Slashdot Mirror
Calif. Initiative To Regulate Search Engines?
Lauren Weinstein writes to tell us about CIFIP, the California Initiative For Internet Privacy — his attempt to get search engines off the dime on questions such as how long they retain search data. The initiative aims to explore "cooperative and/or legislative approaches to dealing with search engine and other Internet privacy issues, including a possible California initiative for the 2008 ballot." There is a public discussion list.
But it's government, so to get anything done, anything enforceable would have to pretty much say, "You can only keep records for 25 years, and then you have to delete them. Seriously, guys, okay?" I'm not saying don't bother. Good on ya, California. But don't get yours hopes up.
Won't this come head to head with the data retention rules?
You can either keep the information on the grounds of security or you can remove them on the basis of privacy.
There is no middle ground.
If you are not a supermodel with stolen pictures then you are a terrorist.
liqbase
The only alternative to having a law on the books is to have a court case define a precedent. Given that lawmakers are actually beholden to their constituencies and voting base, it makes more sense to have them define the rules than a judge who may only be able to see the issue through the particular case in front of him.
Ultimately, though, no one really cares about this type of issue because it doesn't hit home at all. Most people are still using ATMs and paying bills with checks. Technology is passing most of us by and we're not really that interested in the details. Internet privacy is a non-issue to the majority of Americans.
When you allow companies to save mass amounts of information, mass amounts of information, about the searches performed on the tubes, the tubes could get clogged with all this information. Therefore, instead of allowing this information to accumulate on the walls of the tubes, we are putting forth a mandate that all search engines clean their tubes on a yearly basis. To protect privacy. To protect the tubes. To save the internets!
Basically the most dangerous part of keeping this data is the fact that other people can match you to your queries.
I think the government should only get involved if there is a problem that cannot be solved by the people themselves. Unfortunately, the willingness of companies to offer easily accessable avenues for finding some of the risks of their services is not as good as it should be.
I think the first step here is not to make hard rules as to how long all search info can be held, instead, they should give rules as to what can be held indefinately, and what cannot.
In this case, I don't think there is anything wrong with queries being kept indefinately, but it should not be kept in relation to people. Make it so that they have to encrypt IPs to some other value, so that searches can be tracked, and even what the users search, but there will be no way to tie that information to actual people.
That way the information can be stored indefinately, and in the event other people want to see, they will have nothing that they can use maliciously against other people. They will see search trends, and even see what individual users search for in order to create correlation between searches, but will not have access to anyones personal business.
It would be difficult to argue against this because any business that wants to know specific peoples searches is obviously using information that the users did not intend anyone to have.
By doing this the search companies would have a much more trusting user base.
If only we had a media that brought up important stuff like this, the companies would do it on their own in order to generate good PR and more traffic.
You take it, I don't want it...
While search firms have a legitimate business interest in using this data in reasonable ways for both ongoing business and R&D purposes, it is difficult for reasonable observers to justify the retention of this data on an indefinite basis.
The information that you submit to a search engine, such as your search terms, your IP address, your user agent string, any cookie information, is all submitted voluntarily. You give up this data willingly. If you want to keep any of this information private then don't submit it. Of course, that means you won't be able to use the search engine, that's the cost of privacy. A price you should be willing to pay if your privacy is genuinuely important to you.
Too many people seem to expect that they should be able to live a private life despite handing over vast swaths of data on a daily basis. You can't. If you want your data to be private you need to keep it to yourself. Data retention issues are only applicable in situations where you don't have a choice about relinguishing your information (eg tax returns, vehicle licensing, etc).
Bottom line: If you choose to tell someone something voluntarily you cannot expect them to forget about it when you think they should.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Though you may hand over this information, there's nothing forcing the government to force search engine companies hold on to the data. If the search engine decides it doesn't want to hold on to all these search stats, they can't do anything about it if their hands are tied by government regulation.
I don't care whether or not my privacy is protected by Google. I do care that the government cares enough that they see fit to codify it in a way that isn't leaning towards the privacy side.
I would rather they just left it alone and went on their way.
If the search engine doesn't have an office in CA (and it'd be easy to move for stuff like this), they have no reason to listen to your silly laws.
But is it searchable?
M.
.. sounds to me that the american controllers want's what China allready have ;) .. scary!
... if the search companies were required to tell *us* our *own* search history. Of course there is the non-trivial issue of identify verification which, if not done properly, could lead to much abuse.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Way to chase those search engines off our shores and into places where they won't be bothered! :P
I want some answers too, but when it comes right down to it, can we really bully these private companies into giving out this kind of info?
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
This is a knee-jerk reaction to an unfortunate incident- it's only a symptom of a much larger problem that lawmakers refuse to address...companies that make their living pimping and prostituting the personal information of American citizens. There is also the complete lack of a comprehensive law governing the handling of sensitive data, and that protects citizens from people that essentially profit from the increased risk they pose to the security other peoples' information.
But then, in order to really address the issue, you'd have to start at the top- and that means scrapping all this TIA nonsense, as well the illegal re-routing of internet traffic to government agencies...that might actually happen, but it won't have a chance in hell until we get some true patriots in the whitehouse.
So, very soon in California, it will both be illegal to retain data on search engine queries in order to protect people's privacy, and at the same time search engines will be legally required to retain data on searches for ciminal investigations! Brilliant!
Newspapers, even the NYT, aka the "Grey Lady", are notorius for their inaccuracies and even deliberate dis-information. Yet, I can go the any good libary and search the stacks and/or microfilm files for any story about any subject that they've ever published. How is this not violating privacy acts?
Internet news sites, blogs, etc., suffer the same faults as printed papers, but web sources have a decided advantages: speed and multiple points of view. If you disagree with an Op-Ed piece in a newspaper and submit an opposing letter, you can consider yourself lucky IF it gets printed AND you can consider it a miracle if they don't mangle your letter till is says something you did not intend to say or worse yet, it seems to agree with the position you were writing against.
I believe the real powers behind this move are the printed and televised media. ABC and CBS have recently admitted that Drudge style reporting now rules the reporting of news. People have thrown of the shackles of controlled news. Are the old media now seeking ways to re-establish their old strangle hold on what is printed and how?
Will archive.org outlawed? What is "search engine", actually.
calif
n : the civil and religious leader of a Muslim state considered to be a representative of Allah on earth; "many radical Muslims believe a Khalifah will unite all Islamic lands and people and subjugate the rest of the world"
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=calif
Defining Statistics and Social Research
Is there anything left that CA hasn't regulated? Perhaps a warning label on absolutely everything sold in the state: "WARNING: This product hasn't yet been proven to be harmful to humans, the Earth, or baby seals, but eventually someone with too much time on their hands will think of a reason why you should avoid this product. Just save yourself the trouble and move into a grass hut and walk everywhere you go. Don't ride a bicycle because you will need non-renewable fossil fuels to lubricate the chain."
http://www.blackboxsearch.com/
unless you just crazy