Google CEO Google CEO Eric Schmidt says privacy doesn’t matter, but has seen fit to to tell his company that all CNet reporters were to be blacklisted for a year simply because CNET published information on Schmidt’s neighborhood, hobbies, political donations and so forth, which it found through Google searches.

BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow correctly points out that it was Schmidt himself who suggested that “if you want to keep something private, ‘maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place’ (in other words, ‘innocent people have nothing to hide.’)” adding “Hey, Eric: if you don’t want us to know how much money you make, where you live, and what you do with your spare time, maybe you shouldn’t have a house, earn a salary, or have any hobbies, right?”

The Committee would agree and would add that there are all sorts of things someone may need to keep private. Google is in effect, blocking many people from accessing some of the best social tools for grassroots organising by constanly erroring on the side of letting it all hang out.

Ahead of a planned Facebook/Google data agreement, we encourage people who may have reasons to be concerned to increase their privacy settings, delete some information or introduce false information. Read the rest of this entry…

Google docs is a great place to post things anonymously so long as you’ve set up an anonymous account that doens’t refer to your real identity. A brilliant case in point is this Practical Advice for Supporters of #IranElection, which we include here as it has excellent advice for anoyone mixing blogs and social media for their political activism, specifically in countries where speaking out can get you in serious trouble. Read the rest of this entry…