My Opinion

I believe that search engines need to revise their privacy policies in order to limit and retain the data from outside sources which would prevent privacy infractions. Collected search logs that contain information that is traceable back to individual people should be deleted on the spot. Or perhaps the best solution to this issue would be for search engines to simply stop collecting our data completely. If search engines continue to collect our data, then our privacy will never be secure or confidential. Perhaps these search engine companies can use their own experimental search requests from themselves in order to improve their technology, instead of collecting and storing search logs from casual internet users. The government obtaining search logs to prosecute people is not something that I see as reasonable or legal either. With our current laws of freedom of expression and privacy, the government is not allowed to obtain our mail from post offices or record our phone conversations in outside life. Kevin Bankston responded to these government subpoenas and stated, “That's like asking the post office to keep copies of our mail, or phone companies to keep recordings of our phone calls, just in case investigators might find it useful." The laws of real, outside life should pertain to life on the internet as well. Currently the most effective way for internet users to conceal their privacy is through internet anonymizers. Internet anonymizers conceal your IP address, and without knowledge of your IP address, no one can identify you or locate you.

Here are some interesting YouTube videos that pertain to this controversy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqD5zPqZ5Nk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whanGlvZ5lc

A short list I made discussing the pros and cons:

Pros:

-Improvement of search engine technology

-Improves advertisements

-Assists Prosecuters

Cons:

-Assists stalkers

-Makes people susceptible to identity theft

-Major privacy invasion