Spies to Predict the Future

"The theory is simple and reasonable: the more you know about what is happening right now, the better you'll be at predicting what will happen next. One United States intelligence agency is planning to do just that -- using Google, Twitter, Facebook, and anything else that provides a window on current events and trends. [...]

The kinds of sources of information that the project will be consulting are referred to as OSI, or Open Source Indicators -- such as "web search trends, blogs, microblogs, internet traffic, webcams, financial markets, and many others" according to the notice. Using "continuous, automated analysis" of these indicators, IARPA hopes to "anticipate and/or detect societal disruptions, such as political crises, disease outbreaks, economic instability, resource shortages, and natural disasters."

More: http://hken.ibtimes.com/articles/176564/20110708/us-government-to-use-internet-to-predict-the-future.htm

Spies can use Google as a tool of espionage

Use of Google search engine in espionage:

'Google Suggest works by listing up to 10 suggestions each time a letter is added to a search term, based on the most popular searches made by other Google users that begin with the same letters. The words offered change as each new letter is added.

Some of the options that appear as your search term takes shape can often seem quite strange: "runescape", "rotten tomatoes" and "rock and chips" for "r", "ro" and "roc" in "rocket", for instance. This is the key to how Mazurczyk's team adds its own search suggestions to the list to encode secret messages. '

More:
http://www.newscientist.com/mobile/article/mg21028175.900-spies-can-send-messages-hidden-in-a-google-search.html

Espionage terms explained here.

Google vs Writers

Quill and Quire writes:

With the Jan. 28 opt-out deadline fast approaching, three major U.S. writers’ groups – The National Writers Union, The American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the Science Fiction Writers of America – have sent a joint letter to more than 60 members of Congress condemning the recently amended Google Book Search settlement proposal. It’s a notable break with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, both of which are working with Google on the settlement.

The ramifications of the amended settlement for any one author and any one book are exceptionally complex. We’ve talked to our members, authors like yourself. The ones who got the notice found it incomprehensible and just shook their heads in confusion. Go to the settlement website’s poorly implemented database and see for yourself how tricky this is – has your book been scanned? Is it commercially available?  Should you opt out? If you do nothing, you’re automatically included in the settlement. If you opt out, Google doesn’t even guarantee that it won’t steal your work in the future. READ MORE

German Digital Library

Germany to follow France, will not stand idly by while private corporations digitize its cultural heritage:

Germany now has a plan to challenge Google at its own game.  In December, the government announced the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (DDB) — the German Digital Library — a plan to connect the databases of 30,000 German cultural and academic organizations and create an Internet portal that would be available to all German citizens.

This new digital library will contain everything from books and documents, to paintings, film and music recordings. In addition, it will be linked to Europeana, a similar project launched in 2008 by the European Union (that still contains little content and remains difficult to access), and to libreka!, the German e-book portal run by the MVB, a subsidiary of the Boersenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (the German Publishers and Booksellers Association). SOURCE

Take this deal and shove it!

Ursula K Le Guin resigns from the Authors Gild, because of her

unhappiness with the role the Guild played in the Google Book settlement. “You decided to deal with the devil, as it were, and have presented your arguments for doing so. I wish I could accept them. I can’t,” Le Guin wrote in her letter of resignation. “There are principles involved, above all the whole concept of copyright; and these you have seen fit to abandon to a corporation, on their terms, without a struggle.” SOURCE

I am glad I never signed up with the Authors Guild, although now I can't say "Take this deal and shove it!"