There is new news regarding yesterday’s post that discussed Google, Yahoo and MSN turning over search engine data. Google is still defiant, MSN and Yahoo! turned over the data. Since the data is not identifiable as to data, kudos to MSN and Yahoo! for trying to help stop child pornography, shame on Google for skewing what the data in question was and not turning over the non-identifiable data over.
I’m having a real tough time understanding what the problem is at this point? What’s the big deal with any of these search engines saying “Yes, Mr. Government, here is a weeks worth of search data, with no personal or origin information.” Does it really bother people that much? It seems the equivalent of having everyone type a sentence and print it on any printer they desire, having it placed in a large sac, and randomly selecting 20 of them for display in a public room. Who cares? Oh, and if you comment, don’t use stupid arguments like “Well, they could lift fingerprints.” People need to chill, analyze the situation and not make categorical assumptions and throw kindergarten hissy-fits. Throw a hissy-fit because a data warehousing employee or developer at any of these search engines can execute queries against your IP addresses and see what you see, and that they could track down where you live (at least relatively close).
January 20, 2006 at 5:50 pm |
They just see it as *ANY* information going out to the government. Also you can argue it that it might be a snowball effect. First they ask for the search terms, then the time it was done, then the destinations, then the IPS that it came from, etc.
January 20, 2006 at 6:01 pm |
[...] Professor S’ makes the arguement about that it’s not a big deal for search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN to turn over their search engine data over to the government. He makes mention that only the search terms are being turned over and no personal information is going either. [...]
January 20, 2006 at 6:14 pm |
Dr. Mike, while I understand the argument behind a “snowball” effect, the burden of proof solely rests on your shoulders. In logic, your approach is known as a “Slippery Slope” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope). Without factual heuristics to solidify your snowballing claim, its quite easy to view it as fallacious.
June 21, 2006 at 6:01 pm |
[...] Professor S’ makes the arguement about that it’s not a big deal for search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN to turn over their search engine data over to the government. He makes mention that only the search terms are being turned over and no personal information is going either. [...]