Google Data

Posted by Andreas Tuerk, Product Manager

Not many of us like thinking about death — especially our own. But making plans for what happens after you’re gone is really important for the people you leave behind. So today, we’re launching a new feature that makes it easy to tell Google what you want done with your digital assets when you die or can no longer use your account.

The feature is called Inactive Account Manager — not a great name, we know — and you’ll find it on your Google Account settings page. You can tell us what to do with your Gmail messages and data from several other Google services if your account becomes inactive for any reason.

For example, you can choose to have your data deleted — after three, six, nine or 12 months of inactivity. Or you can select trusted contacts to receive data from some or all of the following services: +1s; Blogger; Contacts and Circles; Drive; Gmail; Google+ Profiles, Pages and Streams; Picasa Web Albums; Google Voice and YouTube. Before our systems take any action, we’ll first warn you by sending a text message to your cellphone and email to the secondary address you’ve provided.

We hope that this new feature will enable you to plan your digital afterlife — in a way that protects your privacy and security — and make life easier for your loved ones after you’re gone.

 

Posted by Susan Molinari, Vice President, Public Policy and Government Relations

In the U.S., Polaris Project has collected data from over 72,000 hotline calls, helping local and national anti-trafficking communities better understand the dynamics of the crime. No such actionable hotline database has existed globally — but it doesn’t need to be that way. Clear international strategies, increased cooperation, and appropriate data sharing amongst anti-trafficking organizations will help victims, prevention efforts, and sound policymaking. Slavery can be stopped. Let’s get to it.

We’re asking other companies to work with us to develop cooperative licensing agreements that can help curb privateering. We’re also encouraged that the FTC and DOJ are paying attention to this critical issue, and we hope they will continue to study how abusive troll litigation and patent privateering are harming innovative industries.

Posted by Rob Mahini, Policy Counsel

Every month, the Federal Trade Commission receives over 200,000 consumer complaints about robocalls. These phone calls can not only be annoying, they also can be a vehicle for cheating consumers and stealing their identities. While law enforcement agencies work to crack down on these fraudsters, unscrupulous robocallers continue to find ways to swindle consumers.

Posted by Duane Valz, Senior Patent Counsel 

Cross-posted from the Google Open Source Blog 

At Google we believe that open systems win. Open-source software has been at the root of many innovations in cloud computing, the mobile web, and the Internet generally. And while open platforms have faced growing patent attacks, requiring companies to defensively acquire ever more patents, we remain committed to an open Internet—one that protects real innovation and continues to deliver great products and services.

• Transparency. Patent holders determine exactly which patents and related technologies they wish to pledge, offering developers and the public transparency around patent rights.
• Breadth. Protections under the OPN Pledge are not confined to a specific project or open-source copyright license. (Google contributes a lot of code under such licenses, like the Apache or GNU GPL licenses, but their patent protections are limited.) The OPN Pledge, by contrast, applies to any open-source software—past, present or future—that might rely on the pledged patents.
• Defensive protection. The Pledge may be terminated, but only if a party brings a patent suit against Google products or services, or is directly profiting from such litigation.
• Durability. The Pledge remains in force for the life of the patents, even if we transfer them.

Posted by Pablo Chavez, Director of Public Policy

You can read his written testimony and this recent blog post outlining Google’s approach to government requests for user data.

Posted by Kate Sheerin, Policy AnalystThis Friday is the last day to apply for the 2013 Google Policy Fellowship — all applications must be submitted by March 15, 2013 at midnight PST.  Please visit the website for application and program details…

Posted by Bob Boorstin, Director, Public Policy, and Lewis Segall, Senior Counsel, Ethics and Compliance

(Cross-posted from the Google Europe Blog)

We wake up every day at Google asking ourselves: how can we get more information to more people around the world? Unfortunately, officials in too many governments wake up every day asking themselves: how can we stop our people from getting more information?

Those opposing questions lay at the heart of our decision back in 2008 to be a founding member company of the Global Network Initiative (GNI). The GNI is a group of companies, human rights groups and NGOs, socially responsible investors and academics that works to protect and advance freedom of expression and privacy in the ICT sector.

From the beginning, we hoped that the GNI would find common ground with other companies and groups around the world.  And today we’re happy to report that the GNI is entering into a two-year collaboration with a group of eight European telecommunications firms to “find a shared and practical approach to promoting freedom of expression and privacy rights around the world.”

The eight firms — Alcatel-Lucent, France Telecom-Orange, Millicom, Nokia Siemens Networks, Telefonica, Telenor, TeliaSonera, and Vodafone — provide services and equipment in scores of countries.

The firms, known collectively as the Telecommunications Industry Dialogue, have been meeting among themselves since 2011 to discuss freedom of expression and privacy rights in their sector, and have developed a set of guiding principles. Under the new partnership, they are not joining GNI — but the GNI will house the Industry Dialogue’s work and provide a place where members of both groups can learn from each other, develop new ideas, and collaborate in protecting and advancing user privacy and freedom of expression.

