This endorsement surprises me just because the TPP is so blatantly anti-consumer, pro-corporation.
I'm under no illusion that Google's anything other massive tech-savvy advertising company, but the self-serving corporate side of the company is usually hidden behind the pretty veneer of "tech for the people". Supporting a trade agreement like the TPP (especially given the lack of transparency in the process) lacks their usual subtlety.
Also interesting: All current Presidential candidates have come out against the TPP. Presumably Obama is pressuring Google to help him push it through before he no longer has a say in the matter. If he can get it through, it's going to be very hard to repeal, but if he doesn't get it through, our next President, whoever that is, will do their best to block it.
Why do you assume the next president won't do a backflip and support it once they're in? Politicians break promises, and break opinions a whole lot more.
Hillary reads the same to me, I must say. I have no idea what she genuinely believes.
But, honestly, why would anyone run for president unless they were an insane egoist or craved power? It's not a job a sane person would volunteer to do.
There are a few rare individuals that do it out of desire to do good, but they seem rarer by the day.
She's so sane and down to earth that she'd rather be the most powerful Senator for 20 years than President for 4 years. You should be thanking her for playing the long game.
Human affairs are a marathon, not a sprint. Pace yourself.
Also, I've learned to embrace incrementalism and transactional politics (quid pro quo).
Lastly, if you bring the heat, the targeted policy maker(s) will see the light. The color of their logo won't be a factor. Sanders' campaign, and massive following, absolutely moved Clinton to the left.
It moved her statements to the left (for now). I very much doubt that she's going to actually go through with things given her past history.
Examples: TPP, gay marriage etc. One could try arguing that she has evolved but MANY see her as just flip-flopping to what seems politically expedient at that time. Hence the tremendous amount of distrust.
Embrace incrementalism = let's make mediocre great again. Imagine that kind of mentality when it was announced that we were going to try to send someone to the Moon.
"Let's shoot for the moon!"
"Enh, let's just name an airport instead to build support"
How do you think gay marriage and marijuana were legalized (thus far)? Fits and starts. Fighting for every single inch. And then eventually victory. Think of any major, significant social progress. Emancipation, suffrage, welfare, worker safety, child labor, etc. etc. Each decades in the making.
I encourage you to read The Waxman Report by former US Sen Henry Waxman to get a sense of how much effort and time it takes to forge policy, move the needle.
Continue to disempower yourself thru cynicism, apathy, and inaction.
Or follow the examples of Sanders, Warren and 1000s of others and learn to convert your outrage into action.
Being President doesn't tend to do wonders for public opinion, though - it's an incredibly public role and every decision is scrutinized to a degree higher than any other public office.
If you want a principled presidential candidate on the left of the political spectrum, you could vote for Jill Stein (or hope that Clinton gets indicted by the FBI before the democratic convention so that Sanders can step in, but the chances of that are slim to none).
Jill Stein has similar policy positions to Bernie Sanders, if the Sanders supporters realise this en masse she may have decent chance.
The Clintons are always associated with DLC (Democratic Leadership Council?), a centrist organization. Remember Bill Clinton is for all intents and purposes a Southern Democrat, so he is a close to a blue dog democratic president. Hillary Clinton luckily chose to be Senator of NY (which is a cold political move, esp. when you account for political polarization), she has moved to the Left when tides are that way. Hillary was a staunch centrist during Bush presidency including being very corporate friendly (and still is). Other than abortion rights, Hillary was all over in many issues, including crime, welfare, immigration etc. Her cold ambition fizzled in front of an aspirational candidacy of Obama and now, the D party moved to Left and Bernie pulled it to more Left, so she will play along with it. Hillary Clinton is architect of TPP in its current form, at it is politically expedient for her to deny it. The Clintons were always centrist, that is why Chelsea Clinton was on the board of IAC (pretty sure, its the last name, not her talents). The whole definition of Centrism esp. in a very ideological Political world, many times looks like Opportunism, and many Centrist leaders through out the world, ascend not with Philosophical fidelity but with carefully building a Personality following.
This, he's basically in the game of reactionary politics. Candidate A has X position, so he must take the Y position. Any 'policy' he has in the election process is nothing more than a popularity drive.
Seemed it was an opinion. Trump, a well known and documented public figure, has certainly had a much of his life documented in media as an entertainer, author and business executive.I think there is enough evidence to make a claim (either way) about public figures & their temperment without knowing them personally.
Trump wants corporations to stay in the US. TPP allows corporations to sue the US for loss of profits in other countries IIRC, so that would mean TPP is indeed against Trump's interests.
He did that because he had to pick a party. He could have just as easily run as a Democrat and used the same tactics with different talking points.
He doesn't really alight with either party.
But he's most certainly anti-free-trade. All of his business and money is in the US (mostly in real estate). It's in his best interest to artificially prop up US industry by shutting down inbound trade.
Trump may be a liar, but it's probably a miscalculation to think he has greater loyalty to the Republican Party than to himself.
Trump is a real estate guy. His business is intrinsically tied to the US. He can't outsource hotel construction jobs to China. That makes being anti-globalization an easy path for him.
Moreover, more capital sloshing around in the US instead of going overseas means lower interest rates for construction loans.
First of all, HuffPo is uh, far from an unbiased source when it comes to Trump. But secondly, a lot of that stuff has very flimsy reasoning behind it:
> 11. Claim: “She wasn’t dragged to the ground.” — Trump on Fields.
> Reality: Trump implies here that Fields said she was dragged to the ground. She never did.
> She said, “I almost fell to the ground, but was able to maintain my balance,” which is what the video shows.
If you follow the link with her quote, right before the "I almost fell..." sentence, in her own words she says "Someone had grabbed me tightly by the arm and yanked me down."
Which directly contradicts
> Reality: Trump implies here that Fields said she was dragged to the ground. She never did.
So uh, HuffPo is lying here about a time they claimed Trump is lying?
And then you get stuff like this:
> 53. Claim: “I am not soliciting money from insurance companies and from lumber companies and from banks and from — if I did, I would have made Jeb Bush look like a baby.”
> Reality: He made Bush look like a baby anyway.
Are we reaching here or what? They're seriously trying to say he's lying about not making Jeb look bad? And then you've got stuff like this:
> 40. Claim: “Only a fool would give a tax return [during an audit].”
> Realty: Lawyers do advise against doing this. But nothing about being audited prevents Trump from releasing his tax records.
So yeah, he's right that he shouldn't give out his tax return during an audit. What is he lying about here? He never said he couldn't, just that he shouldn't.
If the disclaimer the HuffPo puts on every Trump article hasn't clued you in, they've clearly got an axe to grind against him and you're not exactly guaranteed to get unbiased reporting about him from them.
