonymous proxy (this way no website you ever visit will be able to track your IP address, know what country you're in) try www.multiproxy.org

Proxy servers (basically a computer you connect to, which then conencts to the internet) were designed to speed up internet access - pages could be cached on them, so you wouldn;t have to actually hit the internet.
Anonymous proxies keep your annonymity by not passing-through any information about your computer to websites that you connect to. If the proxy server you use is in Japan, sites will think you're Japanese.

Java and ActivX bypass this - they can get your IP - as they're work by being downloaded and running from your machine itself.

The problem with rpoxy serevrs is that they are slow and unreliable - multiproxy scans for fast available, and if you want, anonymous proxies to use.

Some firewalls (zonealarm i think?) allow you to choose to surf anonymously - I havn't tried them, so I don't know if they make perfomance worse

http://www.thefreecountry.com/security/anonymous.shtml - has a good list of things to try

http://proxify.com/ - I don;t kn0ow quite how good this is, but it's an easy to use interface... (web based entirely)

http://www.the-cloak.com/anonymous-proxy-why.html - gives a few good reasons as to why (note the boy in Canada who got a jail term in Turkey - the cases are quite old on that page, but there are countless more recent ones)

http://www.samair.ru/proxy/ - gives a list of possibe proxies you can set up yourself.

Be careful though - some anonymous proxy programs (anonymizer for one) are actually spyware as well.