Hvassing.com

Recently the question about who should have access to information gathered by ISP's, search engines and the alike. These companies, of course, hold massive amounts of "who, why and when"-information for a whole variety of reasons. One of them being statistics and secondly to improve their services. But who should have access to this information? Should search engines have to give up their information -- even in the case of suspected distribution of child pornography?

I'm guessing that in most cases people are searching for trivial things, a quick look at Google's zetgeist confirms that.

1. Janet Jackson
2. Hurricane Katrina
3. tsunami
4. xbox 360
5. Brad Pitt
6. Michael Jackson
7. American Idol
8. Britney Spears
9. Angelina Jolie
10. Harry Potter

– Google Press Center ( http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist2005.html )

Now how abou that? No weapons of mass destruction, no child pornography or any that alike.
BBC News reports that «The department wants the data to try to show in court it has the right approach in enforcing an online pornography law.» But most people aren't searching for pornography. The amount of pornography that exists out there is immense, the only thing that surpasses pornography in terms of demand on the Internet is searching.

Most Internet users live in this beautiful world where they are completely anonymous. In this world there are no extensive logs about their whereabouts on the Internet or actions. After all, they have a password on their Windows user-account, and they might even delete the history in their browser when finished. They think no one knows what they have been doing and that no one can ever find out. Most people would expect this to be true, and it's likely that they would get frightened if they found out that their ISP is watching them, that search engines know what they're looking for and that this information could be used in court.

In the event of a search engine or an ISP handing out information about their users actions they have breached the trust between them and their customers. Even if they're required by the law to hand out information would it be a breach in the trust. Most marketeers will tell you that trust is everything. If you haven't got trust you haven't got a business -- or a reason to be in business.

Should then Google hand over their search data they are likely to suffer from a severe distrust from their users, i.e. they'll lose money. No one wants that! Not even a money machine like Google. The problem they face is that if they are to give out their search information to the US Department of Justice it might create an avalanche of both law suits against them and queries to get access to this information. And if you have already handed it out once, it's easier to do it the second time around. So when do you draw the line, and who is supposed to do that?

From my point of view the search engines have no other option than to keep their information and their assets close. Giving out information, even to the US Department of Justice, will be an act of dishonesty according to their privacy policy towards the users (effectively you and me). They won't risk that.

Read more about this on BBC News ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4630694.stm )