Has Johnson (+) said anything about the TPP yet? I would assume that Libertarians lean toward "free" trade deals.
(+) He's been polling in double-digits for weeks now, three points shy of the threshold for getting in the debates. That's a "current candidate" in my book.
Libertarians lean towards free trade, but just because a treaty has "free trade" in its name doesn't mean they will believe it is a step towards free trade.
> "All current Presidential candidates have come out against the TPP."
All current presidential candidates have come out against the TPP whilst running for office, that's not necessarily going to be their position if they reach the White House. Hilary Clinton was promoting the TPP before the current presidential race.
Obama is really hoping the lame duck congress will push it through for him. He's counting on pro-business Republican senators since many Democrats are abandoning him on the issue.
Once you have successfully locked the consumer (rather: society) into your product portfolio and therefor are taking control away from the consumer, once you have sufficiently monopolized your market(s), you can afford behavior like Google's, because you simply get away with it.
One specific part I don't like is that it would require signatories to enforce a DMCA-like ban on circumvention of DRM mechanisms. The US already has such a ban, but putting it in a treaty makes it worse (harder to repeal), and it would create one in countries which don't already have one. In general the intellectual-property related provisions seem not good to me, almost exclusively in the direction of more restrictions on what regular people can do with their data and devices.
There's essentially no enforcement of copyright law in many of the signatory states. Yes DRM kind of sucks, but rampant piracy also kind of sucks. The way the US does it I think is closer to optimal than the way Vietnam does it. That's why Google calls the provisions "balanced copyright enforcement."
That is false. Vietnam does not count as "many". As far as enforcement goes, Japan could be said to have stricter enforcement than the US, recently non-commercial infringers actually being arrested by the police and facing imprisonment (I'm not aware of anyone being actually imprisoned yet) for downloading files on Share or Winny.
But this is all red herring since the TPP does not set any goals for measuring actual ENFORCEMENT, it only imposes new IP laws outside of the democratic process, with zero transparency, all while claiming to be a "free trade treaty".
Let's make it clear: Copyright laws have nothing to do with free trade. Let's suppose for a moment the US Copyright law is anywhere near "balanced" (and Canada is a caribbean pirate cove, as xxAA groups and the USTR love to claim). That still has nothing to do with Free Trade. If the Obama administration really wants to use TPP to fix all of the world's evils as they see them, why not push signatories to accept LGBT marriage for instance?
How exactly does putting a provision in a treaty make it harder to repeal? The same actions that ratify the treaty (for instance, passing an enabling domestic law) can be used to break it.
Because it's no longer as simple as repealing/passing a domestic law but in addition to that becomes an issue of reneging on an agreement with other nations. In practice maybe we don't respect treaties very much, but it does seem to be an additional barrier, at least in the public discourse about what laws to repeal/pass.
This is the theory that the EU tries to push on it's member states. They have accepted that international treaties carry greater weight than the local laws and even the constitution of the local countries :
As to whether it applies to all treaties or just the EU ones, ... good question. In practice courts haven't really followed it.
Also, just as a data point, I've been working in Brussels for close to 20 years now and seen the evolution. I work as a consultant, so it has been a mixed bag for me. However, for just about everyone else, workers, middle class, business owners, ... it has been a consistently worsening disaster.
Having regularly worked for the EU commission, let me tell you this : any idea you may have that this organization has anything but their own economic interests at heart can be cured by chatting with one of them for 5 minutes.
It's like how the US is slightly less likely to unilaterally legalize marijuana at the federal level, it is signatory to several UN treaties which forbid it from doing so.
The point is that something that is included as part and parcel of a treaty may involve breaking the treaty and suffering all kinds of other consequences.
"The Trouble with the TPP" series by Michael Geist [0] is an excellent view of some of the issues with it, and demonstrates how the huge nature of the TPP makes it difficult to create short (digestible) but powerful arguments against it. It was very much written from Canada's point of view, so it isn't the most convincing argument for why the US, or any other country, shouldn't ratify the treaty.
I honestly can't fathom why this question has been downvoted. It's a reasonable question, and one I share.
It's a large and complicated document; there's plenty of room for bad ideas, and plenty of room for good. The real question is, "Would we rather have nothing?" Because the existing ecosystem of loosely-affiliated nation-by-nation policies is a sh-tshow.
Yes, we would certanly rather have nothing. Status Quo is infinitely better than forced data transfer of our data to another nation and infinitely better than selling out IP protection to US corporation under ridiculous copyright laws.
If your local legislature doesn't enable the treaty, you aren't bound by it: it isn't a part of your law. A trade treaty is essentially a promise to pass a set of laws.
Generally treaties are negotiated by the executive of a country, not the legislative force. Even in the cases where there is still a ratification step, the initiative is taken away from the legislative, and the law is written by indirectly (at best) elected commissars (in the case of the EU), rather than directly elected representatives.
In the case of the EU, there isn't even a ratification step once the EU commission (which isn't elected) agrees to a treaty.
That means that with EU commission agreement you get the supreme court (that supersedes all local courts) arguing that anything the commission agrees to can countermand local constitutions.
So local legislature agreement required, in many cases, is incorrect.
Eh, no it isn't (necessarily). That depends on whether a certain legal system is monistic or dualistic; or rather, adheres to monistic or dualistic principles (it's not a black or white thing). Without knowing where the GP is from, you can't reasonably make any assumptions, because both are common.
The most discouraging pattern is down-votes on reasonable comments without any feedback whatsoever. Before a person can down-vote they should be required to leave a response OR to up-vote an existing response.
That's because we don't know enough about the actual text to make a substantial argument. All we have are leaked drafts. And by the time the documents are finalized, it will be signed before the ink of the text is dry.
Do you know how many consumer advocacy groups are included in the negotiation process for TPP? I gather it's zero. Given the process is specifically intended to keep out consumers, why should we believe the end result will be any different?
To expound on this, "by the time the documents are finalized, it will be signed before the ink of the text is dry" is typical FUD from anti-TPP people who've never bothered reading anything on the subject except other anti-TPP FUD.
Negotiating treaties in private is normal, to prevent parties from manipulating public opinion to gain a stronger negotiating position and to prevent kneejerk outcries from the anti-trade crowd for every random provision any party proposes regardless of its likelihood to actually be in the final text. It is not about evil corporatists secretly conspiring to undermine democracy.
As a prominent example of a treaty which was negotiated fully in the open: The UN treaty. Broadcasters were present and recording large parts of the negotiations. Positions papers were printed during the negotiations. Detailed information including drafts was mailed out to citizens of many countries.
Negotiating treaties in private has become normal because its inconvenient to those who wish to find ways getting their pet provisions packaged into something that is hard to resist.
