https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/02/25/say-goodbye-to-google-14-alternative-search-engines/ Say goodbye to Google: 14 alternative search engines SEO 25 Feb 16 | Christopher Ratcliff 742 487 96 Well it’s been a big week for search, I think we can all agree. If you’re a regular Google user ( 65% of you globally ) then you’ll have noticed some changes, both good and bad. I won’t debate the merits of theseimprovements, we’ve done that already here: Google kills Right Hand Side Ads and here: Google launches Accelerated Mobile Pages , but there’s a definite feeling of vexation that appears to be coming to a head. Deep breath… As the paid search space increases in ‘top-heaviness’, as organic results get pushed further off the first SERP, as the Knowledge Graph scrapes more and more publisher content and continues to make it pointless to click through to a website, and as our longstanding feelings of unfairness over Google’s monopoly and tax balance become more acute, now more than ever we feel there should beanother, viable search engine alternative. There was a point not that long ago when you could easily divide people between those that used Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and AltaVista. Now it’s got to the point where if you’re not using Google, you’re not really using the internet properly. Right now though maybe we should be paying more attention to the alternatives. Maybe our daily lives and, for some of us, careers shouldn’tneed to balance on the fickle algorithm changes of the world’s most valuable company. Let’s see what else is out there in the non-Google world.It’s not that scary, I promise. Although you may want to bring a coat. Please note: this is an update of an article published on SEW in May 2014, we felt like it needed sprucing up especially many of the listed engines (Blekko, Topsy) are no longer with us. Bing Microsoft’s search engine is the second most popular search engine in the world, with 15.8% of the search market. But why should you use Bing? Lifehacker has some great articles where they try to convince themselves as much as anyone else why Bing is a serious contender to Google. Plus points include: Bing’s video search is significantly better than Google’s, giving you a grid of large thumbnails that you can click on to play or preview if you hover over them. Bing often gives twice as many autocomplete suggestions than Google does. Bing can predict when airfares are about to go up or down if you’re searching for flights. Bing also has a feature where if you type linkfromdomain: it will highlight the best ranked outgoing links from that site, helping you figure out which other sites your chosen site links to the most. Also note that Bing powers Yahoo’s search engine. DuckDuckGo The key feature of DuckDuckGo is that it doesn’t retain its users’ data, so it won’t track you or manipulate results based on your behaviour. So if you’re particularly spooked by Google’s all-seeing, all-knowing eye, this might be the one for you. There’s lots more info on DuckDuckGo’s performance here . Quora As Google gets better and better at answering more complicated questions, it will never be able to match the personal touch available with Quora . Ask any question and its erudite community will offer their replies. Or you can choose from any similar queries previously asked. Dogpile Dogpile may look like a search engine you cobbled together with clip-art, but that’s rather the point as it pulls in and ‘curates’ results from various different engines including Google, Yandex and Yahoo, but removes all the ads. Vimeo Of course if you’re going to give up Google, then you’ll also have to give up YouTube, which can be a terrifying prospect. But there is an alternative. And a pretty good one at that… Vimeo . The professional’s choice of video-sharing site, which has lots of HD video and no ads. Yandex This is a Russian portal, offering many similar products and services as Google, and it’s the dominant search engine in Russia . As you can see it offers results in a nice logical format, replete with favicons so you can clearly see the various channels for your branded queries. Boardreader If you want to get into the nitty-gritty of a subject with a variety ofdifferent points of view away from the major publications, Boardreader surfaces results purely from forums, message boards and, of course, Reddit. SHARE THIS ARTICLE 742 487 96 RELATED ARTICLES Five common keyword research mistakes you need to avoid How to make speed a core part of your traffic and conversion strategy 12 video SEO tips to help improve your search rankings Understanding how users, not algorithms, search online will help your SEO WolframAlpha WolframAlpha is a ‘computational knowledge engine’, or super clever nerd to you and me. Ask it to calculate any data or ask it about any fact and it will give you the answer. Plus it does this awesome ‘computing’ thing while it thinks about your answer (which can take a short while.) It’s not always successful, you have to practice how to get the best from it. But at least it’s aware of the terrible 90s television show The Dinosaurs. IxQuick Another search engine that puts its users’ privacy at the forefront. With IxQuick none of your details are stored and no cookies are used. A user can set preferences, but they will be deleted after 90 days of inactivity. Ask.com Oh look… Ask Jeeves is still around. Also he’s no longer a Wodehousian butler, but a computer generated bank manager. Weird. It’s still a slightly mediocre search engine pretending to be a question and answer site, but the ‘Popular QA’ results found on the right hand side are very handy if Jeeves himself can’t satisfy your query. And what a good use of the right-hand side space, huh Google. SlideShare SlideShare is a really handy place to source information from presentations, slide decks, webinars and whatever else you may have missed from not attending a conference. You’ll also be surprised what information you can find there. Addict-o-matic “Inhale the web” with the friendly looking hoover guy by creating your own topic page, which you can bookmark and see results from a huge number of channels in that one page (including Google, Bing News, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr). Creative Commons Search CC Search is particularly handy if you need to find copyright free images for your website (as discussed in this post on image optimisation for SEO ). Just type your query in then click on your chosen site you want to search. Giphy Because really, when it comes down to it, we could imagine a worse dystopian future than one in which we all communicate entirely in Gifs . Christopher Ratcliff is the editor of Search Engine Watch.You can follow him on Twitter: @Christophe_Rock
Attend our free webinar August 24 and learn how to create highly profitable direct mail campaigns that will grow your business. Register Now » Having trouble getting your small business site to rank in the search engines? Not even sure where to start?This post will provide you with 15 simple hacks to ensure your site is properly optimized and starts ranking as soon as possible. These hacks have helped me to go from a startup to having millions of online visitors tomy site each month in less than a year. If you're an ecommerce or local business, make sure to stick around to the end of the post. I've included some special hacks just for you! 1. Write long-form content. There is a correlation between longer content (2000+ words) and high rankings. Think about topics that are particularly relevant to your target audience, then create in-depth blog posts that cover every angle of that subject. Several studies have been done on how long your content should be to rank . All have show that to rank in the top10 pages of Google, you should have at least 1100+ words on the page. 2. Upload a sitemap for Google. An XML sitemap shows Google exactly what's on your site. You can easily createand upload one to your site using XML Sitemap Generator . 3. Make sure you're using 301 redirects, not 302s. 301s indicate that your content has permanently moved, and that all SEO "juice" and rankings should be redistributed to the new page. 4. Don't inadvertently block Google from accessing your site. If you're not receiving any search traffic, check the section of your site and look for something like this:.Also look throughyour robots.txt file for something like this: User-agent: * Disallow: / Both of these directives tell the search engines not to crawl or index your site. All the SEO hacks in the world won't help until you remove these. Related: Don't Be a Content Marketing Dinosaur -- 5 Must-Haves to Stay Current 5. Optimize for mobile. Google's Mobile-Friendly tool can help with this. If your site isn't mobile-friendly, you'll needto switch to a responsive design, mobile app or dedicated mobile site. If you're using Wordpress, you can install theplugin WPTouch to automatically switch to a mobile theme for your mobile visitors. 6. Your site needs toload quickly on all devices. Use Google's PageSpeed Insights to see how quickly your site's main pages load. If you find they're taking too long, here is a list of 10 ways to speed up your site . 7. Use descriptiveURLs. Your URLs should always be static and should use descriptive keywords, not just random letters or numbers (such as you'd find with dynamic URLs). 8. Use a .com domain if possible. My friends at Searchmetrics have concluded 84% of top-ranking pages use .com as their top-level domain (TLD). Don't worry too much about using your keywords in your domain name; using your URL for branding purposes is much more important. 9. Use internal linking to refer users and search engines to related products or content. Don't worry about artificially incorporating keyword-rich anchor textto rank for specific keywords. Instead, focus on using natural anchor text that would make the most sense to your readers. 