Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said anonymity on the Internet is dangerous, according to a report in the Huffington Post.
August 11, 2010
By International Business Times
In an interview with CNBC conducted at the Techonomy conference earlier this month, Schmidt offered an additional look at his views on online privacy and anonymity, says the report.
Arguing that anonymity on the Internet is dangerous, Schmidt had reportedly said, “In a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you.”
He also said governments may eventually put an end to anonymity. “We need a (verified) name service for people,” he said. “Governments will demand it.”
“Privacy is incredibly important,” he said in another interview, adding, “Privacy is not the same thing as anonymity. It’s very important that Google and everyone else respects people’s privacy. People have a right to privacy; it’s natural; it’s normal. It’s the right way to do things.” But he said there should be limits to privacy.
Google had admitted in May the company had, for several years, been “mistakenly” collecting private data sent over users’ wireless networks. The revelation prompted German prosecutors to launch an investigation into ‘privacy breach’ by Google.
Schmidt had suggested that such probes were unwarranted. According to the Times of London, Schmidt told audiences at Google’s Zeitgeist event that “the company should not face prosecution over the incident” on the grounds that “nobody had been harmed by the gathering of people’s information.”
“No harm, no foul,” Schmidt had said, according to the report.
Admitting to the privacy breach, Google’s Senior Vice President of Engineering & Research Alan Eustace said in a blog that the information inadvertently collected by Street View cars was “never used in any Google products.”