Following news that Google refused to comply with a subpoena requiring the company to turn over search records from its database, much speculation swirled about the response from rivals MSN and Yahoo. MSN has broken its silence and now acknowledges that it did share search data, but no personal information. The subpoena was handed down by the US Department of Justice last summer, and was reportedly issued to gather data to support a child protection law that was struck down two years ago by the Supreme Court. Under that law, the government could punish pornography sites that made content easily accessible to minors.
Good on you Google. Bravo for having the balls to stand up to the corrupt US system and the evil “Bush jr, I demand to see everything about everyone” regime. Department of Justice, huh! More like the Department of worthlessness and total jokes!
The simple solution is not to use MSN, Yahoo etc. Piss their crappy search engines off and stick with Google.
Dave
Use their services less than I do now? That will be hard.
True!
Dave
Google isn’t interested in protecting your rights or privacy, only their search data. You only have to experience using their search appliance to realize this.
It’s perfectly ok for them to make off with your confidential data, but not for you to make off with their search data.
Right, people have this wrong-headed idea that Google is on their side. Nothing could be further from the truth. Google is on Google’s side! They don’t care about your personal data at all. They just want to be able to use it for their own enrichment.
That is true. But – they had the balls to stand up to the US DOJ and say “NO”. That takes guts, and that earns my respect for them.
Dave
MS can’t win. If it gives up the records, it’s “evil”. If it doesn’t give up the records, it’s “hiding something”.
The internet was built on anonymity. I know George Bush Jr. and gang would love nothing more than to bug EVERY single household in the world for their spies and the CIA, but I, quite frankly, couldn’t give a rats ass about them. The US DOJ or any other government has no rights to this information – period. Microsoft rolled over and gave it to them, which really does show how much contempt they hold their customers with, and how little they value the values on which the Internet was built.
Dave
The internet was built on anonymity. I know George Bush Jr. and gang would love nothing more than to bug EVERY single household in the world for their spies and the CIA, but I, quite frankly, couldn’t give a rats ass about them. The US DOJ or any other government has no rights to this information – period. Microsoft rolled over and gave it to them, which really does show how much contempt they hold their customers with, and how little they value the values on which the Internet was built.
How does aggregate data intrude on anonimity?
MS can’t win. If it gives up the records, it’s “evil”. If it doesn’t give up the records, it’s “hiding something”.
Yup. Sad, really.
Well Microsoft seem to be winning at everything and anyone suggesting that Microsoft put backdoors via WMF MUST be smoking crack right?
Since when have they lost something that REALLY did them damage?, because they can get away with murder and just get slapped with a fine.
MS can’t win…
Do you suppose if they could go back and do it over again they wouldn’t have gotten themselves into this predicament? Maybe made a more secure set of products or decided to compete fairly in the marketplace or not steal so much IP?
If they had done things fairly and legally the first time around they surely wouldn’t have wound up in a situation where there are so many fanbois defending them because they would have established a reputation as a decent and honest company.
Or is their situation the fault of those who, admittedly illegally in many cases, exposed the weakness in design of their OS with 150,000 pieces of malware, viruses, trojans and worms [oh my]? Or the fault of those who beat them in court for their theft, decption and predatory monopolistic practices?
Pray tell, what could have saved them from this dilemma?
Some say Google sucks and are into boicoting it. I say Google is the only search site that is giving us what we need and how we need it. If we stop using all other serahc engines they will learn their lesson and realize that Google is here to stay. Google is something we can trust, MSN and Yahoo is something we can’t trust. And give it up to the best parts of google http://www.google.com/linux and best of them http://www.google.com/bsd Google is run by Linux and OSS and they are open sourcing some things. Well I’m no RMS and I’m not with the horrible idea that everything needs to be OSS since google needs to have it’s closed source things as all companys must have, just do it in a moral way.
If you had let me off the hook for a big whole illegal monopoly court thingy how could I say no?
i am still perplexed as to why the cavers caved.
sure, we all know that the executive banch does not rule by fiat, yada yada yada. but more to the point, the two cavers will still be known for giving away data long after bush has moved back to crawford…i don’t see the public forgetting about this. it simply seems like a terrible marketing mistake to give users the impression that there is no implicit trust relationship.
google won’t get in any “trouble” for this, there is no legal justification for forcing the subpeona, but the other cavers will be remembered long after bush’s surveillance…..errr porn act has been relegated to the dustbin of rejected legislation.
Ms giving your info to the govt who would have thought?
Remember hidepoints in windows 98
And the NSA Backdoor built into every version of windows after windows 95. Who in their right mind would use their “search” engine.
And the NSA Backdoor built into every version of windows after windows 95.
That’s some awful mighty strong accusations you’re throwing around. Got any backup for that?
Here is what he is talking about:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY
Yay conspiracy theories.
yet another google rocks
The most personal information they could have given is your IP.
It is still worrying though.
Your IP could be used to track you down.
They could give all searches that you have ever performed which is probably the most personal information that anyone could have.
Yes, it could. But if you’re doing searches that the government might be concerned about, maybe you should be using a proxy
Also, search history is not that personal. Social Security # is WAY more personal.
I’m sure the Government can get a hold of your social security number if they know who you are.
Your web searches do tell a great deal about your personality and also about parts of your life that you may not want other people knowing. Even searches which are completely benign could be used for character assassination.
There are so many reasons to try and conserve privacy. The biggest reason is that if a Government holds a lot of personal information about you, they hold a greater deal of power of you and as we all know, people that hold power tend to try and abuse it to their own ends.
Listen. I agree that the government should NOT have this information.
I was simply saying that SEARCH HISTORY (not ip) is NOT more personal than anything else.
Listen. I agree that the government should NOT have this information.
OK, sorry. I picked you up wrong on that one
I was simply saying that SEARCH HISTORY (not ip) is NOT more personal than anything else.
This is where I disagree. I think that a person’s search history can tell a lot about a person. Of course this is all a bit of a moot point. We all know that our doings on the web can be easily tracked so there’s not really such thing as someone’s internet privacy anyway…
I was simply saying that SEARCH HISTORY (not ip) is NOT more personal than anything else.
Of course it is. It can reveal where you shop, what you buy, what news stories you read, what issues you respond to, who you talk to, and even salacious details like what p0rn sites you browse — and how you like it.
Excuse me, I meant “more personal than everything else.”
I guess I use search engines for the wrong thing. For shopping, who I talk to, sites I regularly visit, I never use a search engine. It’s almost always for informational purposes.
Yahoo also gave your information without mentioning it. Good on you Google.
If people are wrong headed about Google (and that’s a loaded assumption to be making), it isn’t that Google is looking out for Google, and that’s that. It’s that Google realizes that by not chapping people’s hides, they’ll earn the respect of their customers. Why is Google the idol of geekdom? Why not Yahoo, MSN, or someone else? Because the other guys don’t take the road Google takes. Yes, it’s a business decision, but at the same time, it’s an ethics decision.
just set up a script to submit fake search queries at random times. makes it extremely difficult to track the few real searches i do…
Browser: Opera/8.01 (J2ME/MIDP; Opera Mini/1.1.2421/lofi/nordic/int; Sanyo PM-8200; en; U; ssr)
Well Microsoft seem to be winning at everything and anyone suggesting that Microsoft put backdoors via WMF MUST be smoking crack right?
not just anyone, no. just steve gibson, who makes that claim and then continues to use iis on windows for his web server.
of course, it was already a well known fact that he smokes crack all the time before that happened…