[Politech] Tim Wu: Why should search engines retain records forever?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Lynn <lynn () ecgincc com>
Date: January 31, 2006 9:17:05 AM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: [Fwd: [Politech] Tim Wu: Why should search engines retain  
records forever? [priv]]

---------------------------- Original Message  
----------------------------
Subject: [Politech] Tim Wu: Why should search engines retain records
forever? [priv] From:    "Declan McCullagh" <declan () well com>
Date:    Tue, January 31, 2006 2:49 am
To:      politech () politechbot com
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--

Previous Politech message:
http://www.politechbot.com/2006/01/23/alberto-gonzales-v/


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Converted
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 09:00:16 -0500
From: Tim Wu <wu () pobox com>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>

Declan,

I¹ve obviously been converted by you into one of these privacy nuts.
Here¹s a short piece on Google¹s subpoenas I wrote for Slate:

http://www.slate.com/id/2134670/

Feel free to repost on Politech if you want (first 3 paras are here):

In Google's Mountain View, Calif., campus, there's an LCD showing what's
being searched for at any moment. A passing glance may reveal that
information on "Depression" "marital counseling," or "anna  
kournikova" are
all hotly sought after at a given time. The revelation that Google is
fighting a Bush administration subpoena seeking to get hold of search
records like these has, unsurprisingly, hit a lot of nerves. In part
because it pits the Bush administration against Google‹making the case a
kind of a showdown of East coast against West; religion vs. science;  
Jedi
Masters of information-seeking vs. Jedi Masters of information control,
and so on.

But the big news for most Americans shouldn't be that the administration
wants yet more confidential records. It should be the revelation that
every single search you've ever conducted‹ever‹is stored on a database,
somewhere. Forget e-mail and wiretaps‹for many of us, there's probably
nothing more embarrassing than the searches we've made over the last
decade. Google's campus LCD sounds like it's just fun and games, but  
when
a search can be linked to you (through the IP address recorded by  
Google),
that's a lot less fun. And when, as we're seeing, it can all be demanded
by the government, that's no fun at all.

Google is being commended by many for standing up to the Bush
administration. But however brave Google's current stance may be, the
legal debate over Google's compliance misses the deeper and more urgent
point: By keeping every search ever made on file, the search-engine
companies are helping create the problem in the first place. In the wake
of what we're seeing with this subpoena controversy, the industry must
change the way it preserves and records our search results and must
publicly pledge not to keep any identifying information unless  
required by
court order. This has nothing to do with our mistrust of Google and
everything to do with mistrust of the range of government  
actors‹domestic
and foreign‹that Google must ultimately obey.

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