Regarding recent news that the Justice Department issued subpoenas for user search data to AOL, Google, MSN, and Yahoo — and all but Google complied in one form or another — EFF co-founder John Gilmore says:
If Yahoo, MSN, and AOL didn't reveal any personal info to DoJ, let's see them publicly post the results that they sent back to
the DoJ.They sent "a generic list of aggregate and anonymous search terms, and
not results, from a roughly one day period" (AOL)? Let's see it. The
public can decide whether there are privacy violations in there.They sent "a random collection of page URLs that we had web-crawled"?
Let's see them.No need for barrels of ink to speculate with, let's just look at them.
There can't be a problem with looking, if there's no personal privacy
issues involved. There's no trade secrets here — these are queries
typed by end users, and web pages set up by end users. Right?
Here at Boing Boing, we can't write subpoenas — but we would like to know.
So, America Online, Microsoft, and Yahoo: will you please release the data publicly — or show us where it already exists online? This way, everyone who uses your services can take a look for themselves, and evaluate whether they believe the information shared was privacy-violating.
Thank you,
Cory, Xeni, Mark, and Pesco.
Previously:
Keeping Google's records out of government hands.
Search and privacy: Danny Sullivan, Declan, GoogleAnon
Xeni on NPR: Bush Administration Seeks Search Records
AOL: We did not comply with all of the DOJ's search data request
DoJ search requests: Google said no; Yahoo, AOL, MSN yes.
DoJ demands user search records from Google
