Google Chairman: In Future Online Privacy Will Be Luxury Item
"There is no erase button."
3.10.2014
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Albert Merrick |
Monday at the South by Southwest technology festival in Austin, NSA whistleblower and U.S. fugitive Edward Snowden spoke via teleconference about the surveillance state, but the most ominous news came from one of the country's preeminent CEOs, Google's Eric Schmidt, who foretold the troubling future of online surveillance.
As The New York Times reported, while Snowden implored companies to act responsibly in regards to data collection, Google head Eric Schmidt intimated that whether companies actively collect it or not, what you put online never really goes away:
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In a discussion on Friday, Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, talked about the idea of data permanence — that what is done online never goes away — as the hallmark of the digital era. There is no erase button, he said, and we all need to think critically about the footprint we are creating for ourselves.
Schmidt then discussed possible new industries that could be created because of the permanence of data:
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He also floated the notion that online privacy itself may soon become a luxury item that people will pay for. Mr. Schmidt described “ecosystems developing around the idea of data permanence,” such as “parents taking out insurance policies around their kids’ acting stupidly about what they say and do online.”
Surveillance, data collection, and online privacy were the dominant themes of the technology portion of the conference, which also included a talk via video-conference by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/google-chairman-future-online-privacy-will-be-luxury-item