> Negotiating treaties in private is normal, to prevent parties from manipulating public opinion to gain a stronger negotiating position and to prevent kneejerk outcries from the anti-trade crowd for every random provision any party proposes regardless of its likelihood to actually be in the final text. It is not about evil corporatists secretly conspiring to undermine democracy.
Isn’t this the definition of doublethink?
It will prevent the public from influencing the treaty while it is being made (prevent outcries for random provision), but it will not undermine the ability of the public to influence treaties(It is not about evil corporatists secretly conspiring to undermine democracy)
No. It's a deal negotiated between twelve parties with different interests. The public/Congress get ample opportunity to review the completed deal and decide if it's worthwhile, just not access to the minute details of the negotiating process. That protects the treaty from being torpedoed by demagogues stirring up public outrage and drawing arbitrary red lines in order to gain unfair leverage over other parties. It also protects parties from public antagonism for making any concession, even if it's for a worthwhile return.
If everyone is willing to ratify a deal – that is, it's better than no deal at all – it's reasonable to take measures that make it possible for the deal to be reached in the first place.
So what you're saying is that this law is really being kept secret for our own advantage ? Politicians can't be held responsible for their actions because they benefit us ? Can't have public influence over the deal because that would "torpedo" it ?
Maybe you should move to Russia or China, and have all your deals and laws done like this.
And they give the same argument you're giving : "it's for your own good". And I bet in one case out of 10 that's actually true.
Not sure what you're trying to say ... obviously it was kept secret and is now being presented as a done deal, even when there are LOTS of things in there that we should never ever agree to [1][2]. Moreover it's something congress would never agree to normally.
It's 10x worse than the DMCA, it's anti-consumer, it advocates worse global warming and prevents people from doing anything about it, it's got disastrously bad anti-employee policies, and so on and so forth. I at one point called it the "Indians get medicine now. Let's fix that" agreement.
Why are you even defending it ? Aren't there any red flags in it from your perspective ? Because I'm pretty sure that if you aren't Lloyd Blankfein, that's guaranteed.
It was secret while being negotiated. The reason was that they knew people wouldn't like it. It was surprising that businesses were allowed to access it for things that affected them.
The public gets to influence the implementation or ratification of the final treaty, but they don't get to be a party to the entire negotiation process.
In the US, the signature means little; it must be ratified after the fact by a 2/3 vote of the Senate to come into effect. So - we have a bit of time to influence our lawmakers. It must be a huge, SOPA-level effort, but it can be done. And it must be done.
Trade agreements are basically never treated as treaties, but are, after negotiated, submitted to Congress for passage as regular laws -- as TPP has been -- so it will take a simple majority in each house of Congress, followed by the signature of the President (or, 2/3 of each house to override a veto if one occurs.)
FWIW in June of last year, Obama allied with Senate Republicans, beating his own party, to get TPP fast tracked, meaning that the vote will be all or nothing, up or down, and will receive little debate, oversight, and no amendments before the vote.
The vote was 60-38.
Around that time, Clinton did refer to the secretly-written TPP as the "gold standard" in trade negotiations, but possibly due to pressure from Sanders and the rest of the party, has backed down, saying it was flawed and she doesn't support it.
Trump has also gone after the TPP numerous times, basically shoving a long-standing Republican establishment plank in their faces.
So weirdly both candidates oppose the TPP. I'm wondering if this is going to be saved for after the election, then jammed through.
> FWIW in June of last year, Obama allied with Senate Republicans, beating his own party, to get TPP fast tracked, meaning that the vote will be all or nothing, up or down,
This is true. A supermajority in Congress chose to preemptively waive its filibuster, as it has routinely in such situations since the 1970s. Article 1 Section 5 of the Constitution grants each house of Congress the power to set its own rules. Many believe the filibuster shouldn't exist.
> and will receive little debate, oversight, and no amendments before the vote.
I don't understand how people are still making this argument.
The text has available for seven months at this point and no vote is in sight. There's been plenty of time for both NGOs and individuals to review. The treaty is fairly lengthy (it did take seven years to negotiate after all), but it's certainly readable.
If you're so concerned about not knowing the text, why don't you read it?
Are you referring to the part about corporations being able to sue nations if they take any measures that they can claim hurts their business? [0] I assume that the "ISDS" that Warren refers to in the linked article (which was written before the draft went public), is chapter 28, "Dispute Settlement," in the draft at readthetpp.com. [1] This is already happening, at least with tobacco companies. "Last Week Tonight" did a piece on this.[2]
> if they take any measures that they can claim hurts their business?
This is just flat-out false. The second link you provided clearly lays out the criteria for resolution of a conflict via the ISDS:
> the dispute settlement provisions of this Chapter shall apply...wherever a Party considers that an actualor proposed measure of another Party is or would be inconsistent with the obligations of this Agreement or that another Party has otherwise failed to carry out its obligations under this Agreement; or wherever a Party considers thata benefit it could reasonably have expected to accrue to it under [this agreement] is being nullified or impaired as a result of the application of a measure of another Party that is not inconsistent with this Agreement.
That is, the ISDS is for resolution of conflicts which are alleged to be in violation the the treaty, not for "any measures that they can claim hurts their business". The Phillip-Morris case you cite is because PM alleges that the Australian government expropriated their intellectual property without due compensation. This post[0] has a very nice breakdown of ISDS cases, rationale, and outcomes.
Also give this thread[1] a read - SavannaJeff is a well-known professional trade economist, and has a lot of very valuable expert insight on the TPP that's worth reading.
Okay, thanks for the correction. I read the posts you linked and understand the issue better. Although we have a different definition of clearly.
And I admit that I still have trouble seeing the plaintiffs in these cases as any kind of victims. The first of your links states that companies can use the mere existence of an ISDS mechanism to produce a real "chilling effect" on countries not even part of the dispute. Is that "fair" to the people of those countries?
But okay, there are two sides. And we know which side the "sensationalist media" is on. And also the people of Europe, who (according to your second link) drove the EU to qualify and then scuttle ISDS language in the TTIP after "a lengthy public consultative process."
So I come away wondering what is the value proposition for the public. Or is this provision all carrot?
> I admit that I still have trouble seeing the plaintiffs in these cases as any kind of victims.
The allegations are breach of contract by the government (Veolia), local government changing the rules after signing a contract in order to make it difficult or impossible for the company to fulfill the contract (Vattenfall), and allegations that the government seized a company's IP without due compensation (Phillip-Morris). If the claims hold up, those are three very good examples of companies being victimized by local governments. The "chilling effect" that you mention is in regards to the Phillip-Morris case, where the author speculates that PM was attempting to use the suit to discourage similar behavior in other signatory countries. It didn't work out for them[0] - the system did what it was supposed to in that case, and (properly) no chilling effect was produced. We cannot simply say that because any threat of legal action may have a chilling effect that the possibility for companies to seek legal remedies is a bad thing.
