Search privacy

There's hardly anyone who has not searched the Internet using Google, Yahoo or MSN. Would you still search with a carefree attitude if you knew that your "keywords" were being scrutinised by a third party? This is exactly what's happening, with the US justice department asking a federal court in California to compel Google (other search engines have agreed to comply) to turn over its search records for use as evidence in a case where the government is defending the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act (COPA). Google has refused to comply with a subpoena (a writ requiring appearance in court to give testimony) for those records. Google says parting with the data will heavily compromise users' privacy. The other search engines maintain they have not parted with any "personal information".

Now, the COPA is a law seeking to shield minors from Internet pornography. Hence, the ostensible reason for seeking the data is laudable. However, the government reportedly wants the search data not as evidence in a case, but rather to demonstrate that Internet porn filters are ineffective. In short, the government wants search engines to help it make its case, using the company as a research arm. If the US government wants search data, it could use professional services like Wordtracker, which periodically compiles a database of over 330 million search terms, updated on a weekly basis. All search terms are collected from the major metacrawlers""Dogpile and Metacrawler. They do not have the IP addresses and cookies, though.

Consider another issue. "No porn" throws up 23.7 million pages while "porn" throws up 33.8 million pages on Google. How would one be able to distinguish from the keywords, whether one was looking out for porn sites or trying to trap paedophiles? Besides, there could be pages writing about the evils of online porn, how to avoid online porn, why online porn should be banned. Another argument is that the US government has simply asked for data""not for sites linked with any particular activity. A week's data from Google with these parameters would throw up keywords without linking any individuals to those searches. There would be no compromise of personal data. However, if the parameters are refined or filtered further, the data can be very conclusive. Taken to one logical conclusion, the case has ramifications for everyone, since private searches can be used as "evidence" in courts (this has already happened in one case in the US), besides other privacy intrusions. Today, it's the US government. Tomorrow, just about any government can ask for the records and slice and dice it as they wish.

Most companies have firewalls that can track the sites employees visit and the searches they make. However, that's a contract that every employee has with the employer. Employees understand, even though they may not agree, that this is a "necessary evil". However, such is not the case with the Internet. In principle, no government or body owns the Net. People trust search engines. So it's time the search engines fought back, or that users took steps to protect their privacy from search engines and others by using anonymising technologies when surfing the Net.