Google has a problem. Passwords just aren't what they used to be. Sure, a long password with capital letters, numbers and symbols may have served you well so far. Even the most advanced hacker may have needed millions of years to crack it five or ten years ago. These days, it may just take days or hours with a couple thousand dollars worth of computer equipment and a modern algorithm.
With over 500 million accounts, Google is constantly fighting a losing battle and it cannot possibly win. This fundamentally threatens the company, and that is why it is making a concerted effort to banish the one-step password login once and for all.
Google already has a two-step voluntary system where an account holder is sent a code by text message whenever a new computer or device is used to access an account. There have been rumors about Google working with a ring or similar wearable device to limit account access as well.
Now it is also working with a company called Yubico, which makes a USB device called the Yubikey. The basic idea for using a ring or USB device is to add a physical component to the process that cannot be replicated and will make your account ironclad.
There are plenty of problems to overcome, but Google will continue to forge ahead and will undoubtedly make sure the person on the other end of their connection is you. The company's revenue is at stake, after all.
A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing?
Google is really just a giant advertising agency wrapped in a tech company. It rose to the top of its field by building the best personalized advertising platform in the world and a vast majority of their future revenue depends on making it better.
Google's push to secure your account is a self-serving way to make sure its treasure-trove of lucrative personal information remains intact. If it can keep your account secure, it has a perfect history of where you are, what you search for, which web sites you have gone to, what you clicked on and what you bought.
Just about the only thing about you that Google cannot give to advertisers is your personal identity, but that won't last for long. Pretty soon, everything you do or post online will bear your name.
Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, recently wrote a book with Google Ideas chief Jared Cohen. Here is an ominous quote from “The New Digital Age:”
“Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.”
That is the future of the web according to one of the largest gatekeepers. We're already seeing it through revised privacy rules from Google, Facebook and other online companies. Either you play along and identify yourself in publicly available data or you are cut out.
That doesn't seem as terrible as it truly is on the surface. This is part of a trend that is allowing our government to destroy your First Amendment rights to free and anonymous speech.
Exploitation by the Feds
Since November 2011, the Department of Homeland Security has been authorized to collect personal information on anyone who who decides to “use traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.”
The DHS even hired General Dynamics to exploit the data Americans are publishing online by monitoring and analyzing all of the major social media web sites, along with forums and comment sections for major news organizations.
This surveillance is unconstitutional, plain and simple. The DHS's actions fly in the face of many Supreme Court rulings that reinforce protection of your right to anonymously write or say what you want. America's rich history of anonymous writing dating back to when some of our founding fathers published The Federalist Papers is poised to become a relic in the “new digital age.”
So while Google may seem to be protecting you by fixing the problem with passwords, it is really working to maintain and expand the security of the valuable and extensive personal information it has on you that it will pass along to advertisers.
If you document government overreach, abuse its power or a government agent break the law and you want people to know about it, you will have to post it under your name and the Feds will be watching. If you attempt to protect yourself by anonymously posting a message, it will be lost in a sea of data and no one will ever see it.
Ultimately, anything Google, or other web sites, do to bolster their security and improve the information they keep on you will accelerate Uncle Sam's transformation into Big Brother thanks to the DHS's unconstitutional surveillance. Your First Amendment rights are doomed and Google, Facebook and Twitter are making it possible.
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