By Brandon W. Yuille

I recently read this post by Peter Fleischer on Google's blog, informing of new privacy policies to protect their users:

The Privacy Post From Google

"When you search on Google, we collect information about your search, such as the query itself, IP addresses and cookie details. Previously, we kept this data for as long as it was useful. Today we're pleased to report a change in our privacy policy: Unless we're legally required to retain log data for longer, we will anonymize our server logs after a limited period of time. When we implement this policy change in the coming months, we will continue to keep server log data (so that we can improve Google's services and protect them from security and other abuses)—but will make this data much more anonymous, so that it can no longer be identified with individual users, after 18-24 months.

Just as we continuously work to improve our products, we also work toward having the best privacy practices for our users. This includes designing privacy protections into our products (like Google Talk's “off the record” feature or Google Desktop’s “pause” and “lock search” controls). This also means providing clear, easy to understand privacy policies that help you make informed decisions about using our services.

After talking with leading privacy stakeholders in Europe and the U.S., we're pleased to be taking this important step toward protecting your privacy. By anonymizing our server logs after 18-24 months, we think we’re striking the right balance between two goals: continuing to improve Google’s services for you, while providing more transparency and certainty about our retention practices. In the future, it's possible that data retention laws will obligate us to retain logs for longer periods. Of course, you can always choose to have us retain this data for more personalized services like Search History. But that's up to you.

Our engineers are already busy working out the technical details, and we hope to implement this new data policy over the coming months (and within a year's time). We’ll communicate more as we work out these details, but for now, we wanted you to know that we’re working on this additional step to strengthen your privacy."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/taking-steps-to-further-improve-our.html

My Thoughts

After reading this I realized that there was more that needed to be said to Google, yet from what I can tell no way to say it. Google needs to understand that because they are the largest search engine on the internet the US government is surly devising ways to monitor its use.

As we have already seen in the telecom and ISP industry, the FCC has ruled that CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act) must be adopted by every phone and internet provider. They have extended the hunt for terrorism to our own vehicles, places of work, and homes.

The interest and curiosity of Americans for free information is now being closely watched and monitored. This poses an extremely large threat as the Patriot Act has removed the right to not be simply labeled a terrorist and taken from your daily freedoms.

The Bells or SBC or AT&T as they are now called are in very much cooperation with the government in this anti-freedom of information push. From their angle, the incentive is to please and in return the FCC will allow them to regulate the content that is transferred over the internet. If AT&T is able to charge whatever they feel reasonable for say VoIP traffic there will be no competitors left to attack this monopoly.

Google is the last hope to keep the internet free. There have been rumors of Google creating their own internet to compete against AT&T, as Google has been giving them very large amounts of money to support their high bandwidth needs.

For Google to fight for a free internet, I feel it is imperative that they first start by making their search engine and other tools completely anonymous. Google's current attempt at making "this data much more anonymous" by only holding this data for "18-24 months" is not enough, as it will still drive government subpoenas for release of user data and search habits.

Freedom of information is fading (among others) and all of our hopes are in the hands of Google.