Lauren commented on the wide range of things that people search for, and it keeps getting wider as Google and other search engines add features. I regularly type in names, phone numbers, addresses, and lat/longs, IP addresses, AS numbers, patent numbers, Cisco part numbers, etc., sometimes to find maps, or businesses, or phone book information, and there are a number of websites I use for business for which Google is a much more effective search tool than the site's own indexes. Sometimes I've even typed in my own name when looking for cached versions of mailing list articles in the distant past (non-specific ego-surfing isn't very useful if your name's not sufficiently unique - AltaVista had over 50,000 hits for people with similar names when it first came out - but there are times that specific searches are useful.) As somebody who regularly used Google during the specified period, do I have a right to object to the court if Gonzales wants my data? I hereby declare any phone numbers, addresses, and medical information in my searches to be Confidential, though the subpoena doesn't allow the recipients to declare their entire document as Confidential. Furthermore, the subpoena indicates that for every document not produced by Google due to confidentiality or trade secrecy, the respondents want the authors' and recipients' names, addresses, dates, etc. - but for this type of information, that disclosure includes the confidential portion and more, not less. Gonzales et al. allege that they're looking for information about the effectiveness of web filters as a tool for protecting children, so they want to look at popular search terms to see what people are looking at. But if I search for a term like "Scooter Libby", am I looking for information about him as an friend, or a Republican Henchperson, or a well-known pornographer? His original request wanted _all_ the search terms, including my attempts to find relatives' current mailing addresses, and makes it available to all attorneys and employees of the Department of Justice who are involved in the case - but that's all of them, given Gonzales's War on Obscenity, and nothing in the subpoena forbids them from making other uses of the information, such as using my searches for medical marijuana information for Drug War purposes. Brad Templeton talks about issues of identifying IP addresses, and the Tor project certainly helps - but there are other web surfing privacy tools, like The Anonymizer and other proxies, which are generally faster, more scalable, and effective at protecting content, though they're still susceptible to subpoenas for any information that they may have retained. Thanks; Bill Stewart ------------------------------------- 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]