> So I come away wondering what is the value proposition for the public. Or is this provision all carrot?
The value proposition is that by having an arbitrating entity that is not likely to be under the thumb of this or that sovereign entity, companies are much more willing to conduct business in those countries when they have some assurance that their disputes against a local government won't be heard and denied by a sock puppet court controlled by that same government. It's much the same reason that we domestically use our judicial system and neutral third-party arbitration to resolve disputes, rather than just relying on counterparties to self-police themselves.
Has there ever been a trade agreement that was not drafted in secret? I mean that's pretty much the point in these things, lots of horse trading behind closed doors.
TPP and TTIP do seem to go quite a bit further than just some agreement about tariffs, though. There are public health issues at stake, and as such, public interest should definitely be involved.
> Have there been many trade agreements that were drafted by corporations instead of government representatives?
Pretty much all major trade agreements of the modern era have been largely drafted by corporate lobbyists, so, I guess "yes" is the answer you are looking for.
There's nothing anti-sovereignty. ISDS only allows foreign entities to sue for breach of a law voted on by our own Congress inasmuch as it effects them.
ISDS is in the treaty to encourage foreign direct investment in developing nations, which often do not have well-functioning, independent and fair courts the way the U.S. does.
Accept that free trade as a general principal is a good thing for all parties.
NAFTA and agreements modeled after it have this in common:
They throw US manufacturing jobs under the bus so that we can all have more competitive, fuel efficient, cheaper, safer cars. (Hooray).
OK, so lets say we just killed ~2,000,000 'decent paying' jobs, many of them union, and did a number on hundreds of rust belt communities. Well thats fine, everyone is better off. We are saving money here. Saving Lives.
But what about other industries? Pharmaceuticals do not support nearly the number of jobs that auto industry does. Maybe 30,000 very well paying white collar jobs, people who are upwardly mobile and educated. It is widely accepted that that industry is sapping US economy of strength. We regularly pay 10X what other countries do. Why don't we open up that market to competition too!
Oh wait, thats an industry with deep connections in Washington. They rank up there with banks as the largest political donors, spend the most on lobbyists, and so on. So count them out, they don't need competition.
OK, so the standard counter argument to this is that Pharma is a special case. We let them keep the fat on their margins because... innovation! Think of all the lives we are saving by shoveling them money! If only it were that simple.
The overwhelming majority of the increase in lifespan over the past 100 years has not been modern medicine; its been public health efforts like sewars, safety standards, and as well as a handful of fluke cures like polio vaccine, penicillin, smallpox vaccine, no thanks to the pharmaceutical industrial complex.
I could go on, the point is that too often trade deals are structured to protect the politically connected and their interests while regressively opening up high employment industries to competition. So even if you believe that free trade is a great thing (I do) it is also valid to acknowledge that it has historically been adopted in a regressive way.
Medicine is by far the most flagrant example, but plenty of others.
Another valid, if more contrived argument is this: A trade agreement is a treaty. Once a treaty is passed, congress cannot easily change it; it become the domain of the executive branch and regulatory agencies specified in the treaty. So a lot of progressive critics see it as a way of creating a court system to mediate trade disputes which is not accountable to the laws that congress makes or repeals.
On example of this is the cigarette industry, which has successfully used NAFTA courts to prevent third word countries from banning sales or making labeling requirements on the grounds that it was a violation of IP and so on.
But the bigger problem is that you have this international body making decisions that effect everyone which is not directly accountable to anyone. So in its way it is a separation of powers and taxation without representation type argument which really requires deeper reading than I can provide here.
Well, they removed "Don't be evil" as their motto, replaced it with "Do the right thing", which clearly means "make more moneys". They became yet another big corporation.
I think the point is that they didn't.
Google's motto is still "Don't be evil". Alphabet (Google's parent company) adopted "Do the right thing" as its own, but Google's is still in effect.
To answer the question of why "Do the right thing", it is in my opinion to support actions that they deem "right" or "good" which otherwise aren't strictly required for their operations. For example their support of gay marriage.
Wow. Even as the resident Google critic, I never expected Google would sink down to the level of endorsing the TPP. :/
This is a clear break from the EFF's position (https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp) and a strong indication of their increasing closed door ties with the Obama administration.
Or it could be an indication that Google is considering a bigger picture than the EFF is. TPP is a comprehensive agreement, covering a wide range of topics and activities. Here are the titles of the major components:
Competition & Business Facilitation
Competition Policy
Cooperating & Capacity Building
Cross Border Trade in Services
Customs Administration & Trade Facilitation
Development
Dispute Settlement
Electronic Commerce
Environment
Financial Services
Government Procurement
Intellectual Property
Investment
Labour
National Treatment & Market Access for Goods
Regulatory Coherence
Rules of Origin and Origin Procedures
Sanitary & Phytosanitary Measures
Small & Medium-sized Businesses
State-Owned Enterprises
Technical Barriers to Trade
Telecommunications
Temporary Entry for Business Persons
Textiles & Apparel
Trade Remedies
Transparency & Anti-Corruption
The EFF's opposition seems to be almost all based on just one of those components (Intellectual Property). It is quite possible that others, including Google, could see enough positives in the other components to outweigh the negatives the EFF sees in the IP component even if they agree with the EFF that those IP provisions are serious negatives.
This is especially true when you consider that much of the EFF's criticism of the IP section is over provisions that are already in effect in the US, and to a lesser extent in Europe. For instance, the US and Europe already have the 70 year copyright term, and the US and Europe already have anti-circumvention measures (DMCA in the US, the Copyright Directive [1] in the EU). Basically, many of the things the EFF objects to ALREADY APPLY to Google in most of Google's markets.
This is especially true when you consider that much of the EFF's criticism of the IP section is over provisions that are already in effect in the US...
A core purpose of the EFF is to keep IP law from spinning out of control, and to roll back the places where it already has (which is pretty much everywhere). This would be more nearly impossible than it already is if the US laws calcify into treaty form, which is a very good reason for them to oppose the TPP.
The scope of this agreement is a problem in and of itself. By stapling together what should actually have been tens or hundreds of smaller agreements the authors of the TPP are ensuring that both support and opposition to the treaty from the broad population are under-informed positions based on ideology. If this were anything else than an anti-democratic power grab, they would break the treaty down into pieces, around which we could have a meaningful and accessible discussion.
If these benefits are legitimate, why can't they focus on 5 or 10 specific objectives, and write them in some concise form like the Bill of Rights? Why does it need to be 2,000 pages and full of complex, obsfucated concepts and details?
Is the only way for progress to happen?
