Professor Geek

This week’s edition of Information Week contains a very interesting article entitled “What Google Search Reveals About Us.” The article outlines, in some detail, a few of the issues surrounding the Google search and the subpoena Google received (and fought) recently to turn over some of their search records.

The article is excellent and brings up several points regarding personal information:

1. “Google has called into question whether the government’s subpoena complies with the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which limits the circumstances under which electronic data and communications can be disclosed to the government and other entities.”
2. “Google queries are ‘disclosed routinely to third parties when a user clicks any link in Google search results,’ writes Philip B. Stark, a professor of statistics at the University of California at Berkeley and a government expert witness, in court documents.”
3. “Web servers contain logs of text files that are records of site visitor activity. Anyone with access to those logs - and that’s not limited to system administrators - can determine, in most cases, the IP address of the visitor’s computer, the date and time the visitor requested each page and image on the site, the referring URL, and more.”
4. In January, one blogger demonstrated “how Web information can be manipulated to encroach on privacy: He wrote a computer script to download all Amazon Wish Lists posted by people name Edgar, winnowed the results to controversial titles, located the individuals who posted the lists using Yahoo People Search, then plotted their locations on Google Maps. ‘The technology exists to watch everybody,’ he warns.”
5. “Google confirms that it can identify people who have submitted specific keyword search terms using their IP addresses or HTTP cookies. It also can identify, in some circumstances, the search terms submitted by a specific user.”
6. “The evidence left behind during web searches can be telling, yet it also can be misconstrued or used with malice. Even those who think the U.S. government is looking after their best interests may find themselves in disputes with colleagues, employers, ex-spouses, insurers, or competitors. In such circumstances, bits of Web usage information can be connected to present an unwelcome, unflattering, or damning picture - and one that may or may not be accurate.”
7. A bill has been proposed in congress, entitled the Eliminate Warehousing of Consumer Internet Data Act of 2006. It is “aimed at protecting consumer privacy and preventing the indefinite storage of data.”

It appears that, at present, the burden is on the user to insure their own personal privacy and security. Remember that any Internet activity you engage in is logged somewhere, on some server, and there is no way for you to tell how that information might be used, who might have access to it, and how long it will be retained. There are currently no laws covering this area. All you have are “privacy policies” to rely on, many of which are not worth the bits they are stored in.

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