In light of today's SJ Merc report that the Department of Justice has demanded user search records from Google, this excerpt from John Battelle's The Search seems worth reading again:
As we move our data to the servers at Amazon.com, Hotmail.com,
Yahoo.com, and Gmail.com, we are making an implicit bargain, one
that the public at large is either entirely content with, or, more likely,
one that most have not taken much to heart.That bargain is this: we trust you to not do evil things with our
information. We trust that you will keep it secure, free from unlaw-
ful government or private search and seizure, and under our control
at all times. We understand that you might use our data in aggregate
to provide us better and more useful services, but we trust that you
will not identify individuals personally through our data, nor use
our personal data in a manner that would violate our own sense of
privacy and freedom.That’s a pretty large helping of trust we’re asking companies to
ladle onto their corporate plate. And I’m not sure either we or they
are entirely sure what to do with the implications of such a transfer.
Just thinking about these implications makes a reasonable person’s
head hurt.
Previously: DoJ demands user search records from Google
