Joking aside #2: could a private company like Google be acquired by US as a key security asset? It seems possible, I found this https://www.quora.com/Can-the-US-government-acquire-private-... helpful.
I've always felt that Google sees privacy solely or largely through the lens of security. You can't have privacy without security, but privacy is more than just security. Online, it's about being tracked in the first place.
Google may have the best encryption and the most secure data storage, but that security and encryption doesn't stop Google from voraciously tracking and recording as much of your online behaviour as they can.
Google has it's digital fingerprints in every corner of the web: from analytics to CDNs, to online accounts that sync your activity on mobile, desktop, tablet, TV and no-doubt more gadgets in the future. They have an entire cloud-based OS that requires immediate sign-in on start-up (and which is heavily promoted in schools).
The amount of data they capture (much of it not even anonymous) is truly staggering. And yet on matters of privacy, they get a completely free ride from the tech community.
You really ought to look into the early history of Google (particularly the Stanford years) before disregarding this point. If you're not an Assange fan, that's OK (I'm not either) -- but other people have done some pretty good research on this.
It's all there, if you want to find it. I'm sure you know how.
That may be obvious to you, but it isn't to most people. Even most people who are uncomfortable with having their "private life in the cloud" make compromises and have large parts of it there.
The Federal government can seize control of private companies through one of two mechanisms:
1. Seize ownership of Google and pay market value (the Takings Clause allows the government to seize private property so long as there is "just compensation.")
2. Declare war, and essentially draft Google's workers into wartime production. This was done extensively during WWII.
For example, Ford motor company only built about 200 automobiles for private use during the entire course of the war because their assembly lines were devoted nearly entirely to wartime production.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmid...
I've always seen "Project Zero" and such as a smart PR move: hire some security folks, pay them to break other people's software, publish the results. Improving computer security would be an accidental side-effect.
In the latter half of the 21st century, the robots and the AI will be "the guns".
Who has the AI?
At the very least your approximate location and people you talk to is definitely in there.
It is on any smart phone with GPS, or at least, one should assume it is.
> who you talk to does not have to be in there either
Really? If the number is there does it matter if the name isn't in your address book? I'm fairly tech savvy and how much confidence do I really have that clearing my call history actually removes it from the phone all together?
Not on mine.
> Really? If the number is there does it matter if the name isn't in your address book? I'm fairly tech savvy and how much confidence do I really have that clearing my call history actually removes it from the phone all together?
You don't need any confidence because it is safe to assume you've given those numbers to the phone company (and by extension the secret service of your own country and probably in some back room deal to the United States and from there to the other five eyes countries).
So you're paranoid about the wrong thing. Your cellphone 'knows where it is' but so do you and anybody looking at your cellphone, that's not exactly secret information. Where it was may be a different story. And where it is is interesting information when looking from the providers side into the network.