Ah, the world of search engines, the best way to surf the web in your own privacy. But now, in order to enforce The Children Online Protection Act, the government is out to find out what people are searching for with Google.
Ultimately, the court ruled that Google doesn't have to disclose search requests, though the government is still after them, albeit in much lower demands (from a potentially a million, to 50,000, to 5,000).
Right now, privacy prevails but is it right for the government to intrude into what people are searching for on the internet even if it is for law reasons? I mean, the situation isn't even a security issue. Not to mention Google also records personal information when someone creates a Google Account and if that information gets dragged along with the data demanded then it may go against Google's Privacy Policy. In that case there's sure to be some outcry there.
But for now you can rest assured your search results aren't going to land in the government's lap for the time being nor (for website creators) whatever web pages you have that are searchable by Google. Not that you guys are searching for anything illegal now ... right (but hey, Fourth Amendment)?
Julia Song @ Tue, 03/21/2006 - 7:13am
This is good news. Like you said, many people have nothing to worry about as far as what they've been Googling. But I just don't like the idea of the government scrutinizing our Google habits. According to their privacy policy, they say they only collect general information such as the time of connection and the IP address. If Google were to hand the information over to the government, just how much of our private information will be on stake? I know the other search engines like Yahoo and MSN sent their data to the government, although they say no personal information was included.