The Bush administration is furthering its domestic spying program by monitoring your web search habits.  The DoJ has subpoenaed records from all the major search engines.  Thus far, AOL, MSN and Yahoo have readily provided them.  Using this information, the government can now tell precisely what you’re searching for on the internet.  Since each query is tracked with a date & time stamp as well as an internet address, all they have to do is request the IP address allocation for a specific date and time from the ISP and — voila! — they know precisely who searched for what.

In what I consider a famous and admirable move to live by its tenet of “Don’t Be Evil” and to protect netizens, Google refused to hand over the records and is fighting the government on this blatant invasion of privacy.

I do not understand those who still think this is an OK thing for the government to do.  It’s not, and I don’t care that it’s being done under the guise of protecting children by way of COPA, a law which was already found to be unconstitutional.  The range of information available in search engine records will lay wide open all of your search activities, no matter how innocent, and offers the government a way to build spy-worthy databases of your online activities.  Not only are they tapped into the telephone networks and gobbling up all e-mail traffic, but now they want to know exactly what you’re looking for on the net.

What is this country coming to?

Oh, you can bet I’ll never use AOL, MSN or Yahoo for searches.  Not that I have in many years, but this clarifies how willing they are to hand over your search activity at the drop of a hat.