10. Keep your most important content on your root domain. Most top-ranking pages sit on a site's root domain,rather than on a subdomain. Related: The 4 Easiest Ways to Supercharge Your Social-Media Marketing 11. Title tags still matter. Ensure each page of your site uses a unique, descriptive title tag to tell users and the search engines what the page is about. Consult the HTML Improvements report in your Google Webmaster account to see if there are any potential issues with your site's title tags. 12. Use schema.org to show rich snippets in search. By adding this markup to your site, you giveGoogle a better sense of what your site is about, and ensure rich snippets are displayed alongside your site in the search results. Here is a great overview of what rich snippets are and how to use them. 13. Write a blog . Having a basic business website is great, but regularly adding unique, relevant content to a blog on your site will give you thebest chance of attracting search traffic. Find out what topics your prospects and customers are interested in, and write long-form content that addresses these issues. If at all possible, keep your blog on your business site's root domain (e.g., www.yoursite.com/blog) rather than on a separate domain. 14. Find and use relevant keywords. Keywords don't hold the same level of importance they did even a few years ago. That said, keyword research is still a goodway to find popular, relevant topics to include on your site. For step-by-step guidance on this, see my content marketing guide . 15. Content marketing is key to search rankings. Creating and distributing high-quality content via your blog (see #13), social media and email list is the key to achieving and sustaining high rankings, building trust with your prospects and ultimately, for increasing sales. Instead of focusing exclusively on optimizing your content for the search engines, take aholistic approach tocreate and promoteexcellent, well-researched content that both the search engines and your readers will love.
Wearable gadgets -- from Google Glass to the Apple ( AAPL , Tech30 ) Watch -- are here to stay. But it's not yet clear what purpose many of these wearable gizmos will serve. They're marketed as everything from second screens for your smartphone to fitness trackers to personal assistants. Meanwhile, there's a less talked-about group of wearable gadgets that has a clear, futuristic purpose: To turn people into superhumans by amplifying their senses and abilities. Many of these gizmos are prototypes, but they paint a portrait of a future in which gadgets hack people -- not the other way around. Related: Apple unveils the Apple Watch Sight: A group of British designers developed a mask called Eidos that allows people to see movement better. The device overlays what you're seeing now with images that it recorded just a few milliseconds ago. The effect is a kind of time-lapse video, only in real time. Eidos allows you to see moving objects more clearly and determine patterns in them. For instance, a rower or golfer could trace her ideal stroke, or security professionals could better track suspicious activity. Hearing: SoundHawk is a kind of a hearing aid on steroids. The wearable device doesn't just amplify all sounds like a traditional hearing aid -- it cuts through background noise, focusing on the speech of the person you want to hear. An app lets you tune the device to listen for specific sounds you'd like to make louder (say, your wife), and reduces other sounds. And Eidos makes another mask that works like SoundHawk. It doesn't look nearly as inconspicuous, but it has the same basic function. Strength: The Ekso body suit is a kind of robotic exoskeleton that gives people super strength. It's kind of like a real-life Iron Man suit. Perhaps one day Ekso will be used to make ordinary people into superhumans. Today, Ekso is marketed for people with traumatic injuries, including victims of strokes, spinal cord injuries or disease and brain injuries. The suit works by powering steps when the wearer shifts his or her weight. Motors push the legs forward . Health: Google ( GOOGL , Tech30 ) , Microsoft ( MSFT , Tech30 ) and some other companies are developing smart contact lenses that measure the glucose levels in diabetics' tears. If successful, the contacts could help to eliminate one of the most painful and intrusive daily routines of diabetics. The prototype contacts are outfitted with tiny wireless chips and glucose sensors, sandwiched between two lenses. They are able to measure blood sugar levels once per second. Google is working on putting LED lights inside its lenses that would flash when those levels are too low or high. Wear all these devices, and you can become a real-life bionic woman. Or a $6 million man -- only for much less.