And even if the TPP is completely beneficial, it is still part of the philosophy of economic integration. Which at its heart is promoting the centralization of power and the diminishment of classical liberalism.
>Why does it need to be 2,000 pages and full of complex, obsfucated concepts and details?
The cynic in me says thinks of the TPP as a gigantic pile of economic concessions to specific corporate interests.
The more generous interpretation is that free trade creates winners and losers, but there's generally more winners than losers. The length of the agreement is then the result of multilateral negotiations. Each party realizes - in excruciating detail - how they're getting screwed, and attempts to negotiate concessions for agreeing to the entire thing.
Of course it's a gigantic pile of economic concessions. But mostly that's in the form of tariffs which aren't struck down as quickly as others. Some countries really really want to keep their little pet tariff, like Japan taxing automobile imports. They get to keep those taxes for 30+ years instead of reducing them to zero as quickly as we want. So no it's not perfect, but at least they agreed to move toward freer trade eventually.
The Bill of Rights is really short and simple, but there have been millions of pages of legal precedent discussing and defining it ever since it was enacted. If you made TPP a concise document with 5-10 specific objectives they would all be litigated for decades to decide on the very same special cases that are detailed in the 2,000 page agreement.
The bill of rights is amazing and everything is an anti-pattern. The bill of rights explicitly says what you are allowed to never have done to you. Where as most laws try to prevent specific things. I am not saying law is black and white, but it is certainly difficult to understand, simplicity is important.
> If you made TPP a concise document with 5-10 specific objectives they would all be litigated for decades to decide on the very same special cases that are detailed in the 2,000 page agreement.
I started reading the TPP today, but I didn't get far enough to form an opinion, although I suspect that would be ideal. In a world changing as fast as ours having an agreement span 3 decades seems laughable.
I don't really know, but I'm guessing it's a comprehensive deal. With tons of players with their own goals. So there's probably plenty of stuff like "your eggs aren't round enough to be labelled like that, but we'll allow them if we can call our meat like this". And "we don't like your copyright law, but in exchange for ... we'll allow it". Layer on exceptions and whatever else and the page count goes up real quick.
Even selling a company for just 8-figures is more than 5-10 pages and these deals far eclipse that amount and probably directly involve hundreds of people if not thousands.
I would be okay with minutia or details like these, making it a highly complex trade agreement. What i can never swallow is the secrecy. If it really is a good trade deal, why not make it transparent? They should be publishing it online, searchable and indexable with consice summaries for every section. This deal will literally affect billions of people, the people have a right to know.
Google mentioned in their press release that they were not happy about the secrecy in the negotiations. The negotiations were secret for the same reason diplomatic cables are secret. These agreements would involve things like Japan agreeing to to stop subsidizing rice farmers as long as it can keep its high auto tariffs for a few decades. It's nasty stuff, embarrassing to watch the sausage get made. But maybe it was a bad idea to do it all in secrecy.
The reasoning provided is that negotiators can't do their jobs well if every single thing they ask for is publicized then politicized. Unfortunately this ends up with a treaty that no one wants to renegotiate, a take-it-or-leave-it deal with a bunch of sunk costs.
There is a lot of middle ground between keeping something secret until there's something take-it-or-leave-it vs. publishing every "what if we do X, will you then let us do Y" back and forth. If more intermediate work products are unfit for public eyes, perhaps they shouldn't be going there in the first place.
OK but what would they publish? General ideas? The details being published would only lead to a mess as each company could advertise and make a fuss over things. Or other countries might do the same to shift things in their favor. The end goal for each country is to do things to benefit themselves, even if it means making hard decisions.
It's not like spy exchange negotiations or all other sorts of diplomatic processes are public. And it's not that things are unfit for the public per se, just that publishing each move isn't beneficial.
Yikes I never thought I'd be defending TPP-like processes. Personally I think we're (the world) not yet ready for this level of globalisation, unfortunately.
Spy exhanges and most diplomatic processes rarely gets enshrined in law. At least not without the resulting law being written in a far more open process afterwards (e.g. consider changes after the Troubles in Northern Ireland - the negotiations certainly didn't happen in the limelight, but the subsequent legal changes in the UK did happen in the open).
Whether or not "publishing each move" is beneficial depends on what "each move" is. I agree that at the most fine grained level, you don't want everyone to find out how far you were willing to go in conversations with one opposing negotiator, in case you need to negotiate similar clauses with someone else, for example.
But once you have agreed that you're giving X in return for Y, publishing that should not do much harm unless giving X is controversial. In which case the "harm" might be exactly what ought to happen.
Here's another example, which is more relevant:
During Norways EEA negotiations with the EU, the Norwegian press reported details pretty much daily. I just checked the archive of one of Norways largest papers to confirm my memory, and from '90 to '92, EEA was mentioned about 5000 times, and included things like government ministers informing the press about likely contents of Norwegian negotiation positions that had not yet been presented to the EU (but where the overall lines of the EU position was known - in one case I looked at, the minister confirmed that the Norwegian position would overall come close to what the EU had asked for in terms of regulation of granting operating licenses for EU companies in certain areas).
They certainly did not get access to everything, but they got regular briefings, and it contributed to ensuring the debate over whether or not to join the EEA shaped the negotiations, as the sitting, pro-EEA government got very clear signals about which concessions would cause the biggest problems with the opposition and/or cost them voters.
Why should other countries give those "5 or 10 specific objectives" to American companies in exchange for nothing (since those countries don't really have an equivalent "tech" industry it really wouldn't be mutually beneficial). This is where things like allowing foreign workers to undercut American salaries comes into play.
Of the very many terrible things in these trade treaties (most notably the massive expansions of copyright and patents), this is one of the few that seems helpful. It's a step towards not having to care (as much) about national borders on the Internet. A company providing a service accessible to the entire Internet should not have to worry about jurisdictions other than their own.
In Canada we have laws that protect personal health data. For instance my doctor cannot save my patient data outside of the country. This is a major pain for SAAS vendors, and I understand google's position. However, as a patient I appreciate knowing that my personal health data is not being sent around the world to other jurisdictions that may not have the same privacy and data protection laws that we do here.
So, I have to wonder do we have a problem of countries requiring local storage for reasons that are questionable? Or is this simply a preemptive strike ensuring companies like google continue their easy access to global markets? Given my example above I suggest its the latter.
I agree with this as an American as well. Obviously worries about the NSA getting your data are moot if the data was American to begin with, but there are a lot of other concerns, too. I wouldn't feel comfortable with my medical data being stored just anywhere, and I think it's entirely reasonable that the U.S. government should be able to put some restrictions on where it's stored.
