Trust Lost: From Nixon to Google

Earlier today, a widely circulated report noted a Stanford University researcher's findings regarding Google's circumvention of Apple privacy safeguards. To put it mildly, the episode adds to Google's collective black eye over privacy. (Google's ex-CEO Eric Schmidt's announcement today of his intention to sell over two billion in Google stock seemed particularly ill-timed.) However, it would be fatuous to assume such privacy violations were unique to the Mountain View search giant. The sense, from Facebook's outrageous rape of privacy to the everyday data mining that American technocrats are convinced are their entitlement, is that Silicon Valley finds privacy rights simply inconvenient to their firms' ambitions.

It is ironic that Silicon Valley -- a hotbed of libertarian political philosophy -- should treat privacy so cavalierly. A previous generation understood how profoundly invasive and erosive electronic "data collection" -- a/k/a snooping -- can be. I was reminded of this when I read a rather truculent opinion piece in today's Miami Herald. The article, by Glenn Garvin, complained about what the author claimed were the less than virtuous motives of Richard Nixon's nemesis, Deep Throat.

Garvin alleged that Deep Throat, who was the FBI's numero due at the time of the Watergate incident, wanted to become the next J. Edgar Hoover. To that end, Deep Throat used his leaks to reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to as leverage to ease out DT's bureaucratic obstacles. At that time, privacy was still something Americans of any political persuasion guarded. The notion that a widespread invasion of privacy, managed by a Mafia-like network within the federal government's executive branch, could seize control of the nation was a shivering thought. It was as if the very foundation of American political freedom and hope was being slowly strangled.

Nixon was stopped, though not easily and especially not without resentment from conservatives who saw Tricky Dick's denouement as a plot hatched in the editorial offices of "liberal" newspapers. The current situation, in which fabulously rich enterprises apparently simply flout any inconvenient privacy statutes in their lust for advertising and data dominance, is much more upsetting than Nixon's attempted overthrow of the Constitution.

Who will stand up to Silicon Valley?