Kabir, 

This is scary, interesting and useful piece to read; thanks indeed for
sharing it. It has revealed to me issues I never thought of happening.
The reality is I am scared to my bone, not because I do anything
criminal or absurd on the internet, but because I have an unknown
insider....TECHNOLOGY GOOD OR BAD? USEFUL BUT BAD? Whatever, the
evolution of our civilization, its attendant capitalism and consumerism
has made us very dependent on it. However, I do not want to quit!!!

OBRIGADO KABIR!!!

Alieu Darboe

-----Original Message-----
From: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Amadu Kabir Njie
Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2006 12:33 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Fwd: In Google, Yahoo, Should We Trust?

In Google, Yahoo, Should We Trust?
http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/20060214_google_yahoo_trust1/ Posted on
Feb. 14, 2006

By Mark Malseed

An unsettling reality has begun to descend on the millions of fans and
devotees of the Internet giants Google and Yahoo: *They know an awful
lot
about us.*

Every Google search ever typed, every Yahoo news article ever read-all
are
logged and stored indefinitely in these companies' massive databases.
Think
about that for a moment. We whisper a lot into the ears of these shadowy
search engines, including plenty of secrets that we'd want to keep from
our
spouses and kids. And we do so without ever bothering to check what is
being
done with that information.

If you don't already know, let me be the first to tell you: Google,
Yahoo
and their less-well-known brethren are keeping tabs on what is being
searched, viewed and clicked on, all across their sprawling Web empires.

You know all those e-mails you've sent using free services such as Yahoo
Mail or Google's Gmail? They are kept for posterity on company servers,
even
in cases when they have been deleted from users' accounts. And instant
messages? A new service from Google leaves a digital record long after
the
conversations have been forgotten. Driving directions? Not only do
Google
and Yahoo know the way to our intended destination, they also know that
we
probably made the trip. (We all but told them we were going, didn't we?)

Searches are not by default linked to our names-only to an Internet
address
or a unique browser ID. But armed with that information, investigators
and
sometimes the companies themselves can make the crucial link to our
names
and addresses.

Existing laws offer fewer protections for data and e-mail communications
stored by a third party than for the contents of someone's personal
computer. And though there are gray areas in the law, this much is
clear:
plenty of what the search engines have amassed about us may be obtained
without a wiretap or search warrant.

The words we type into Google may seem anonymous and innocuous at the
instant we're doing a search, almost as if we are confessing to some
digital
high priest: "Lord, just between you and me, I am fascinated with . . .
recreational drugs, bondage, Islamic radicalism, how to cheat my friends
at
poker. . . . " But our inquiries leave behind permanent tracks that
could
come back to haunt someday.

Consider for a moment what a complete history of just your Internet
searches
alone might reveal. Chances are the list would offer pretty good clues
as to
your political leanings, your health condition, your finances, your job
satisfaction, your marital fidelity, your obsessions and addictions, and
plenty else that you may want to keep private.

Add to that the full archive of your Web e-mails-and depending on what
other
Yahoo or Google services you use, a partial or full record of your Web
surfing habits-and these companies have got a fairly comprehensive
digital
dossier on you, me and several hundred million other people.

This is a treasure trove by any accounting, and potentially a very
valuable,
perfectly legitimate asset to criminal and terrorism investigations. But
such an accumulation of personal data also presents a tempting target
for
intrusive fishing expeditions by law enforcement, divorce lawyers,
government prosecutors and even less savory characters.

What's more, the whereabouts of this data are generally kept secret. The
records are sequestered in undisclosed locations, entirely out of our
control, and may even be stored in a country other than the one in which
a
user lives, raising potential legal complications.

In China, both companies have come under fire for complying with the
communist regime's censoring of the Internet. Yahoo has twice turned
over
personally identifying information about Chinese dissidents that led to
their being jailed.

Here in the United States, the search engines say they comply with legal
requests for information, but they rarely comment on the extent of their
cooperation in handing over search data for criminal or civil cases. (In
at
least *one case <http://www.wral.com/news/5287261/detail.html>*, a
person's
search history was used in prosecution, but that information was skimmed
from his own computer.) Nevertheless, unless laws are rewritten or
company
policies changed, the search engines will find themselves increasingly
bombarded with subpoenas for their users' search histories.

If all this sounds like a privacy disaster in the making, it is one that
until recently has received scant attention in the mainstream press.
Google's generally gung-ho media coverage has glossed over some of the
serious concerns that privacy advocates have voiced about its
information-hording habits.

This week's *cover
story<http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1158920,00.html>
* in Time magazine is a perfect example. Despite a cover headline that
provocatively asks, "Can We Trust Google With Our Secrets?" the article
largely dodges the question, instead retracing (yet again) the
admittedly
impressive rise of the seven-year-old firm. Not until the last paragraph
does it break what is surely news to many people, mentioning in passing
that
Google "retains loads of our data-what we search for, what we say in our
Gmails-so we need to know it won't be evil with them."

