Stephen Colbert Rips Google For Selling Users' Private Data To Highest Bidder (VIDEO)

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On an installment of The Colbert Report this week, host Stephen Colbert lambasted Google for its controversial handling of users' personal data and its CEO's remarks about personal privacy.

Colbert warned that a person's activities on social networking sites "could destroy your offline future."

He showed footage of Google CEO Eric Schmidt's infamous 2009 interview, in which the chief executive advised, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

"Are you listening, young people?" Colbert asked. "Just don't ever make a mistake. How hard is that?"

"The point is," Colbert continued, "the Internet is one giant resume. And under "special skills," yours might list: getting high, keg stands, flashing your boobs, and multitasking. That's why Eric Schmidt further suggests that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood. Exactly. From now on, changing your name will be a right of passage."

Colbert ridiculed Schmidt's statement about name changes, made during an interview with the Wall Street Journal, by suggesting that job seekers go one step further and "surgically alter" their faces to avoid Google's all-seeing eye. He also hinted that since many people depend on Google for email, chat, and search, the only way to escape Google is to ditch friends and family and dump "everything you've ever searched for on the Internet. Then, once all that's done, and you're a disfigured, nameless loner, you'll be the ideal job candidate."

He skewered both Google and Facebook for their treatment of personal data:

Of course, there is one other answer. Google and Facebook could stop invasively data-mining and selling our private data to the highest bidder. But that would be asking them to change who they are. And that's not fair.

Watch Colbert's Report below. Also take a look at how social networking blunders have ruined careers and have even led to arrests.

WATCH:

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Comments

[Seán O'Nilbud]

01:55 AM on 08/29/2010

Privacy is a delusion. It is only used as a weapon by the government against citizens.

[Balzac]

02:04 PM on 08/27/2010

Nice one.

[Ryan Hidalgo]

07:24 AM on 08/27/2010

Eric Shmidt, Google CEO on Dec. 3, 2009: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Aug 14, 2010: "Every young person one day will be entitled automatica­lly to change his or her name on reaching adulthood.­..." Love Colbert's irony, that to ask Google and Facebook to stop invasively datamining our private lives and selling to highest bidders would be asking Google to change who they are and that's just not fair. Magnifeco.

And what a prophetic descriptio­n of Google's plausible hand in technologi­cal dystopia: if all email is recorded through Gmail, and all seraches and webhistory are recorded by Google, and Google offers a facial recognitio­n feature in unlabeled online photos, then we would have to change our names and surgically alter our appearance if we made any mistake that could be used against us by employers that could afford to purchase informatio­n on our background­.

[enemyofignorance]

08:15 PM on 08/27/2010

And we thought big brother was supposed to be the government­, lol!

[Chris3131]

04:44 PM on 08/26/2010

Google is becoming dangerousl­y powerful. The outcry isn't there because they aren't making money (directly from the consumer) off of it (like Microsoft)­.

[enemyofignorance]

08:15 PM on 08/27/2010

a legal form of blackmail.­.

[ChelleAgain]

04:08 PM on 08/26/2010

The whole thing about "don't do anything you don't want people to know about" is absurd. No one, even people leading good lives, wants everyone ton know everything­. Privacy is not about not wanting people to know about your nefarious doings but rather thinking we each have the right to share or not share depending on our relationsh­ips with others.
I'm guessing Eric Schmidt password protects his computer. Why? What does he have to hide?

[hypnotoad72]

04:57 PM on 08/26/2010

"With power comes responsibi­lity"? Thankfully we have far more power than we give credit for, but it takes more than just us as individual­s to keep a system of respect in place.