Skip to main content

Google is creating ‘internet surveillance DRM,’ critics say

Google is working on a system to fight fraud and make the internet “more private and safe,” but it’s just come in for some blistering criticism from software engineers behind the Vivaldi web browser. According to them, it’s a “dangerous” idea that could lead to greater surveillance of ordinary people.

The subject of this kerfuffle is Google’s Web Environment Integrity project, or WEI. Its purpose, Google says, is to stymy bad actors by providing a piece of code on a website that can be checked with a trusted attestor (such as Google) to ensure the visitor is who they say they are. That could prevent cheating in games, for example, or ensure that ads are being properly served to readers.

Google Drive in Chrome on a MacBook.
Digital Trends

The problem, critics assert, is that those same measures could be used to hamstring ad blockers, block browsers that compete with Google Chrome, or otherwise limit lawful web browsing activities.

Recommended Videos

Ben Wiser, a software developer working on the scheme, responded to the criticism on GitHub by saying that WEI is “part of a larger goal to keep the web safe and open while discouraging cross-site tracking and lessening the reliance on fingerprinting for combating fraud and abuse.”

Yet not everyone agrees. Posting on the company’s blog, Vivaldi developer Julien Picalausa said “The details are nebulous, but the goal seems to be to prevent ‘fake’ interactions with websites of all kinds. While this seems like a noble motivation, and the use cases listed seem very reasonable, the solution proposed is absolutely terrible and has already been equated with DRM for websites, with all that it implies.”

If any browser or user behavior doesn’t please Google, Picalausa argues, it runs the risk of simply being excluded or restricted in some way thanks to the enormous amount of power such a scheme could concentrate in an attestor’s hands. And that could be bad news for the open principles of the web.

‘More surveillance’

Vivaldi Web Browser
Digital Trends

Speaking to The Register, Vivaldi CEO Jon von Tetzchner explained that “A big part of the reason why there is a problem is the surveillance economy … the solution to the surveillance economy seems to be more surveillance.”

They continued by explaining that when they worked on the Opera browser, developers had to hide the browser’s identity in order to get Google Docs to work properly. The concern, von Tetzchner said, was that WEI could represent a similar problem for third-party browsers.

In their GitHub post, however, Wiser argues that WEI is not designed to single out individual browsers or extensions and that it does not penalize browsers that try to hide their identity. They also insist that the goal of the project is to balance user privacy with fraud prevention and to improve results in both areas.

But whether WEI can satisfy the critics is another matter. It’s clear that many people object to an internet where powerful institutions can judge a user’s worthiness based on a handful of opaque factors. It seems that this battle is far from over.

Alex Blake
Alex Blake has been working with Digital Trends since 2019, where he spends most of his time writing about Mac computers…
Google just settled a $5B privacy suit involving Chrome browser
The Google Chrome logo on a smartphone.

Google has agreed to settle a $5 billion lawsuit brought by claimants who accused the web giant of privacy invasion by tracking their online activities despite being in “incognito mode” when using the company’s Chrome browser.

After lawyers announced on Thursday that they’d reached a preliminary agreement, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers put a scheduled trial for the case in California on hold, Reuters reported.

Read more
Google has a great idea to fix your tab chaos in Chrome
Google Drive in Chrome on a MacBook.

If you use Google Chrome and are sick of managing an unruly mass of tabs in your web browser, help may soon be at hand. That’s because Google is testing a new feature that could bring order to your tab chaos.

As spotted by Leopeva64 on X (formerly Twitter), a new edition of Google Chrome Canary (a version of Chrome that lets users test out experimental features) contains a new tool called Organize Tabs nestled in the top-left corner of the browser.

Read more
I found a Chrome extension that makes web browsing bearable again
Google Drive in Chrome on a MacBook.

GDPR cookie consent notices were meant to hand privacy control back to ordinary internet denizens. Instead, they’ve unleashed a tidal wave of deception, with unscrupulous website owners using any means necessary to trick you into letting them harvest your private data for resale and profit.

It wasn’t meant to be like this. But while things might have not gone so well for GDPR, there’s still a way to protect your privacy and banish those annoying pop-ups in one fell swoop. Instead of rage-clicking Accept just to get the damned pop-ups to go away, I’ve found a much better way: the Consent-O-Matic browser extension.

Read more