Well, indeed, it would be reassuring to know Google intends to uphold
its
unofficial motto of "Don't Be Evil" with regard to our records. But how
does
one prove that?  What we really need to know more about-and this is a
matter
of fact, not conjecture-is what data are being retained; for how long;
who
has access to the information, and for what purposes; and what our
rights
are under the law.

Given the fact that Google just made a $1-billion investment in AOL
(which
is owned by Time magazine's parent company, Time Warner), one might
expect
the magazine to give the search company gentle treatment on touchy
issues.
It's not going to bite the hand that is helping to rescue papa. But how
about some tougher questioning? The softballs lobbed in the
accompanying *interview
transcript<http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1158956,00.h
tml>
* reveal that the Google guys are still fun and down to earth, which
they
are, but they shed no light on the advertised topic of "Can we trust
them?"

The existence of detailed logs like the ones Google and Yahoo compile
has
never been a secret among technology insiders. Owners and developers of
websites naturally want to have data on what's being viewed, how often
and
by whom, as this helps in analyzing and improving operations and in
spotting
malicious attacks. In some ways, it is no different than in the offline
world, where businesses like to keep a careful eye on their inventories
and
customers.

Yet neither Google or Yahoo has exactly called attention to the fact
that it
keeps comprehensive records on its users' movements. Google has been
around
for seven years now, Yahoo for nearly 11, yet the vast majority of
visitors
to these sites remain unaware they are being tracked. Precisely because
it
might scare off users, this revelation is kept in the fine print of
privacy
policies, which few people read. Google doesn't even link to its privacy
policy from its lily-white home page. (Is that "evil"?)

So last month's news that the Justice Department had subpoenaed search
records from Google, Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft came as an eye-opening
jolt.
Loyal users, investors and the media began asking long-overdue
questions.
What exactly was in those records and for the taking? Could search
engines
produce lists of what searches came from what Internet addresses?

Tech-news site CNET posed a series of *specific
questions<http://news.com.com/Verbatim+Search+firms+surveyed+on+privacy/
2100-1025_3-6034626.html>
* along these lines to several major search engines, but many of the
responses were comically short on detail. "We keep data for as long as
it is
useful," said a Google spokesman when asked if records were ever purged.
A
Yahoo rep offered this: "We maintain data that will help us provide
users
with the best possible experience."

The specifics of the Justice Department subpoena were as follows:
Federal
prosecutors, hoping to revive a previously overturned law protecting
minors
from exposure to pornography, went googling for data that would buttress
their case. (Some early reports about the subpoena said the law in
question
dealt with child pornography, which was not true.)

Initially, the government demanded a list of every website address
available
on Google and every search term entered during July 2005-a staggering
amount
of data, considering that Google handles 300 million searches per day.
The
request was later narrowed to a list of 1 million random Web pages and
all
the search queries for a given week.

Perhaps trying to show off its bureaucratic muscle for data-crunching,
the
Justice Department also requested similar information from Yahoo,
America
Online and Microsoft, all of which have said they turned over some
aggregated data, though they have not specified how much.

Their compliance with the subpoena is disappointing from a privacy
standpoint, but it does not add up to a doomsday scenario. None of the
search engines released any personally identifiable information to the
government, nor were they asked to.

Google, to its credit, gallantly refuses to turn over any data at all.
The
company is being seen by many as taking a stand against the Bush
administration, which is not well liked in Silicon Valley. "The demand
for
the information is overreaching," Google attorney Nicole Wong told the
San
Jose Mercury News, which broke the subpoena story. Google co-founder
Sergey
Brin later told
*Bloomberg<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=at.0suYD_
qJQ&refer=us>
*, "We don't think it's a proper subpoena for some legal case; it's not
anything we're even a party to." (A court hearing is scheduled for Feb.
27.)


Brin's main reason for putting up a fight, of course, is to protect
Google's
business. The Internet is as hotly competitive as ever, and while Google
holds a commanding market share in search, Yahoo is still the most
visited
website in the world and Microsoft is still king of the desktop. Google
does
not want to give them or anyone else a window into its proprietary
information. Nor does it want to see a precedent established for regular
government trawling of its data, which might make users and investors
skittish.

But Google has its work cut out, in part because of the high
expectations it
has set for itself. Even as the search leader seems to be standing firm
against the Department of Justice, it sent the opposite signal last
month
when it rolled over and acceded to the Chinese government's wishes.

By launching a China-based service in January, Google agreed to
*actively
restrict <http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060125-072617>* certain
Web
pages on the totalitarian government's behalf, a stark departure from
its
thumb-in-the-nose approach to, at one time or another, its venture
capitalists, Wall Street and even the SEC.

