Google defies US over search data

At least for now. MSN and Yahoo have already turned over subpoenaed database records to the Justice Department. The Justice Department has now filed suit in San Jose, CA, to obtain records including a weeks worth of search queries and a million randomly selected web addresses from the Google index.

 

The data is to be used to defend the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, but details on how that is going to be done are not very clear. With the current administration's record for spying on the American people, I don't think it's such a stretch to think that this information will be used to track American's online activities.

Google uses a 35 year cookie across all of its services. IP addresses and search queries are saved in conjunction with a unique ID contained in the cookie. This makes the information personally identifiable.  

Do you use gmail? Did you ever notice how complicated deleting a message is? It takes 3 clicks to delete a message, but only one to archive it? Google admits that deleted messages are available internally for an indefinite amount of time on their servers.

The question I suppose we should ask ourselves is this; Do we really want the government to know what we've been searching for, what addresses we've mapped, what news we've read, who we email? Or maybe this one; Why does the government want this in the first place?