Digital devices and the question of privacy

Published February 23, 2012

| FoxNews.com

As we become more and more dependent upon digital devices (Blackberry, Ipad, Android, computer) to store personal information, most of us take for granted that the information is private. But is it?

On January 24, 2012, Google announced it was changing its privacy policies. Instead of a policy for each individual product (YouTube, Gmail, Google search, Picasa), all 60 Google services will now be covered by a blanket policy, one that is a lot shorter and easier to read.

And for the first time, information across all platforms will be combined to create a fuller portrait of users. Ostensibly, the move will help Google better tailor ads to people’s tastes. Google says they’ll never sell your personal information, or share it, without permission.

Simple enough …but the fact that users cannot “opt out,” and given Google’s checkered past regarding privacy issues, serious concerns are being expressed by privacy experts, federal agencies and congressional lawmakers.

Google is already under a consent order from the Federal Trade Commission for using deceptive tactics and violating consumer privacy, when it launched its Buzz social network in 2010.

And according to the Department of Justice, Google has also paid, “one of the largest settlements in U.S. history,” as a result of a criminal investigation by the DOJ and the United States Attorney in Rhode Island.

If you use Google, YouTube, Gmail or Picassa -- be sure to tune in to Justice Saturday night at 9 p.m. ET. Prepare to be outraged! Forewarned is forearmed.

Justice w/ Judge Jeanine airs on Saturday night at 9 p.m. ET on Fox News.

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Thomas Jefferson

Shall these governments be dissolved, their property annihilated, and their people reduced to a state of nature, at the imperious breath of a body of men, whom they never saw, in whom they never confided, and over whom they have no powers of punishment or removal, let their crimes against the American public be ever so great? Can any one reason be assigned why 160,000 electors in the island of Great Britain should give law to four millions in the states of America, every individual of whom is equal to every individual of them, in virtue, in understanding, and in bodily strength? Were this to be admitted, instead of being a free people, as we have hitherto supposed, and mean to continue ourselves, we should suddenly be found the slaves, not of one, but of 160,000 tyrants, distinguished too from all others by this singular circumstance, that they are removed from the reach of fear, the only restraining motive which may hold the hand of a tyrant.