Privacy advocate Moxie Marlinspike used the spotlight of the SOURCE conference here to call attention to Google's data harvesting practices, warning that the search engine giant can mine information to figure out even what Web surfers are thinking about.
During a presentation that discussed the changing threats to privacy, Marlinspike likened Google's data collection to the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness program and lamented that fact that it's near impossible to avoid Google's tentacles without "opting out of the social narrative."

"They have an awful lot of data. They record everything. They have your IP address, your search requests, the contents of every e-mail you've ever sent or received. They know the news you read, the places you go. They're even collecting real-time GPS location and DNS look-ups," Marlinspike said.

"They know who you friends are, where you live, where you work, where you are spending your free time. They know about your health, your love life, your political leanings. They even know what you are thinking about," Marlinspike added, warning that the company has found a way to control the terms of the privacy debate by offering what he described as fake anonymization.

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