Code of uncertain origin

Posted Aug 10, 2006 16:41 UTC (Thu) by emkey (guest, #144)
In reply to: Code of uncertain origin by ekj
Parent article: Code of uncertain origin

There is also potentially a lot of information contained in messages received by a particular mail account. How long google keeps "deleted" messages around is anyones guess of course.

Code of uncertain origin

Posted Aug 12, 2006 9:47 UTC (Sat) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link] (4 responses)

Oh my. I'm really shocked to see 4 LWN readers (I would have understood one, but anything more than two is shocking) sincerely debating this with the assumption that Google employees would obviously have no problems whatsoever to go and look in this persons mailbox and then reveal his identity on lkml. Surely, this must be some kind of joke I'm not getting?

Code of Uncertain Origin - Google's morals

Posted Aug 12, 2006 18:00 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (3 responses)

Yeah, morality aside, I would expect Google to have serious enough fears of bad publicity from privacy advocates, not to mention legal liability, that pigs would fly before Google would do that.

So I figured we were probably talking about a subpoena situation.

While I doubt Google maintains enough information to comply with such a subpoena, I'm not at all surprised that lots of LWN readers think it secretly does. People suspicious of big organizations seem to be very well represented here.

Code of Uncertain Origin - Google's morals

Posted Aug 12, 2006 19:37 UTC (Sat) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link]

Paranoid people yes, but I got the impression these people were thinking it would actually be a good idea. I was kind of reacting to it in a "are you even worthy of being here" kind of way. On the other hand, LWN is certainly a good place for such people to be. And in any case, I probably misunderstood something from the very beginning.

Code of Uncertain Origin - Google's morals

Posted Aug 21, 2006 2:07 UTC (Mon) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (1 responses)

I believe Pascal's Wager suggests that's the position to take.

Code of Uncertain Origin - Google's morals

Posted Aug 21, 2006 3:02 UTC (Mon) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link]

Actually, Pascal's Wager suggests that it's something that should be believed, which is something different from just taking the position (i.e. assuming it's true). Pascal's Wager is bunk because of its assumption that belief is a matter of will.

But the expected value analysis at the heart of Pascal's Wager definitely applies, and probably makes it wise to assume the worst of Google, even while not actually believing it.