It may be possible to come up with a list of reasonably similar and friendly countries where such restrictions are dropped, because they agree to similar protections, and form a kind of common data-storage zone. For example, I am probably okay with reputable Canadian or German companies being contracted to store sensitive data. We could have a treaty formalizing what that zone is and what common protections will be applied. But the TPP is not by any reasonable stretch of the imagination that zone. The TPP includes countries where being homosexual is a serious crime, for example. Is it really wise for the U.S. government to agree to be bound by treaty not to take measures to keep its citizens' medical data, student records, employment records, etc. out of those countries' hands?
That's the price of freedom: putting individuals in control of their data means they have responsibility to protect it. But is that such a bad trade-off?
Let me put it another way. Someone has to decide where it's safe to send and store private data. Right now, in many cases, it's the government. Why do we think that the government is properly equipped to make that decision for us? Make sure you don't give your medical records to any shady companies. Corporations with international operations and teams of lawyers are probably better equipped to determine where data can be safely secured than some random regulator.
How do you propose that I personally reach agreements with corporations on storage of my medical records? I've visited a hospital once in my life, which involved doing business with dozens of different "businesses", from the hospital to the anesthesiologist, all of whom collected records, and none of whom I was in a condition to negotiate with on an individual basis (nor would they have been interested in negotiating with me regarding their data-protection policies anyway). And I don't have any faith in corporations determining where data can be safely stored; I think they will primarily go with where it can be most profitably stored, which is not necessarily the same question. I would feel much more comfortable if the hospital, anesthesiologist, and everyone else were required to store my data in accordance with a regulator's oversight. And preferably in the USA or a friendly western country. The companies can of course exercise additional caution if they feel it warranted, but I'd like the government to legislate some minimums.
The EU did this, remember, by agreeing to a "safe harbor" agreement with the US, where companies could certify that they would voluntarily treat personal data from the EU according to EU data protection rules. But then it transpires that we can not actually trust this, because US companies do not have the ability to control this.
That said, as as long as TPP only requires that there is no discrimination, that should not affect the EU rules much other than perhaps requiring the EU to put more resources into determine which countries have laws and governments that makes it possible for local companies in those countries to abide by the EU regulations.
> However, as a patient I appreciate knowing that my personal health data is not being sent around the world to other jurisdictions that may not have the same privacy and data protection laws that we do here.
Having your bits stored on Canadian soil doesn't magically make them secure. The emphasis should be on security, not physical location.
If that was the spirit of the agreement, then I would expect to see some clauses forbidding geo-blocking, or offering different "app-store" based on your country of residence, etc.. Otherwise it is terribly one-sided.
It is not fair to consider internet being global and borderless when it is in corps advantage, but segmented and controlled when it comes to consumers rights. Right?
If there were a widespread problem with governments mandating market segmentation, I'd certainly want to see that. But it seems rather unlikely that a trade agreement like this would restrict the ability to do business with a company that segments app stores by country. Consumers can make that choice for themselves, just like they can choose whether to do business with a company based on where they store their data or whether they have a local presence.
Which sounds like you're admitting that the treaty only benefits profits of large corporations and stops as soon as they'd have to give up a little bit to actualy help consumers across the world?
I think the majority of the treaty is terrible, spreading laws that prop up businesses based on copyright and patents, and on balance I think that no country should adopt it.
In this one particular case, it appears to remove artificial restrictions that prevent consumers from doing business with companies they otherwise want to do business with. I'm in favor of that, whether it's "you can't block a company from providing a service to a person in country X who wants that service just because they don't store data in country X" or "you can't block a company from providing a service to a person in country X who wants that service just because the company doesn't provide an identical service to a person in country Y". Either way, you're preventing two parties who want to work with each other from doing so.
(Also, keep in mind that many of the "must store data locally" laws have less to do with protecting that data and more to do with making it available for attempted seizure.)
If the people of a given country want to refuse to use a particular service because it stores their data elsewhere, or doesn't have a local presence, or shows them a different selection than people in other countries, or any of a thousand other reasons, they can already choose to do so. But there's a huge difference between choosing not to use a service and preventing anyone else from using it.
I don't directly care about the profits of companies, large or otherwise, except to the extent those profits mean they've built something people want. I do care when people can't use a service they want because their country doesn't think they should or wants to prop up another. And I care when a company owned, operated, and staffed within one country suddenly has to worry about another country's government, rather than just what their users want.
1. "Google cannot conduct business in Japan unless they store their data in Japan"
2. "Netflix cannot conduct business in Japan unless they allow complete access to all content"
Who does law (1) benefit, and who will be benefited if it goes away?
Same for (2).
> (Also, keep in mind that many of the "must store data locally" laws have less to do with protecting that data and more to do with making it available for attempted seizure.)
I think any government that would be interested in this, wouldn't sign the TPP agreement in the first place.
In both cases, "who will benefit if the law goes away" would be people who wanted to do business with Google and Netflix, but can't because those companies were told they "cannot conduct business". If Google and Netflix also benefit from that, it's because they offered something people wanted to pay for.
The scenario you envision is "law blocks doing business in the country, so the business changes their practices". The more common scenario, for the majority of countries in the world, is "law blocks doing business in the country, so the people in that country don't get the service until enough people complain and the law goes away, or people find a way around the block if they want the service enough".
How about this one: "Whatsapp cannot conduct business in Brazil unless they make their customers' data available to the government on demand". ("End-to-end encrypted? That doesn't sound like 'yes sir how would you like that delivered sir' to me.")
I can see your point, and is definitely a multi-dimensional problem.
Just for the record and for not getting misunderstood, my opinion and what I support is to break any artificial borders on the Internet, which means that on one hand a corps may choose to store the data wherever they think is better, but also prevent the corps from altering their service based on a persons location.
For my own part, I support breaking any artificial borders on the Internet as well. But rather than adding a restriction like "can't do business with a company if they offer different services to different locations", I'd instead remove any restrictions that might affect someone who simply purchased the service as provided in a different locale. (The company can try to block accessing other versions of the service, but that's a technical problem, and solvable with a technical solution. If the company can tell where in the world you are, we haven't made the Internet good enough yet.)
For that matter, geographical restrictions on media depend on restrictive copyright laws to have any effect at all. So I don't support adding a restriction to "solve" a problem artificially propped up by another restriction.
If the proposal on the table was a law/treaty to prevent people from accessing the service as sold to a country other than their own, then I think we'd both agree that's a bad idea and oppose it.
Anybody who runs a service where data must be stored in the country of the customers/participants/whatever wants this. If you do self-hosted services normally this is a huge PITA.
It's not like our politicians would ever dream of doing something like that anyway. I have a certain feeling that they would be more prone to obey Google than their constituents.
Its always funny when people naively forget that Google, Apple, etc. are megacorps, not some startup ventures. They are the man. This endorsement doesn't surprise me one bit.