Debates are raging about whether big data still holds the promise that was expected or whether it was just a big bust. The failure of the much-hyped Google Flu Trends to accurately predict peak flu levels since August 2011 has heightened the concerns. In my mind, there is no doubt that data analytics will one day help to improve health care and crime detection, design better products, and improve traffic patterns and agricultural yields. My concern is about how we will one day use all the data we are gathering—and the skeletons it will uncover. Think about how DNA technology is being used to free people who were wrongfully imprisoned decades ago. Imagine what supercomputers of the future will be able to do with the data that present-day data gatherers haven’t yet learned to use. Over the centuries, we gathered data on things such as climate, demographics, and business and government transactions. Our farmers kept track of the weather so that they would know when to grow their crops; we had land records so that we could own property; and we developed phone books so that we could find people. About 15 years ago we started creating Web pages on the Internet. Interested parties started collecting data about what news we read, where we shopped, what sites we surfed, what music we listened to, what movies we watched, and where we traveled to. With the advent of LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and many other social-media tools, we began to volunteer private information about our work history and social and business contacts and what we like—our food, entertainment, even our sexual preferences and spiritual values. Today, data are accumulating at exponentially increasing rates. There are more than 100 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, and even more video is being collected worldwide through the surveillance cameras that you see everywhere. Mobile-phone apps are keeping track of our every movement: everywhere we go; how fast we move; what time we wake. Soon, devices that we wear or that are built into our smartphones will monitor our body’s functioning; our sequenced DNA will reveal the software recipe for our physical body. The NSA has been mining our phone metadata and occasionally listening in; marketers are correlating information about our gender, age, education, location, and socioeconomic status and using this to sell more to us; and politicians are fine-tuning their campaigns.
Are You Targeted By The NSA? Submitted by Tyler Durden on 07/03/2014 16:01 -0400 Apple Erste ETC FBI Germany Google Newspaper PrISM The Onion lang: en_U in Share 3 Meet XKeyscore - "a computer network exploitation system", as described in an NSA presentation, devoted to gathering "nearly everything a user does on the internet." The German site Das Erste has exposed the shocking truth about the rules used by the NSA to decide who is a "target" for surveillance. While the NSA claims to only "target" a small fraction of internet users, the perhaps unsurprising truth is very different. As Boing Boing concludes , one expert suggested that the NSA's intention here was to separate the sheep from the goats -- to split the entire population of the Internet into "people who have the technical know-how to be private" and "people who don't" and then capture all the communications from the first group. As Das Erste describes it, The NSA program XKeyscore is a collection and analysis tool and "a computer network exploitation system", as described in an NSA presentation. It is one of the agency’s most ambitious programs devoted to gathering "nearly everything a user does on the internet." The source code contains several rules that enable agents using XKeyscore to surveil privacy-conscious internet users around the world. The rules published here are specifically directed at the infrastructure and the users of the Tor Network, the Tails operating system, and other privacy-related software. And Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing summarizes, In a shocking story on the German site Tagesschau ( Google translate ), Lena Kampf, Jacob Appelbaum and John Goetz report on the rules used by the NSA to decide who is a "target" for surveillance. Since the start of the Snowden story in 2013, the NSA has stressed that while it may intercept nearly every Internet user's communications, it only "targets" a small fraction of those, whose traffic patterns reveal some basis for suspicion. Targets of NSA surveillance don't have their data flushed from the NSA's databases on a rolling 48-hour or 30-day basis, but are instead retained indefinitely. The authors of the Tagesschau story have seen the "deep packet inspection" rules used to determine who is considered to be a legitimate target for deep surveillance, and the results are bizarre. According to the story, the NSA targets anyone who searches for online articles about Tails -- like this one that we published in April, or this article for teens that I wrote in May -- or Tor (The Onion Router, which we've been posted about since 2004 ). Anyone who is determined to be using Tor is also targeted for