For the Industry Dialogue, we hope the arrangement will give the eight companies the chance to see the advantages we’ve found in an alliance that goes beyond industry and includes NGOs and others. For the GNI — a group born of the conviction that there is strength in numbers and a diverse membership — the arrangement marks a concrete step to building a broader and more global platform to help protect user rights.

Posted by Eric Schulman, Legal Director

We’ve been encouraged by recent proposals for legislation and other reforms aimed at addressing the growing harm that patent trolls are inflicting on U.S. consumers and small businesses. We also think that companies can work together to help curb excessive patent litigation, so we’ve launched a new cooperative licensing website laying out some of our ideas and soliciting feedback from interested companies.

The problem of lawsuits brought by patent trolls—companies that don’t make any products—is huge and getting worse. Additionally, in a growing trend, companies are selling patents to trolls that then use those patents to attack other companies. In some cases, those companies arrange to get a cut of revenue generated from the trolls’ suits.

We think companies should cooperate to reduce patent litigation—what’s been compared to nuclear arms control for the patent world. On our site, we outline several networked, standardized, royalty-free patent licensing agreements that increase companies’ freedom to operate while reducing patent assertions, especially by trolls.

For example, in a License on Transfer (LOT) Agreement, participating companies agree that when a patent is transferred (other than as part of a legitimate spin-out), the transferred patent automatically becomes licensed to other participating companies. Participants are thus protected from any future attacks if the patent was sold to a troll.

The more companies that unite in these kinds of agreements, the more beneficial the agreement becomes to its members, especially companies that don’t regularly sell patents or don’t want to spend money or time defending against trolls.

Take a look at the description of the LOT Agreement and the other approaches on our website and, if you’re interested or have feedback, let us know.

Posted by Richard Salgado, Legal Director, Law Enforcement and Information Security

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

Our users trust Google with a lot of very important data, whether it’s emails, photos, documents, posts or videos. We work exceptionally hard to keep that information safe—hiring some of the best security experts in the world, investing millions of dollars in technology and baking security protections such as 2-step verification into our products.

Of course, people don’t always use our services for good, and it’s important that law enforcement be able to investigate illegal activity. This may involve requests for personal information. When we receive these requests, we:

• scrutinize them carefully to ensure they satisfy the law and our policies; 
• seek to narrow requests that are overly broad; 
• notify users when appropriate so they can contact the entity requesting the information or consult a lawyer; 
• and require that government agencies use a search warrant if they’re seeking search query information or private content, like Gmail and documents, stored in a Google Account.  

When conducting national security investigations, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation can issue a National Security Letter (NSL) to obtain identifying information about a subscriber from telephone and Internet companies. The FBI has the authority to prohibit companies from talking about these requests. But we’ve been trying to find a way to provide more information about the NSLs we get—particularly as people have voiced concerns about the increase in their use since 9/11.

Starting today, we’re now including data about NSLs in our Transparency Report. We’re thankful to U.S. government officials for working with us to provide greater insight into the use of NSLs. Visit our page on user data requests in the U.S. and you’ll see, in broad strokes, how many NSLs for user data Google receives, as well as the number of accounts in question. In addition, you can now find answers to some common questions we get asked about NSLs on our Transparency Report FAQ.

You’ll notice that we’re reporting numerical ranges rather than exact numbers. This is to address concerns raised by the FBI, Justice Department and other agencies that releasing exact numbers might reveal information about investigations. We plan to update these figures annually.

Posted by Alan Norman, Principal, Access

Cross-posted from the Official Google.org blog

Today, there are billions of phones, tablets, laptops and other mobile devices connecting to the Web wirelessly. Meanwhile, people living in parts of the world without wired infrastructure rely on wireless broadband for their last mile connection. As more people go online and the number of wireless devices grows, so does the need for spectrum.

There is available spectrum out there — but it can be hard to find if you don’t know where to look. One way we’re trying to help researchers and other stakeholders identify available spectrum is through dynamic spectrum sharing. Spectrum sharing allows devices to use spectrum when it is not in use by someone else simply by checking a data base. We’re in the process (with several others) of becoming a certified database administrator for a band of spectrum called the TV white spaces.

Today, we’ve reached a milestone in the certification process: our database is beginning a public trial with the FCC. Our trial site allows industry stakeholders (broadcasters, cable, wireless microphone users, licensed spectrum holders) to test and provide feedback on the database. The trial site also allows anyone to find out how much TV white spaces spectrum is available at any location, such as your home or office.

Google Earth visualization of available TV whitespace spectrum.

The completion of the trial will bring us all one step closer to freeing up more spectrum, which in turn will help the industry bring new wireless technologies to market and enable people to get wireless Internet access when and where they need it.

