Google eroding its privacy pledges further – avoid Google Docs

Turns out Google likes to do business with federal government snoopers.

The Internet search giant has sold data collection and storage hardware to the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency, who are banding together to create an internal government Intranet — sharing data on a system called Intellipedia.

Google supplies the software, hardware and tech support. The software and browsing giant is also licensing its mapping data to government agencies.

So, what else is Google selling?

Questioned by CNET earlier this year, both Google and Microsoft declined to say if they have provided their users private data to federal authorities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program. In general email and Internet data are not subject to the same privacy rules that wire, telephone and radio transmissions are.

Google told CNET: “As our privacy policy states, we comply with law enforcement requests made with proper service. We do not discuss specific law enforcement requests and generally do not share aggregate information about them. There are also some legal restrictions on what information we can share about law enforcement requests.”

And that is why big business as a whole, no matter the promises a bright new individual company makes, is no more to be trusted than big government.

Read here for more concerns about Google privacy.

This story doesn’t connect all the dots, but I will for you.

Do NOT use Google’s web-based Google Documents applications. You don’t know how much of the information Google will pass on (or already has) and to whom.