long-term surveillance and retention. Tor and Tails have been part of the mainstream discussion of online security, surveillance and privacy for years. It's nothing short of bizarre to place people under suspicion for searching for these terms. More importantly, this shows that the NSA uses "targeted surveillance" in a way that beggars common sense. It's a dead certainty that people who heard the NSA's reassurances about "targeting" its surveillance on people who were doing something suspicious didn't understand that the NSA meant people who'd looked up technical details about systems that are routinely discussed on the front page of every newspaper in the world. But it's not the first time the NSA has deployed specialized, highly counterintuitive wordsmithing to play games with the public, the law and its oversight. From James Clapper's insistence that he didn't lie to Congress about spying on Americans because he was only intercepting all their data, but not looking at it all; to the internal wordgames on evidence in the original Prism leak in which the NSA claimed to have "direct access" to servers from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, etc, even though this "direct access" was a process by which the FBI would use secret warrants to request information from Internet giants without revealing that the data was destined for the NSA. I have known that this story was coming for some time now, having learned about its broad contours under embargo from a trusted source. Since then, I've discussed it in confidence with some of the technical experts who have worked on the full set of Snowden docs, and they were as shocked as I was. One expert suggested that the NSA's intention here was to separate the sheep from the goats -- to split the entire population of the Internet into "people who have the technical know-how to be private" and "people who don't" and then capture all the communications from the first group. Another expert said that s/he believed that this leak may come from a second source, not Edward Snowden, as s/he had not seen this in the original Snowden docs; and had seen other revelations that also appeared independent of the Snowden materials. If that's true, it's big news, as Snowden was the first person to ever leak docs from the NSA. The existence of a potential second source means that Snowden may have inspired some of his former colleagues to take a long, hard look at the agency's cavalier attitude to the law and decency. * * * And just this week it was all found perfectly legal... But it appears the US continues to make friends wherever it goes... The German attorney Thomas Stadler, who specializes in IT law, commented: " The fact that a German citizen is specifically traced by the NSA, in my opinion, justifies the reasonable suspicion of the NSA carrying out secret service activities in Germany. For this reason, the German Federal Public Prosecutor should look into this matter and initiate preliminary proceedings. " So now you know - you are all being watched... Average: 4.94737 Your rating: None Average: 4.9 ( 19 votes)
How The NSA Spies On Your Google And Yahoo Accounts Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/30/2013 15:17 -0400 Google PrISM in Share 5 It's quite simple really, and as the WaPo explains , the NSA "has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, according to documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials. By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from among hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans. The NSA does not keep everything it collects, but it keeps a lot ." In a nutshell - 181,280,466 new records in 1 month: According to a top secret accounting dated Jan. 9, 2013, NSA’s acquisitions directorate sends millions of records every day from Yahoo and Google internal networks to data warehouses at the agency’s Fort Meade headquarters. In the preceding 30 days, the report said, field collectors had processed and sent back 181,280,466 new records — ranging from “metadata,” which would indicate who sent or received e-mails and when, to content such as text, audio and video. The NSA’s principal tool to exploit the data links is a project called MUSCULAR, operated jointly with the agency’s British counterpart, GCHQ. From undisclosed interception points, the NSA and GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information between the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants. The infiltration is especially striking because the NSA, under a separate program known as PRISM, has front-door access to Google and Yahoo user accounts through a court-approved process. So, front door for whatever the "court" allows, back door MUSCULAR for everything else. Visually: It gets better: In an NSA presentation slide on “Google Cloud Exploitation,” however, a sketch shows where the “Public Internet” meets the internal “Google Cloud” where their data resides. In hand-printed letters, the drawing notes that encryption is “added and removed here!” The artist adds a smiley face, a cheeky celebration of victory over Google security. Two engineers with close ties to Google exploded in profanity when they saw the drawing. “I hope you publish this,” one of them said. And a comprehensive schematic: Keith Alexander's response was simple: it would be illegal for the NSA to break into Google or Yahoo databases. Because the threshold of illegality always stopped the NSA before and because spies never lie... Average: 4.916665 Your rating: None Average: 4.9 ( 24 votes) !