Begin forwarded message:
From: "Richard M. Smith" <rms@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: December 3, 2005 8:57:59 AM EST
To: EPIC_IDOF@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [EPIC_IDOF] Google search and seizure
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/
2005/12/03/
google_search_and_seizure?mode=PF
Google search and seizure
By Robert Kuttner | December 3, 2005
The Boston Globe
THE NEW York Times recently reported that in a North Carolina
strangulation-murder trial, prosecutors introduced as evidence the
fact that
the defendant's Google searches had included the words ''neck" and
''snap."
The Times noted that the evidence had come from the defendant's home
computer, but could just as easily have come from Google.
Google's whole business-model includes keeping track of users'
searches by
putting ''cookies" (tracking devices) on users' own computers, and
then
using the results to customize ad offerings that pop up when we use
their
ingenious free search service.
In the era of the misnamed USA Patriot Act, which allows
warrantless police
searches that are not even disclosed to the target, Google plus
Dick Cheney
is a recipe for undoing the liberties for which the original
patriots of the
American Revolution bled and died. Under the Patriot Act, anyone
suspected
of enabling terrorism can be subjected to these fishing expeditions.
Depending on a prosecutor's whims, that includes all of us.
In the 18th-century era of star-chamber courts and despotic
monarchs, the US
Constitution put an end to government as prosecutor, judge, and jury.
Unreasonable searches and seizures were explicitly prohibited by
the Sixth
Amendment. People (not just citizens) were guaranteed the right to
confront
their accusers and to know the charges against them. There were no
''national security" loopholes.
Google's internal slogan is, charmingly, ''Don't be evil." Well, the
interaction of cyber-snooping and the unreasonable searches
authorized by
the Patriot Act is pure evil.
Herewith an idea that I am putting into the public domain, which
could make
some computer-whiz a billionaire: One of Google's competitors could
guarantee users of its search engines that all data keeping track of
searches will be permanently discarded after 24 hours. The search
process
could still learn a broad pattern of users' purchasing tastes, if
we wish to
be party to a bargain of being marketed to in exchange for the
convenience
of free searches.
The same libertarian computer entrepreneur could offer e-mail
software, in
which old messages are permanently erased unless the user
deliberately opts
to retain them.
Google, like Microsoft and IBM before it, may be the current market
leader
in whiz-bang technology based on sheer inventive genius. But if
Google is
not careful, some competitor with a genuine regard for privacy could
displace it.
We all grew up vaguely knowing that 20th century technology, under
fairly
narrow circumstances, could invade privacy. The phone company kept
track of
everyone's calling records. These could be subpoenaed. Prosecutors and
detectives, with warrants approved by judges, could deploy telephone
wiretaps. There were occasional abuses, as in the witch hunts of
the 1950s,
but for the most part these technological invasions of privacy were
used
against bad guys, not for broad fishing expeditions. And there was
no e-mail
and no Google.
Today, however, the explosion of computer technology coupled with the
discarding of prosecutorial restraints is leading to a Big-Brother
society.
Unless we pay attention, the technology is so seductive that we become
enablers of our own enslavement.
The universal information that is so empowering could be enslaving in
another respect. Check out a little satire available on the
Internet titled
EPIC 2014. It is a short, dystopian picture of the next 10 years.
EPIC stands for the Evolving Personalized Information Construct. In
this
grim view of the near future, Google merges with Amazon and becomes
''Google-zon," the ultimate information market monopoly.
By 2014, the press as we know it no longer exists. Google-zon
usurps the
press's advertising base by ultra-customizing all ads. There is no
longer
the traditional craft of reporter or editor. Newspapers go out of
business
or become small niche products.
''Everyone contributes now -- from blog entries to phone-cam
images, to
video reports, to full investigations," the video says. Everyone is
a news
producer as well as a news consumer, and it's almost impossible to
differentiate journalism from junk. Computers strip and splice
items, based
on each user's past interests, pattern of use, and declared
preferences.
News is prioritized according to how many users read each item. Ads
are
similarly customized. We are universally connected, but universally
fragmented and universally vulnerable to misinformation and
government and
commercial snooping.
The marketplace may solve this dilemma by offering privacy-sensitive
products, but entrepreneurs may also make the problem worse. The
moment
cries out for political as well as commercial leadership.
Correction: Last week's column referred to Warren Tolman. It should
have
been Steven Tolman.
Robert Kuttner, co-editor of The American Prospect, can be reached at
kuttner@xxxxxxxxxxxxx His column appears regularly in the Globe.
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