[IP] Government searching of searches
Begin forwarded message:
From: Art Wolinsky <awolinsky@xxxxxxx>
Date: January 24, 2006 12:31:28 PM EST
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Government searching of searches
About a month or so ago, someone on IP wrote about the search tool,
Watson. I downloaded it and have been using it quite a bit. A few
minutes ago I was working on research for the creation of Child
Safety curriculum for WiredSafety.org. I opened a Word document that
contained the text of Parry Aftab's next book. Immediately, Watson
went to work. As I began exploring the results, each click resulted
in new searches being done automatically by Watson.
As I was doing this I couldn't help but think of the governments
request for Google searches. Since Watson searches Google, the
searches done automatically by the software would become part of the
search phrase database at Google. Watson is generating searches
quicker than I could and with terms I might never use, yet they are
being attributed to me.
Anyone gaining access to that data without my personal information
would be getting searches that were not generated by a human, which
would obviously not be valid for proving any point about what people
were searching for and retrieving. Anyone getting that data with my
personal information attached would getting searches attributed to me
that I actually never made. Considering the topics of child
pornography, Internet predators, hacking, and similar subjects, the
conclusions about me based on these searches could be entirely off base.
The fact that this could happen is a bit disconcerting, but the fact
that I have to be worried about it happening is a sad commentary on
the state of our society and the government's intrusion in our lives.
Art
Art Wolinsky
OEO 3DWriting, Inc.
awolinsky@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.3dwriting.com
I am perfectly capable of learning from my mistakes.
I will surely learn a great deal today.
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