-- - advertisements - .AR_2 .ob_empty {display: none;} .AR_2 .rec-link {color: #565656;text-decoration: none;font-size: 12px;} .AR_2 .rec-link:hover {color: #565656;text-decoration: underline;font-size: 12px;} .AR_2 {float: left;width:50%} .AR_2 li {list-style: none outside none !important;font-size: 10px;padding-bottom: 10px;line-height: 13px;margin:0;} .AR_2 .ob_org_header {color: #000000;text-decoration:bold; margin-left: 0px; font-size:14px;line-height:35px;} .AR_3 .rec-link {color: #565656;text-decoration: none;font-size: 12px;} .AR_3 .rec-link:hover {color: #565656;text-decoration: underline;font-size: 12px;} .AR_3 .rec-src-link {font-size: 12px;} .AR_3 li {padding-bottom: 10px;list-style: none outside none !important;font-size: 10px;line-height: 13px;margin:0;} .AR_3 .ob_dual_left, .AR_3 .ob_dual_right {float: left;padding-bottom: 0;padding-left: 2%;padding-top: 0;} .AR_3 .ob_org_header {color: #000000; text-decoration:bold; margin-left: 0px; font-size:14px;line-height:35px;} .AR_3 .ob_ads_header {color: #000000; text-decoration:bold; margin-left: 0px; font-size:14px;line-height:35px;} -- - advertisements - Login or register to post comments 14820 reads Printer-friendly version Send to friend Similar Articles You Might Enjoy: How The NSA Collects Your Internet Data In Four Charts "You Should Use Both" - How America's Internet Companies Are Handing Over Your Data To Uncle Sam Microsoft Helped The NSA Bypass Its Own Encryption Software, Spy On Its Clients The NSA Has Inserted Its Code Into Android OS, Or Three Quarters Of All Smartphones Guest Post: How The Corrupt Establishment Is Selling Moral Bankruptcy To America
Google Moves to Destroy Online Anonymity … Helping Authoritarian Governments In the Process Submitted by George Washington on 02/10/2013 15:50 -0500 ABC News China DARPA ETC First Amendment FOIA Freedom of Information Act Google national security New York Times Ohio The Economist Twitter Tyler Durden Wall Street Journal Governments Move to Destroy Online Anonymity Gene Howington reported last year: The history of anonymous political free speech in America dates back to our founding. The seminal essays found in “The Federalist Papers” were written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay under the nom de plume of “Publius” although this was not A id=_GPLITA_4 title="Click to Continue by Text-Enhance" href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/01/homeland-security-shreds-constitutional-right-to-anonymous-political-speech-not-to-protect-our-security-but-to-monitor-dissent.html#" confirmed until a list of authorship complied by Hamilton was posthumously released to the public. As previously discussed on this blog, the right to anonymous political free speech has been addressed by the Supreme Court. Most notably in the cases of Talley v. California, 362 U.S. 60 (1960) and McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, 514 U.S. 334 (1995). In Talley, Justice Hugo Black writing for the majority said that, “Anonymous pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and even books have played an important role in the progress of mankind. Persecuted groups and sects from time to time throughout history have been able to criticize oppressive practices and laws either anonymously or not at all.” In McIntyre, Justice John Paul Stevens writing for the majority said that, “Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. an author’s decision to remain anonymous, like other decisions concerning omissions or additions to the content of a publication, is an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.” That seems clear enough in defining that citizens do have a Constitutionally protected right to anonymous political free speech. Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge points out (with slight editing): Though often maligned (typically by those frustrated by an inability to engage in ad hominem attacks), anonymous speech has a long and storied history in the United States. Used by the likes of Mark Twain (aka Samuel Langhorne Clemens) to criticize common ignorance, and perhaps most famously by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay (aka publius) to write the Federalist Papers, we think ourselves in good company in using one or another nom de plume. Particularly in light of an emerging trend against vocalizing public dissent in the United States, we believe in the critical importance of anonymity and its role in dissident speech. Like A id=_GPLITA_0 title="Click to Continue by Text-Enhance" href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/11/why-we-use-pen-names-2.html#" the Economist magazine , we also believe that keeping