Posted by Pablo Chavez, Director, Public Policy

Yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission released its annual list of the top categories of consumer complaints received by the agency. In 2012, for the thirteenth year in a row, complaints about identity theft topped the list.

Identity theft has real consequences for consumers. It enables fraudsters to open lines of credit, drain banking, savings, and retirement accounts, file false tax returns, and falsify medical records. Victims often incur significant out-of-pocket expenses, spend considerable time trying to fix the problems created by the theft, and experience emotional stress as they attempt to repair the damage to their lives.

Keeping our users’ information safe and secure is among our highest priorities at Google, and we are continuously adjusting our security practices as threats from identity thieves and account hijackers evolve.

In 2010, we turned SSL encryption on by default for Gmail users to protect their messages from being snooped on by others, and have since extended this security measure to services like Google Search and Google Drive as well. In 2011, we made our 2-step verification service available for all Google Accounts so users could add an extra layer of security and protection to their account.

And as we noted last week when we saw spammers start to focus their attention on breaking into legitimate Google accounts in 2010, our security team further strengthened the Google Account sign-in process. This allowed us to reduce the number of accounts compromised by those specific kinds of attacks by 99.7 percent.

You can read more about how Google helps protect you from identity theft, and steps that you can take to help protect yourself and keep your family safe online on our Good to Know site. We encourage anyone concerned about online safety or identity theft to take five minutes today and do the following:

• Make sure you are using strong, unique passwords for each of your important online accounts;
• Make sure your account recovery options are up-to-date to help services contact you if there is a problem with your account; and
• Turn on 2-step verification for your Google Account.

We’ll continue to work hard to protect our users and help make the Internet a safer place for everyone from threats like identity theft and online fraud. And to keep identity theft from making the consumer complaint list for a fourteenth year in a row, we look forward to working with other companies, NGOs, and the public sector on identifying emerging security threats and improving consumer education efforts.

Posted by Suzanne Michel, Senior Patent Counsel

Patent trolls are hurting consumers and small businesses. Patent trolls don’t make anything of value to consumers, but rather extract profits from lawsuits against productive companies. Suits brought by trolls have quadrupled since 2005. They now account for 60% of all patent litigation and are disproportionately targeted at small businesses. In 2011 alone, companies spent $29 billion fighting trolls. That’s money that should have gone towards building great products, or creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.

There is no silver bullet when it comes to solving the troll problem, but Congress and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) are taking steps in the right direction.

The trolls’ weapons of choice—used in 85% of their suits—are software patents, many of which are vague, overbroad and invalid. The PTO should improve patent quality by requiring better descriptions and clearer claims. Today at a PTO-sponsored event in New York, I spoke on how better application of established legal principles can help to curb the issuance of overbroad software patents.

We’ve also been encouraged by the PTO’s new partnership with the software community and its recent call for public comment on improving patent quality. The Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice are also looking at the serious threat posed by trolls to both innovation and competition. As President Obama explained in his recent Fireside Hangout, trolls “don’t actually produce anything themselves, they’re just trying to essentially leverage and hijack somebody else’s idea and see if they can extort some money out of them.”

Congress should also make it easier for companies to recover money spent defending against frivolous troll suits. Legislation, such as the bipartisan SHIELD Act re-introduced this week in the House, can do much to reduce troll litigation. And expanding the covered business method program of the America Invents Act to include more patents would create a robust alternative to litigation.

We look forward to continuing to work with the PTO, Congress and the software industry to find ways to improve patent quality, end the growing troll problem, and protect innovation and job growth.

Posted by Susan Molinari, Vice President, Public Policy and Government Affairs

Any student in the country could be the creator of the next big website or the next cool app. That’s why we’re excited that yesterday the House of Representatives passed H. Res. 77, a near-unanimous resolution highlighting the importance of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) — especially computer science — and establishing an annual, nationwide academic competition in these fields.

STEM disciplines are a source of jobs and innovation, and they are necessary for our workforce to match the fast pace of technological change. For example, an estimated 1.4 million new jobs will require computing skills by 2020. Yet the US still lags in this area; only a small percentage of middle schoolers show proficiency in math and science, and only one third of bachelor’s degrees earned in this country are in a STEM field. For this reason, energizing students at an early age is crucial.

The competition established by the House resolution could engage students in various ways. To start, it calls for a challenge to create new apps for a range of platforms. Developing an app is a great way for students to gain hands-on experience in computer science, the next wave of opportunity in today’s economy. As technology advances, the competition may evolve to focus on different fields.

We believe it’s crucial to help kids and teens around the country move from being great consumers of technology to being great creators of technology — and competitions like this one can help drive that evolution. By reaching out to budding technologists in their districts, Members of Congress can foster a deeper enthusiasm for computer science. We hope this opportunity for students to showcase their creativity will spark interest in the STEM fields for years to come.