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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.
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!
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
(1) The identity can sometimes (often?) be figured out by going through all of the searches. This is basically what all of the uproar over the AOL snafu was all about
(2) The US government wants this data to be saved and tied to users in case they need to get it (via a court order I'm sure *snicker*). If you are against this you must love the terrorists and child porn.
(3) This data represents significant intellectual property of the search engines. Remember, you are NOT their customer, you are their product. The advertisers are their customers. As their product, they want to collect and retain as much as they can about you, this makes their product more valuble.
Basically, the search companies and government are not going to want to do this, only the "product". And if the data is all tied to a single IP (or long term cookie like google's), encrypted or not it is possibly still traceable.
Part of the problem is the weird notion that all internet searches should be completely anonymous, I don't know where that came from.
Finkployd
the main reason for keeping searches anonymous is that you have no idea where that data will end up. You've looked up something about aids recently ? Your insurance just went up.
Tried to find out how to make TNT ? Off to Guantamo bay with you.
Finding out about the origins and local chapter of the KKK ? Better buy a new set of windows.
and so on.
Search queries are a private thing because like calling the help hot line for being suicidal if you can not guarantee privacy you end up causing real life damage.
Marketeers wet dreams and bottom lines only go so far, it's perfectly possible to run a search engine without profiling and still make a buck.
Maybe not quite as many bucks, and maybe you'd have to work a little harder to 'monetize' but to unconditionally hold hostage an individuals entire search history for an indefinite amount of time is a serious breach of privacy.
It would be like the phone company keeping a record of all your CONVERSATIONS, not just the numbers that you have dialled.
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