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Researchers See a Post-Snowden Chilling Effect In Our Search Data
Daniel_Stuckey (2647775) writes "How risky is it to use the words "bomb," "plague," or "gun" online? That was a question we posed, tongue in cheek, with a web toy we built last year called Hello NSA. It offers users suggested tweets that use words that drawn from a list of watchwords that analysts at the Dept. of Homeland Security are instructed to search for on social media. "Stop holding my love hostage," one of the tweets read. "My emotions are like a tornado of fundamentalist wildfire." It was silly, but it was also imagined as an absurdist response to the absurdist ways that dragnet surveillance of the public and non-public Internet jars with our ideas of freedom of speech and privacy. And yet, after reading the mounting pile of NSA PowerPoints, are all of us as comfortable as we used to be Googling for a word like "anthrax," even if we were simply looking up our favorite thrash metal band? Maybe not. According to a new study of Google search trends, searches for terms deemed to be sensitive to government or privacy concerns have dropped "significantly" in the months since Edward Snowden's revelations in July."
Let's not blow this out of proportion. Sure, it would be the bomb if the NSA stopped spying on everyone, as all this spying is a plague on our freedoms. But let's not burn any bridges here.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
Because if someone thought you liked the band, that would be horrible.
Oh the embarrassment! On your permanent record, no less.
Unfortunately, so has Congress.
Guys, if you don't want the NSA scanning your websites, just set up a robots.txt. Duh.