more on Search queries *can* contain personal information

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Henrik Brameus <blondino () gmail com>
Date: January 21, 2006 2:38:10 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] more on Search queries *can* contain personal  
information

Hello Dave,

If you think it's relevant, please forward to IP

Henrik

One thing that I find curious about this whoe incident is that
Google's privacy policy
(http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacypolicy.html#information) sas the
following about information sharing:

<blockquote>Information sharing

Google only shares personal information with other companies or
individuals outside of Google in the following limited circumstances:

- We have your consent. We require opt-in consent for the sharing of
any sensitive personal information.
- We provide such information to our subsidiaries, affiliated
companies or other trusted businesses or persons for the purpose of
processing personal information on our behalf. We require that these
parties agree to process such information based on our instructions
and in compliance with this Policy and any other appropriate
confidentiality and security measures.
- We have a good faith belief that access, use, preservation or
disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy
any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable
governmental request, (b) enforce applicable Terms of Service,
including investigation of potential violations thereof, (c) detect,
prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, or
(d) protect against imminent harm to the rights, property or safety of
Google, its users or the public as required or permitted by law.
</blockquote>

In the third bullet point they say that they will share it to satisfy
any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable
governmental request. IANAL, but I thought that a legally obtained
subpoena would fall into that category. If the request on top of that
are search URLs and search terms from one week, all separatd from
personal identifying information, then I think that they are creating
a storm in teacup. If thy were to challenge the legality of this,
shouldn't they (again IANAL) at least file something to that effet,
rathere than just flatly refusing to comply.

Henrik


On 21/01/06, David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart () pobox com>
> Date: January 20, 2006 7:59:03 PM EST
> To: dave () farber net
> Subject: RE: more on Search queries *can* contain personal information
>
> Lauren commented on the wide range of things that people search for,
> and it keeps getting wider as Google and other search engines
> add features.  I regularly type in names, phone numbers, addresses,
> and lat/longs, IP addresses, AS numbers, patent numbers, Cisco part
> numbers, etc., sometimes to find maps, or businesses, or phone book
> information, and there are a number of websites I use for business
> for which Google is a much more effective search tool than the site's
> own indexes.  Sometimes I've even typed in my own name when looking
> for cached versions of mailing list articles in the distant past
> (non-specific ego-surfing isn't very useful if your name's not
> sufficiently unique - AltaVista had over 50,000 hits for people
> with similar names when it first came out - but there are times that
> specific searches are useful.)
>
> As somebody who regularly used Google during the specified period,
> do I have a right to object to the court if Gonzales wants my data?
> I hereby declare any phone numbers, addresses, and medical information
> in my searches to be Confidential, though the subpoena doesn't allow
> the recipients to declare their entire document as Confidential.
> Furthermore, the subpoena indicates that for every document not
> produced by Google due to confidentiality or trade secrecy, the
> respondents want the authors' and recipients' names, addresses, dates,
> etc. - but for this type of information, that disclosure includes
> the confidential portion and more, not less.
>
> Gonzales et al. allege that they're looking for information about the
> effectiveness of web filters as a tool for protecting children, so  
> they
> want to look at popular search terms to see what people are looking  
> at.
> But if I search for a term like "Scooter Libby", am I looking for
> information about him as an friend, or a Republican Henchperson,
> or a well-known pornographer?  His original request wanted _all_ the
> search terms, including my attempts to find relatives' current mailing
> addresses, and makes it available to all attorneys and employees of  
> the
> Department of Justice who are involved in the case - but that's all of
> them, given Gonzales's War on Obscenity, and nothing in the subpoena
> forbids them from making other uses of the information, such as using
> my searches for medical marijuana information for Drug War purposes.
>
> Brad Templeton talks about issues of identifying IP addresses, and the
> Tor project certainly helps - but there are other web surfing privacy
> tools, like The Anonymizer and other proxies, which are generally
> faster, more scalable, and effective at protecting content, though
> they're still susceptible to subpoenas for any information that
> they may have retained.
>
>                Thanks; Bill Stewart
>
>
>
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--
"If you're right 98% of the time, why quibble about the remaining 3%?"
Henrik Brameus - http://www.benitel.com/ - blondino () gmail com.invalid
MSN: hbrameus () hotmail com


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