Ah, but Google often does the things it knows people aren't going to like behind closed doors. (For instance, Google's control over Android is done via confidential agreements. The public hasn't seen a version of these agreements newer than 2011.)
An open, public endorsement of something that most tech enthusiasts who use their products know is a bad thing, is a very surprising move. I'm pretty sure I've seen a number of Google employees condemning the TPP in the last year or two as well.
Is this a satirical comment or are you actually using the word "megacorps" seriously? Just because a company is big doesn't mean it is nefarious. You should explain why these companies are evil and how them endorsing TPP is a bad thing.
I take "megacorps" to mean large, established companies with strong political connections. Companies that exert influence both over people's lives and governments; not necessarily malicious.
Precisely. Case in point: Google's various attempts at tax avoidance in Europe. I respect them for trying it, I'm sure every other established corporation is doing the same thing, or trying to at least.
A single company's opinion on a multinational treaty should be completely irrelevant. The fact that it matters speaks poorly of our representative government, and the fact that Google is willing to use that power to attempt to influence policy decisions speaks poorly of Google's respect for citizen rule.
Its also always funny when people forget that in 7 of the 9 TPP countries a majority of the ordinary citizens are in favor of it, and in the two where it does not have majority support those in favor handily outnumber those opposed (US 49% in favor, 29% opposed and Malaysia 38% in favor, 18% opposed) [1], and so think that this is some megacorp thing being forced on an unwilling populace.
That survey was from Spring (only a US company would forget that the other hemisphere has a different season) 2015. That was prior to the TPP being publicly available. Attitudes seem to have changed considerably since then.
The announcement starts by patronizing the reader ("most of us imagine container ships ..."), then proceeds to use a "for the children"-type argument ("small business"), directly followed by "for freedom!" argument with little to no substance.
Trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are beginning to recognize the Internet’s transformative impact on trade.
Sure, in the sense that the TPP is designed by and for corporations, like Google, who don't want stuff like, say, the EU, getting in their way when trying to defend the users' rights (e.g. right to be forgotten). The paranoid in me also thinks this is in fact an agreement between organizations like Google and the US government to "legally" syphon foreign data directly from US soil, but there is of course absolutely not enough transparency to substantiate this either way.
I clearly don't support TPP in the first place, but I find this announcement from Google borderline insulting, TPP or not. The condescending tone alone makes me cringe, but the whole "we're fighting for freedom" cover story is just disgusting.
Everyone links to that general page, but I'd think the EFF analysis on how it affects digital rights specifically might be even more persuasive for this crowd:
I see that the point about countries not being allowed to require local storage because
>These provisions will support the Internet’s open architecture and make it more difficult for TPP countries to block Internet sites -- so that users have access to a web that is global, not just local.
I do however believe that there is a aspect that has been overlooked here.
Many cooperations, private and governmentally controlled, handle sensitive data.
Having a SLA with Microsoft, Amazon or Google that states that this highly sensitive data is ONLY to be stored in specific data centers is the only way for a lot of non flexible IT departments to regain some control over their data.
This is a widely popular demand. I can only see this as the "X eyes" with USA in charge removing one more hurdle in their way to total information control.
Disappointing. The were a loud voice against SOPA/PIPA. All it takes for them to do an about-face is a bill that includes a few bits about protecting multinational internet companies.
It's sad to see that most of the commenters here decided to discuss it as a news tweet ("Google endorses TPP which, as we know, is terrible") instead of a text that makes some points on the matter. Seems like most don't even address the text in any way — which means people don't stop for a second to doubt their opinion on TPP, or even discuss arguments of the "enemy camp".
I am sorry, but hours-old accts commenting on highly controversial threads, spouting poorly cited 'almost conspiracies' doesn't seem helpful. I may be completely off, but that is how I feel; this is something that has become far too common on HN. Am I in my own world on this?
Judging other people by the age of their accts instead of their reasoning, you are in your own perfect world. Here is a simple example which shows how liberal Google is (there are plenty of them): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFxFRqNmXKg
She said she supported it while it was being negotiated, and later (as a candidate, when the final text was available) said she opposed the final form, and that it no longer had the specific features she expected the final form would have when she supported it.
We can debate the "he said she said" until the cows come home. It is no mystery that HRC supports and champions oligarchic policies. The TPP is being pushed by the Obama administration who have added their support to her presumptive nomination. There's no fooling anyone here about what may very well happen.
The timing of this is peculiar, but if it has nothing to do with HRC, we'll simply have to wait and see if that is the case.
> The timing of this is peculiar, but if it has nothing to do with HRC
If it had to do with HRC, they could wait; if anything connected to the election, it has to do with their actual support for TPP and concern that no successor to Obama will approve it, so their best chance is for it to get passed and signed this year (given the statements already made by Republican leaders that that isn't going to happen before the general election, probably in the lame duck session after the election.)
Hillary's emails include back and forth with Jared Cohen, a former State department employee who now heads a Google subsidiary called Jigsaw (formerly 'Google Ideas'). That should be enough to figure out what search terms to use. :)
So "Google works closely with Hillary" is sourced to Hillary in the past corresponding with a former employee of hers who is now heading a Google subsidiary? That's borderline tin-foil-hat levels of conspiracy theory. By that logic, Google "works closely" with Oracle via the connection to Eric Schmidt; that's just as believable if you ignore the messy lawsuits they're engaged in.
If you actually read the details, as I indicated one should, Hillary's email archive includes collaboration with Jared Cohen WHILE he works at Google, on foreign affairs related projects.
That's still extrapolating from "Hillary corresponds with a past staffer who now works for Google" to "Google works closely with Hillary." I feel like I'd need to be seeking out conspiracy to believe there's more to it than that.
Bing is alright, to be honest (some of their data widgets are more comprehensive than Google's), but you will find times with Bing that you are sad with the results.
If anyone isn't sold on DuckDuckGo: using quotes for literal queries actually does something, instead of Google deciding that's not actually what you meant.
That's the killer feature for me: it actually obeys "advanced search" operators.
DuckDuckGo's killer feature is its thousands of !bang search shortcuts. They integrate with content sites' own search forms, so the results are similar to but often better than Google's site:example.com searches because the sites' have more domain knowledge over their content.
I support TPP for geopolitical reasons, I am sure the Elites in the corridors of Power in Google do it for "access" and ability to sue the shit out of the gubmints that come in their way.
I couldn't listen to that video for long, it wasn't quite bearable. Stopped after 2 minutes.
Can you explain it from your point of view? These first 2 minutes repeated 'strong United States' about five times already or so. Is that what you consider 'geopolitical reasons'?
This comment seems very holier-than-thou to me. Did you intend it that way? If not, it still seems a bit inconsiderate to ask someone to summarize a video a mere 8 minutes in length, which they were kind enough to link.
