London, UK - 7 February 2006, 21:52 GMT - Prof Jonathan Zittrain, OII, University of Oxford; ATCA: Google black lists BMW for cloaking practices; Boycott Google Now - Dan Verton

Dear ATCA Colleagues

We are grateful to Prof Jonathan Zittrain from the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, for his personal views in regard to Google as well as search engine regulation and censorship. The independent views expressed are the personal views of the author and not necessarily those of ATCA.

Prof Jonathan Zittrain holds the Chair in Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University and is a Principal of the Oxford Internet Institute (OII). He is also the Jack N & Lillian R Berkman Visiting Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, where he co-founded its Berkman Center for Internet & Society. His research interests include battles for control of digital property and content, cryptography, electronic privacy, the roles of intermediaries within Internet architecture, and the useful and unobtrusive deployment of technology in education. He has recently co-authored a study of Internet filtering by national governments as part of the OpenNet Initiative bringing together the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Toronto, and is writing a book about the future of the now-intertwined Internet and PC. He writes:

Dear DK and colleagues

I'm not ready to boycott Google. To be sure, I think the announcement that Google would put up a Chinese-language version of its search engine at google.cn and filter its results was a sad day for the Internet. It is a decision of particular significance given Google's current leadership in the space, and the way in which its existence is so associated with openness, whimsy, technical efficiency, and a sort of anti-political ideology. Google is based around giving users just what they want, and making the presentations of things they may want less (like advertising) clean and sensibly demarcated. Filtering runs completely counter to all of these principles.

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Best

Jonathan

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-----Original Message-----
From: Intelligence Unit
Sent: 07 February 2006 12:37
To: ATCA Members
Subject: ATCA: Google black lists BMW for cloaking practices; Boycott Google Now - Dan Verton

Dear ATCA Colleagues

Re: Google black lists BMW for cloaking practices

Google, the world's most popular Internet search engine, has been trying to lure brand market leaders to paid search for a while now. It comes as no surprise that an example is being set with the car manufacturer BMW as it finds its main German site, BMW.de, expelled from Google's organic results listings for using so-called "cloaking" or disallowed optimisation techniques.

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-----Original Message-----
From: Intelligence Unit
Sent: 26 January 2006 16:48
To: ATCA Members
Subject: ATCA: "Boycott Google Now" by Dan Verton

Dear ATCA Colleagues

We are grateful to Dan Verton from Virginia, USA, for his submission "Boycott Google Now" over censorship collusion with China.

Dan Verton is Vice-President and Executive Editor of the Homeland Defense Journal in USA. He is also the author of two highly acclaimed books, "The Insider: A True Story" (Llumina Press, 2005) and "Black Ice: The Invisible Threat of Cyber-Terrorism" (McGraw Hill Osborne Media, 2003). Verton is the first-place recipient of the 2003 Jesse H Neal National Business Journalism Award for Best News Coverage for a series of reports on wireless network security threats at some of USA’s largest airlines and airports. Verton has presented his research into the high-tech future of terrorism to the Department of Homeland Security, Air Force War College, US Secret Service, Library of Congress, NASA’s Counterintelligence Division and colleges and universities across the country. Verton is a former senior writer for Computerworld magazine and Federal Computer Week in Washington, DC. His work during the past eight years has featured regularly on CNN, The History Channel, PC World, USA Today etc. Prior to becoming a journalist, he was an intelligence officer in the US Marine Corps. From 1994 to 1996, he served as senior briefing officer and analyst in charge of the Balkans Task Force for the Second Marine Expeditionary Force during the crisis in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He is also a former imagery intelligence analyst with the US Army Reserve. He writes:

Dear DK and colleagues

Boycott Google Now... This is a topic that I think is worth your time. The company has done more than agree to censor the search results of Chinese citizens. It has adjusted its technology to return search results that are only inline with official Chinese propaganda on topics such as Tiananmen Square and Taiwan independence.

Dan

Boycott Google Now

It's official. The last of the US's Internet search giants has opted to become a firewall to freedom. And that deserves a boycott. Google Inc, one of USA's greatest success stories and a technology company that has become almost synonymous with the Internet and all of the benefits of knowledge sharing the Internet has brought to the world, has put profit ahead of social responsibility by cooperating with one of the world's most repressive governments.

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We look forward to your further thoughts, observations and views. Thank you.

Best wishes

For and on behalf of DK Matai, Chairman, Asymmetric Threats Contingency Alliance (ATCA)

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ATCA: The Asymmetric Threats Contingency Alliance is a philanthropic initiative founded in 2001 by mi2g to understand and to address complex global challenges. ATCA conducts collective dialogue on opportunities and threats arising from climate change, radical poverty, organised crime, extremism, informatics, nanotechnology, robotics, genetics, artificial intelligence and financial systems. Present membership of ATCA is by invitation only and includes members from the House of Lords, House of Commons, European Parliament, US Congress & Senate, G10's Senior Government officials and over 500 CEOs from banking, insurance, computing and defence. Please do not use ATCA material without permission and full attribution.

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