This week, Google quietly dropped its defining motto, “don’t be evil.” The move comes as Google recently entered into a deal with the Pentagon to develop better artificial intelligence for facial recognition in its killer drone program. That Google is using its massive research capacity for military applications should make citizens and legislators around the world shudder. We have come a very long way from those heady days of the early digital revolution when edgy startup companies like Google sold us a vision of a democratic digital commons, where people around the globe were brought together by access to knowledge and ease of communication and connectivity. Google even talked about creating the greatest library the world had ever known. What we didn’t know was that library was our own personal lives — and the beneficiaries were Google’s investors, not the general public.Nobody paid much attention to how Google was amassing this massive library of our digital lives as its steadily grew into a corporate conglomerate of unprecedented size. But it was our search histories, browsing habits and a meticulous record of — literally — every step we take that transformed Google from a cool search engine into the colossus it is today.Google is not alone. The domination of the digital realm by an oligarchy consisting of a few massive firms raises many disturbing questions for legislators, regulators, and the public. Their unprecedented control of digital space has the potential to stifle innovation, undermine the rights of citizens, and upend the democratic processes of sovereign countries. Facebook is currently under fire for its role in the breach of the personal information of millions of users to a sketchy political data firm that may have undermined the most important election in recent memory. In other parts of the world, they’ve been raked over the coals by NGOs, journalists and civil society groups for, among o ...
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