Given the intense regulatory pressure (especially in the EU) that Google is finding itself under, this is unsurprising. The TPP would greatly help in easing 3 strategic concerns, which are:
1) Data protection regulation that would severely impact Google.
Google is kinda caught in the crossfire here. The EU is upset at the US intelligence community (Post-Snowden), and wishes to have some assurance of protection for their citizen's communication. The USG does not see why it should do this, and the data protection regulation is the EU's way of saying: If we can't get you to cooperate by being friendly, we will have to pass legislation that will hurt US companies; they can then perhaps pay lobbyists to change your mind. So it is not really Googles fault, but they are caught in the middle.
2) Anti-Trust considerations.
Google is extremely dominant in the European market, much more so than in the US. See #3. The momentum for an Antitrust case in the EU is high.
3) Industrial policy considerations.
Right now, the EU does not have an "Internet powerhouse"; there simply are no modern Internet giants in the EU. Interestingly, both China and Russia have "inadvertently" created local giants (mostly by censorship, which has had the strange side-effect of being equivalent to import tariffs, but for Internet services -- e.g. an accidental protectionist measure that allowed local competition to emerge). Some voices have been heard in recent months that advocate that the only way the EU won't get entirely left behind is industrial policy toward creating an internet giant. This could even mean blocking US-based giants for a while.
If TPP passes, Google will have a very powerful tool to wield against these three concerns. It is entirely rational of them to support it.
Speaking of Google and politics, Julian Assange claims that Google has made a deal with Hillary Clinton and is backing her [0]. That's not far-fetched considering how intertwined Google and White House are. The Intercept has a really detailed analysis and a chart showing how Google and WH share so many lobbyists and executives [1]. Google wants to keep Democrats in the White House so they can continue their influence over various decisions and FTC (which squashed the investigation into Google's anticompetitive practices).
And just today, Google was accused of whitewashing Hillary Clinton's record and not showing negative autocomplete terms [2].
Google's "don't be evil" mantra is just a way to inoculate themselves from criticism. If anyone accuses them of anything unethical or evil or inappropriate, they can always claim how they are "not doing anything evil" because that's their policy. It becomes circular logic.
Assange has exposed Google's close ties to the State Department in the past as well. For example, give this NY Times article a read [3]. If you want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes, Assange also published a book about his meeting with Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen of Google [4] and he published the complete transcript of their meeting. He also covered how Jared Cohen, formerly a State Department employee, was involved in regime changes around the world while at Google.
Assange also states that in 2015 former Google CEO Eric Schmidt launched “The Groundwork,” a startup specifically designed to get Clinton elected. [5]
Finally, Clinton's email release also confirmed that Google was involved in helping Syrian rebels who were trying to bring down the Syrian regime [6].
> And just today, Google was accused of whitewashing Hillary Clinton's record and not showing negative autocomplete terms.
That was a pretty silly accusation. It was mostly based on comparing Google autocomplete terms to Bing and Yahoo autocomplete terms. To show a pro-Clinton bias on the part of Google what you need to concentrate on is comparing Google autocomplete terms for Clinton searches to Google autocomplete terms for other people.
Do that experiment and you find that the kind of things that appear to be removed from Clinton autocomplete are also removed from the autocomplete of many other people, including many politicians, current and past celebrities, and criminals.
There is a good discussion of how Google tries to avoid autocompletes that could be seen as disparaging here [1].
"...Our Autocomplete algorithm will not show a predicted query that is offensive or disparaging when displayed in conjunction with a person’s name..."
So, I guess somebody at Google is deciding what is offensive or disparaging? And we shoulld trust that the standard is being applied equally to both parties, in spite of Google having a vested interest in the Democrats? OK, let's see.
There is a VERY VERY popular nickname for Secretary Clinton, "Crooked Hillary", which has been widely reported on, and is all over Twitter. So let's try:
"Crooked Hil" -> The final item in the list is "Crooked Hillary Bernie". Which makes no sense. Why not remove it entirely?
Now let's try Trump.
"Crooked Tru" -> First item on the list is "Crooked Trump". Which isn't even a meme or anything.
Politics is full of offensive and disparaging statements. By censoring those terms, Google is presenting a worse search product to the world.
On [2], the article you link to provides strong evidence for why Google isn't doing that, and if it was its not specifically for HRC but for just about any person. In other words, they're simply running search differently from Yahoo and Bing.
Let me translate this into truthiness: even though TPP and TPIP favor multinational corporations over the sovernty of countries and what is best for people, Google is promoting what is best for their profits.
Seems like they agreed to the deal to have a bigger influence on future trade deals. I don't think they like this deal particularly. But they are swallowing the pill for having a say in the next one.
This is how you dump a story. Everyone's on the way out the door for the weekend. Google will publish something "amazing" on Monday morning to excite everyone to the level that people forget Google sold them out three days prior.
This doesn't make sense to me. The purpose of endorsing something is to be heard by the public, thereby persuading them. You don't deliberately do it when noone is listening. You might as well just not do it.
Don't get me wrong, I don't trust a politician to keep his promises. He's just the best shot against the TPP we have, it seems (I trust Clinton less than Trump, and nobody votes libertarian).
Just because someone claimed Google manipulated search suggestions doesn't mean they actually did it. The video itself even acknowledged the lack of concrete proofs.
Probably referring to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFxFRqNmXKg
Was on HN but flagged. Google replies:
"Google Autocomplete does not favor any candidate or cause. Claims to the contrary simply misunderstand how Autocomplete works. Our Autocomplete algorithm will not show a predicted query that is offensive or disparaging when displayed in conjunction with a person’s name. More generally, our autocomplete predictions are produced based on a number of factors including the popularity of search terms."
Seems like "criminal" and "indictment" are filtered out, which happens to benefit Hillary but seems to apply to other people. I tried a indicted people and it didn't autocomplete.
"The analysis found a very different result with Google’s top competitors, Bing and Yahoo.
When spotted the terms “Hillary Clinton cri” and “Hillary Clintion ind,” Bing and Yahoo brought up as their top choices “Hillary Clinton criminal charges” and “Hillary Clinton indictment” as part of their auto-complete functions using the same key letters, according to SourceFed.
While that could reflect legitimate differences in the engines’ algorithms, Mr. Lieberman said that a search of “Hillary Clinton crime reform” on Google trends showed that “there weren’t even enough searches of term to build a graph on the site.”"
I'm under no illusion that Google's anything other massive tech-savvy advertising company, but the self-serving corporate side of the company is usually hidden behind the pretty veneer of "tech for the people". Supporting a trade agreement like the TPP (especially given the lack of transparency in the process) lacks their usual subtlety.