Although Google has operated a Chinese-language site for several years,
the
site had been run from outside the country and served unfiltered content
that the government then censored through its so-called *Great Firewall
of
China<http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engASA170072002?OpenDocument&
of=COUNTRIESCHINA>
*. After much internal debate, Google's founders and executives made
peace
with the Chinese regime's demands, deciding that was best for business
and,
they also argue, ultimately was a way to break down the oppressive
speech
restrictions.

Yahoo, which also operates in China, has come under even more intense
fire
for its apparent role in the jailing of two activists. The cases, which
have
been publicized by the human rights groups Reporters Without Borders and
Amnesty International, have also sparked bipartisan criticism in
Washington.


"I don't like any American company ratting out a citizen for speaking
out
against their government," Rep. Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat and member of
the
House Human Rights Subcommittee, told
*Reuters<http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=internetNew
s&storyID=2006-02-10T075233Z_01_N0917515_RTRUKOC_0_US-CHINA-INTERNET.xml
&archived=False>
* last week. The committee is holding a hearing on Feb. 15 on the
activities
of U.S.-based Internet companies in China, and lawmakers have said they
intend to push Yahoo to reveal what information it has provided to the
Chinese government.

It's easy to take an absolutist stance and condemn Google and Yahoo for
their decisions to do business in China given the strict censorship. But
to
stay out would mean compromising the service they provide to the world's
second-largest Internet audience. (If Google didn't agree to
self-censorship, the Chinese government's Great Firewall would do the
censoring, and that firewall greatly slows down the speed of the Web.)
For
companies whose missions are all about open information, but which need
millions of satisfied users to keep their advertising engines running,
this
was a tough call.

Then again, the serious privacy concerns outlined above-namely, that
Google
and Yahoo know all and see all-now come into play for China's 1.3
billion
citizens, whose government is not as mindful of rights and legal
processes
as our own.

Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page may be young tech geeks
but,
make no mistake, they are also shrewd businessmen. They are visionaries
too,
with a grand mission to organize all the world's information and make it
accessible.

Yahoo's leaders have a similarly broad vision, which they summarize with
the
acronym FUSE, for "find, use, share and expand all human knowledge."

No ordinary dot-com enterprises, these are powerful global juggernauts
whose
actions matter, whose products increasingly define how we experience the
Internet.

Brin and Page tend to beg forgiveness, not permission, when pursuing
their
bold ideas, as was the case in 2004 when they launched Gmail, a free
e-mail
service that automatically scanned the contents of messages to display
relevant ads. Despite complaints by privacy advocates, the duo did not
back
down, insisting that the novel features and massive free storage
capacity
would win over users. They have. Gmail accounts are in high demand, and
are
now being offered in a *trial
version<http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/big-mail-on-campus.html>
* to schools and businesses.

Still, the Google guys' penchant for pushing boundaries and challenging
the
status quo may make them party to landmark legal struggles in coming
years,
perhaps reaching as high as the Supreme Court.

Locked in a fierce battle for supremacy on the Internet, Google and
Yahoo
are innovating at a dizzying pace, in fields ranging from advertising to
video search to artificial intelligence, biology, energy, even space
exploration. Yahoo is aggressively researching new forms of online
communities to engage its enormous audience of 420 million registered
users,
such as the free photo sharing site Flickr.  Google, meanwhile, is busy
scanning millions of library books without regard for traditional
copyright
laws, and it has quietly embarked on a project with maverick scientist
Craig
Venter to build a database of genetic and biological information.

Funding this race is a robust online advertising business that generates
billions of dollars in yearly revenue for each of the companies. In
order to
deliver the best-performing ads, the firms will strive to learn and
anticipate our wants, needs and aspirations. And that probably means
tapping
into our surfing habits, search histories, personal preferences and
more.

How do we balance the admittedly impressive features that Google and
Yahoo
provide, on the one hand, and cherished notions of personal privacy on
the
other? There are small steps users can take to minimize the digital
dossiers
that these companies can amass-for example, clearing "cookies" from Web
browsers every so often, or using different sites for search and for
e-mail.
But the lead must come from the firms themselves.

Tomorrow's Internet will be far more interesting than today's-which is
why
it is critical for the leading search engines to work out industry-wide
privacy standards sooner rather than later. They can start by resisting
unwarranted requests for data, appointing internal "chief privacy
officers,"
and being more forthcoming about what information they record and share
with
third parties.

Until that day, and probably for as long as they are around, Google and
Yahoo will know a lot more about us than we know about them.

*Mark Malseed is coauthor of "The Google Story: Inside the Hottest
Business,
Media and Technology Success of Our Time," an international bestseller
that
is being published in 17 languages worldwide. Formerly the researcher to
Bob
Woodward for the books "Plan of Attack" and "Bush at War," Malseed
contributes to numerous online and offline publications, including The
Washington Post. *

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