At the relatively small Search and Privacy track at last week’s SES conference in New York, the Fourth Amendment was a source of major discussion. In light of the recent subpoenas being sent to the four major U.S. search engines, the Fourth Amendment’s protection of citizens from unlawful search and seizure seems to be in question. MSN’s recent decision to comply with the request for information (though with the vow to reveal no personal information) has started the ball rolling on the issue of search and how much privacy is at stake.
The Fourth Amendment may be irrelevant to the matter according to EPIC.org’s Sherwin Sly, who says that the Amendment is only applicable to civil matters. EPIC.org is a research center that focuses on issues of privacy.
Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu indicated that “This is just the beginning. There are many governments that are interested in this.” Wu intimated that governmental abuse of electronic privacy will only grow in the future.
Wu’s comments highlighted the notion that the real issue with these recent events is not what kind of information the Department of Justice has obtained, but what they will be capable of obtaining in the future due to lax user privacy laws in the U.S. The Department of Justice merely received an elementary list of queries and the time frames in which those searches were conducted. However, if the U.S. laws on user privacy do not take after the stricter European laws on the same matter, the future may hold even more threatening circumstances.
The amount of personal information accumulated by search engines varies depending on the personalization of the services utilized. At the very least, indexes will display a registered IP address, but for services that give users more personalization, search logs may include an e-mail address.
For the user the issue boils down to a question of how personal and rich of an Internet experience they are looking for. Obviously, if the user is hoping to use personalized services and features they must be willing to part with a certain degree of privacy. For some users the trade-off of privacy for personalization is worth the risk, while for others it is not.
One solution to the looming concern could be a Search Privacy Bill of Rights, as SearchEngineWatch.com’s Danny Sullivan suggested. Sullivan also proposed the use of privacy notifications on sites to avoid subpoenas.
One thing is for certain. Reams of personal data are sitting on AOL, MSN, Yahoo, and Google’s servers waiting to be requested by the U.S. Department of Justice. Concerns have not been helped by recent rumors that Google’s “GDrive,” which Google hopes will act as virtual copies of users’ hard drives will launch soon. Google has been battling the subpoenas valiantly, but with no new user privacy laws on the near horizon, it remains to be seen how long the battle will last, and if Google and the other search engines can take the heat for a prolonged period of time.
Source:
http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/
searchinsider/wpn-49-20060302SearchingFor
AnonymityNowItsPersonal.html
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