SEL: Search and Privacy: The Biggest Search Story of '06

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Search marketing in the new media era.

January 23, 2006

Search and Privacy: The Biggest Search Story of '06

I think this will shape up to be one of the biggest search stories of '06. At the least this event will be the story that brought the issue of search and privacy into the mainstream. (check out Danny Sullivan on ABC)

This statement nutshells the situation:
"The expressed purpose of the government's request was to estimate how much pornography shows up in the searches that children might do."
Don Dodge in comments on Battelle's blog

And Battelle digs in with a bit more info regarding the subpoena (including the request for all URLs available through a query! Talk about a mountain of data.)

"The subpoena asks Google to produce an electronic file containing '[a]ll URL's that rea available to be located through a query on your company's search engine as of July 31 2005."

and

"all queries that have been entered on your company' search engine between June 1, 2005 and July 31, 2005."

The DOJ then narrowed its request to a random sample of one million URLs and agreed to not ask for personally identifying info on the search queries, but it still wants all search queries for a one week period.

And finally the following posts from SEW do a good job of digging deeper into the search and privacy story. I pulled out the most telling quotes from each:

Google pushed back in this case, but it may have complied with other governmental requests. Indeed, one of the best points in John Battelle's book "The Search" was the section focusing on the US Patriot Act and how Google (or other search engines) might not even be able to say if it has given out information.

Had Microsoft said no, it would have scored major points for trust. But to say yes -- then not even admit to saying yes -- just makes Google seem better and better to many people.
The Day After: Points In The Search Trust Sweepstakes

In this piece, I'll take you step-by-step about how your search privacy data gets exposed from all the way from your desktop to the sites you visit.
Protecting Your Search Privacy: A Flowchart To Tracks You Leave Behind

It is possible that somehow, someway some of the search data could contain some private information that is personally identifiable.
Private Searches Versus Personally Identifiable Searches

If you're interested in researching and learning more about U.S. Federal legislation (and related issues) dealing with Internet privacy, Internet technology, and the protection of children from "unsuitable material on the web," here are a few research reports from the non-partisan and highly respected Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress.
Full Text Reports from the Congressional Research Service on Internet Privacy, Net Technology, and Protecting Children from "Unsuitable Material"

Here's Battelle (be sure to check out the comments):
Felten on Google and Privacy
Don't Look Now, But It's Happening
MSN: What We Gave the Govt.
More On The Slippery Slope

Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

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