authorship anonymous moves the focus of discussion to the content of speech and away from the speaker – as it should be. We believe not only that you should be comfortable with anonymous speech in such an environment, but that you should be suspicious of any speech that isn’t. But governments – especially authoritarian governments – hate anonymity. A soon-to-be-released book by Google executive Eric Schmidt - called“The New Digital Age” – describes the desire of authoritarian governments to destroy anonymity. The A style="TEXT-DECORATION: underline" id=_GPLITA_1 title="Click to Continue by Text-Enhance" href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/#" Wall Street Journal provides an excerpt: Some governments will consider it too risky to have thousands of anonymous, untraceable and unverified citizens — “hidden people”; they’ll want to know who is associated with each A id=_GPLITA_0 title="Click to Continue by Text-Enhance" href="http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2013/02/01/the-future-according-to-eric-7-points/#" target=_blank online account , and will require verification at a state level, in order to exert control over the virtual world. Last December, China started requiring all web users to register using their real names . But the U.S. is quickly moving in the same direction. Gene Howington explains : Do you have a right to anonymous political free speech? According to the Supreme Court, you do. According to the Department of A id=_GPLITA_0 title="Click to Continue by Text-Enhance" href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/01/homeland-security-shreds-constitutional-right-to-anonymous-political-speech-not-to-protect-our-security-but-to-monitor-dissent.html#" Homeland Security , you don’t. They’ve hired General Dynamics to track U.S. citizens exercising this critical civil right. *** The full DHS policy statement regarding its A style="TEXT-DECORATION: underline" id=_GPLITA_2 title="Click to Continue by Text-Enhance" href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/#" activities can be viewed in the DHS Privacy Compliance Review of the NOC Media Monitoring Initiative (November 15, 2011) , but rt.com’s summary spells out the basics: “Under the National Operations Center (NOC)’s A id=_GPLITA_1 title="Click to Continue by Text-Enhance" href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/01/homeland-security-shreds-constitutional-right-to-anonymous-political-speech-not-to-protect-our-security-but-to-monitor-dissent.html#" Media Monitoring Initiative that came out of DHS headquarters in November, Washington has the written permission to retain data on users of A style="TEXT-DECORATION: underline" id=_GPLITA_0 title="Click to Continue by Text-Enhance" href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/#" social media and online networking platforms. Specifically, the DHS announced the NCO and its Office of Operations Coordination and Planning (OPS) can collect A id=_GPLITA_5 title="Click to Continue by Text-Enhance" href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/01/homeland-security-shreds-constitutional-right-to-anonymous-political-speech-not-to-protect-our-security-but-to-monitor-dissent.html#" personal information from A style="TEXT-DECORATION: underline" id=_GPLITA_3 title="Click to Continue by Text-Enhance" href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/#" news anchors, journalists, reporters or anyone who may use “traditional and/or A id=_GPLITA_2 title="Click to Continue by Text-Enhance" href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/01/homeland-security-shreds-constitutional-right-to-anonymous-political-speech-not-to-protect-our-security-but-to-monitor-dissent.html#" social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.” According to the Department of Homeland Security’s own definition of personal identifiable information, or PII, such data could consist of any intellect “that permits the identity of an individual to be directly or indirectly inferred, including any information which is linked or linkable to that individual.” Previously established guidelines within the administration say that data could only be collected under authorization set forth by written code, but the new provisions in the NOC’s write-up means that any reporter, whether someone along the lines of Walter Cronkite or a budding blogger, can be victimized by the agency. Also included in the roster of those subjected to the spying are government officials, domestic or not, who make public statements, private sector employees that do the same and “persons known to have been involved in major crimes of Homeland Security interest,” which to itself opens up the possibilities even wider. The department says that they will only scour publically-made info available while retaining data, but it doesn’t help but raise suspicion as to why the government is going out of their way to spend time, money and resources on watching over those that helped bring news to the masses.” – rt.com This question about the right to anonymous political free speech is also asked over the background