What would you say if I told you that a number of state governments (and soon the federal government) are willingly sharing vast amounts of your public information with a private corporation to help save money on data hosting? You’d be concerned, right? After all, private companies don’t answer to the will of the people the same way that politicians do; they answer to their investors and shareholders. What if I then told you the company in control of your information was Google?

In a recent blog post at philosecurity, wellknown cybersecurity consultant, Sherri Davidoff, talks about Google’s firm grip on our government’s data and why it’s a dangerous proposition for privacy activists.

From the blog post:

Recently I saw an ad which read:

“Over 60% of the U.S. state governments have gone Google.”

Does this mean that we’ve now handed the majority of our state governments’ operational data to a single privately-controlled company which has well-publicized partnerships with other governments such as China?

To find out more, I contacted Google’s press department. A representative promptly got back to me with more information:

“The reference to Going Google refers to US state governments using one or more of Google’s enterprise products…With regard to data hosting, Google Apps is a cloud computing solution meaning Google hosts the data in our data centers, relieving the customer or gov agency of the burden of managing their own servers in house.”

In other words, according to Google, United States state governments have literally handed over our public data to be held and managed by a private company which has well-publicized partnerships with other governments such as China. The data is physically stored in Google’s buildings, on Google’s servers, managed by Google’s employees. This means Google now controls our government’s access to it’s own data.

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To me, this is an unacceptable level of control for a single private company to have over federal, state or local government. When you reach a point where the government cannot operate without a private company, then the private company has effectively gained control of the government.

While Davidoff acknowledges the impracticality of the government developing its own Google-level technology in-house, she says the long-term risks of ceding so much authority to a private company far outweighs the short-term benefits of improved communications.

Last week here at the Reputation.com Blog, Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik discussed Google’s rumored acquisition of Yelp. In the blog post, Michael declared that Google’s interest in Yelp showed the company was “no longer a disinterested observer,” further elaborating that “its ownership of blogging technology, its interest in reviews, and its increasing appetite for a broadened footprint in what we can call the Opinions Industry confirm that Google owns content like a regular Old Media media company.” In light of Sherri Davidoff’s recent post, Michael’s words seem even more apt.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I don’t believe Google is evil or that it’s run by maniacal geniuses bent on taking over the world. However, I am practical. Allowing one institution so much power over government operations is a risky proposition and one which should not be taken lightly. It’s your data, which is why you should have control over it. Unfortunately, as Davidoff says in the last paragraph of her blog post:

Google is outside our system of checks and balances. They are quickly becoming absolutely necessary for our government to function, but their operations are not transparent and are outside the control of the American people.