seizure
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.
Instead of getting mad at Google, why don't we get even? Here are two simple ideas that any good coder could turn out in an afternoon: 1. Write and disseminate a little daemon that makes randomize queries to Google from your computer. Every few minutes to an hour (i.e., at random times) it would send a Google query with search terms randomly chosen from a large dictionary. This would pollute Google's logs and create reasonable doubt if you are later accused of entering queries for, say, the words "neck" and "snap". 2. Write and disseminate a web proxy filter that would route all Google queries through the TOR (The Onion Router) network and strip off all tracking mechanisms from the results. This may be a more palatable alternative to routing all your web surfing through TOR, which can be quite slow. I consider it unproductive to scream at Google, as has become so popular of late. It is also misguided to call for laws to limit what they can do with our search queries. Even if Google were to say that they no longer keep personally-identifiable search queries, there would be no way to verify it. And any new privacy law for search engines would surely be riddled with enormous loopholes for government abuse. As with confidentiality, the *only* solution here is technological. So let's get coding. --Phil ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen@leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]