The Global Id
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More generally, the biggest single area of worry about Google involves privacy. This has been a long-running subject of concern on the net, but thanks to an op-ed piece in the New York Times in November it has begun to attract some wider attention. The paper pointed out that the prosecution in a recent North Carolina strangulation case drew into evidence the fact that the defendant had made Google searches on the words 'neck' and 'snap'. This brought to wider notice the fact that Google logs all the searches made on it, and stores this information indefinitely; and Google installs a cookie on the computer of everyone who uses it, which helps log that user's searches, and which isn't due to expire until 2038. Because every computer has a unique IP address, every visit to every website can be traced back to the computer making it – a fact well known in geek circles but remarkably under-publicised outside them. (Last April a Chinese journalist called Shi Tao was given ten years in jail for 'leaking state secrets' after Yahoo! in Hong Kong handed over information linking his IP address and his email to the Chinese authorities.) Users of Google's Gmail service have already given the company their identity, a full record of all their searches, and copies of all their emails, stored indefinitely. According to the tech guru Robert Cringely, the future of Google lies in combining the company's knowledge of who you are with its Google Video service to produce microscopically targeted TV ads. 'Google imagines a world where only single people see match.com ads, and people who can't drive see ads from taxi companies where others see Toyota campaigns. Where fraternities see ads for strip clubs, beer, Cancun weekends and LSAT prep courses, and only seniors (and their adult children) see ads for Alzheimer's drugs.' In case that doesn't seem sufficiently dystopian, one should bear in mind that the information stored at Google is vulnerable to legal subpoena. It's not hard to imagine this information being sought by governments, litigants or divorcing spouses, and the list does not stop there. Google badly needs to develop tools which ensure privacy.
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Full text: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n02/lanc01_.html
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Colin Brace
Amsterdam