"Google"... The biggest Spying Tool on the Net…

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AlterNet posted an article written by Christopher Ketcham and Travis Kelly, who after a thorough investigation titled the article:
“The More You Use Google, the More Google Knows About You."

“On June 2007, Privacy International, a U.K.-based privacy rights watch- dog, cited Google as the worst privacy offender among 23 online companies, ranking the “Don’t Be Evil” people below Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and eBay, LinkedIn, Facebook and AOL. According to the report, no other company was “coming close to achieving Google’s status as an endemic threat to privacy.” What most disturbed the authors was Google’s “increasing ability to deeply infiltrate into the details of a user’s life and lifestyle choices.”

The result: “the most onerous privacy environment on the internet.” The authors wrote.
Indeed, Google that controls 70 percent of the online search engine market today is drilling deep into user information. where we surf, whom we e-mail, what blogs we post, what pictures we share etc.….It extends far beyond the search feature to encompass the kind of “total information awareness” that privacy activists feared at the hands of the Bush Jr. Administration.
“few if any single entities, other than the National Security Agency, have ever possessed such a hoard of sensitive data about so many people,” Kevin Bankston a privacy expert said.
Moreover, Stephen Arnold an IT expert who formerly worked at the defense and intelligence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. reported that Google was increasingly sought out by the U.S. intelligence services because its click-stream data archives “is a tremendous opportunity for the intelligence community.”

Arnold added that Google “has figured out everything there is to know about data-collection.” Moreover, its relationship with the government had become intimate enough that at least three officers from “an unnamed intelligence agency” had been posted at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California... However, Arnold did not reveal, “what they are doing there”.
The question today is whether the Congress and the intelligence agencies want Google to change its ways and whether Google will oblige. However, users should be aware that Google’s powers of data-collection depend on their choices. “The more you choose Google applications, the more Google can know about you; If you use Google toolbar, the company can watch the amount of time you surf a website; With Google’s acquisition of YouTube in 2006, viewing habits can be tracked..” The writers warned.
When asked about the matter, Google spokesperson responded, “We don’t comment on rumor or speculation.”