of the Electronic Privacy Information Center filing a FOIA request against the DHS to find out the details of the agency’s social network monitoring program. *** As part of recent disclosures related to the EPIC suit, it is revealed that the DHS has hired and instructed General Dynamics to monitor political dissent and the dissenters. The range of websites listed as being monitored is quite impressive. Notably, jonathanturley.org is not on this list , but equally of note is that this list is by the DHS’ own admission “representative” and not “comprehensive”. *** Some of the more high profile and highly trafficked sites being monitored include the comments sections of The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, the Huffington Post, the Drudge Report, Wired, and ABC News. In addition, social networking sites Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are being monitored. For the first time, the public not only has an idea who the DHS is pursuing with their surveillance and where, but what they are looking for as well. General Dynamics contract requires them to “ media reports that reflect adversely on the U.S. Government, DHS, or prevent, protect, respond government activities.” The DHS also instructed General Dynamics to generate “reports on DHS, Components, and other Federal Agencies: positive and negative reports on FEMA, CIA, CBP, ICE, etc. as well as organizations outside the DHS.” In other words, the DHS wants to know who you are if you say anything critical about the government. Anybody thinking of the name “Goebbels” at this point is not out of line. Indeed, valuing online privacy could even get you labeled as a potential terrorist . Google Moving to Help Destroy Anonymity Google’s motto is “ Do No Evil “. And Google notes in a patent application: When users reveal their identities on the internet, it leaves them more vulnerable to stalking, identity theft and harassment. So you might assume that Google is fighting to protect anonymity on the web. But Schmidt’s new book reveals that Google will support the destruction of anonymity (via Wall Street Journal ): Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance. Search Engine Journal explains : confirm what many industry writers have been passionately clattering away about for months now. Google+ is an identity verification network . As the network continues to grow, content associated with a verified identity will rise to the top of Google search rankings. (Google+ is now the world’s second most popular social network .) In other words, Schmidt acknowledges (in the first quote above) that authoritarians want to destroy anonymity … and Google will help them do so. We are not saying that Google likes authoritarians. True, there are potential ties between Google and the government . For example, the head of DARPA now works for Google, and Internet powerhouse Vint Cerf has worked at both institutions . Wired reports : Long before it reportedly enlisted the help of the National Security Agency to secure its networks, Google sold equipment to the secret signals-intelligence group . In-Q-Tel backed the mapping firm Keyhole, which was bought by Google in 2004 — and then became the backbone for Google Earth. And a former high-level CIA officer alleges that the CIA funded Google with seed money . However, the focus of this essay is on Google’s profit motive. Specifically, Google will do business with anyone … and will cowtow to authoritarians they happen to do business with. Google is doing this to make money. Remember, Google gathers information across all of its platforms , and personalizes search engine results based upon what you’ve looked for in past searches . After all, Google is primary an advertising company … not a search company. See this , this , this and this . As the Daily Mail reported last year: A former Google executive has lambasted his ex-employer … claiming that the search company has been turned into an ‘ad company’ obsessed with harvesting people’s private information. James Whittaker, a current Partner Development Manager at Microsoft and ex-Engineering Director at Google, posted the 1328-word attack on Google on his Microsoft blog this week. ‘Perhaps Google is right,’ writes Whittaker, ‘Perhaps the future lies in learning as much about people’s personal lives as possible. ‘The Google I was passionate about was a technology company. The Google I left was an advertising company.’ *** The move comes in the wake of Google’s controversial new ‘privacy policy’, which allowed the search giant to ‘pool’ information from 60 separate services including Gmail, Google Search and Android phones, to create ‘personalised’ advertising. The bottom line is that anonymity reduces Google’s ability to monetize personal information and sell it to its advertisers. So Google is on a campaign to destroy anonymity … and unintentionally helping tyrants in the process. As INeedHits laments: We knew a day would come when privacy was a thing of the past, but Schmidt clearly spells out that day is sooner than we had expected.
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