Aardvark Daily

The world's longest-running online daily news and commentary publication, now in its 30th year. The opinion pieces presented here are not purported to be fact but reasonable effort is made to ensure accuracy.

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Google's Gotcha

10 November 2008

It's pretty hard to do anything on the Net these days without Google making a note of it and storing the information for posterity.

And, this is something that is worrying more than a few people.

While many of us look on in disbelief at the UK government's moves to install Orwellian black boxes to track every move made by Net users, it's easy to forget that Google is already keeping a pretty good diary of what you're up to.

And Google does it in a way that probably no other independent online provider of services can, thanks to the multiplicity of services it offers.

Every time you use Google's search engine, the cookies that are exchanged between your browser and the search site uniquely identify you (or at least your browser) as a unique entity.

Thanks to this unique identification, a catalog can be kept of every search you make -- whether it's for researching a PhD thesis or just trawling for porn.

Of course if searching was all you ever did with Google, that'd be one thing -- because your actual identity would be safe. You would be little more than a number to Google.

However, when you sign up for other Google services, such as GMail, things change a lot.

Now it becomes possible to put a name and other details to that Google cookie and the value of the data being accumulated is dramatically enhanced.

Suddenly Google can tell that it's Bruce Simpson, the 50-something male from New Zealand who has been doing all that searching on topics related to quantum physics.

And, since they own YouTube, Google can also tell that it's me who keeps posting and watching videos about jet engines.

Quite frankly, I don't care that the world knows what I do online - otherwise I wouldn't have just told you would I?

I also don't think that Google will do anything nasty or nefarious with that unbelievably large volume of information it has the ability to collect.

But what does worry me just a little is the risk that some paranoid government (such as the US one) might decide that they need to have access to all that profiling information so as to identify risks to the nation's security.

Imagine if, under the provisions of the Homeland Security laws, they demanded full access to all those records held by Google. Then think about what would happen if they ran a query that pulled up the names and other identifying information for people who might be planning a hi-tech attack.

"Well looky here... there's this Kiwi guy who keeps searching the net for unmanned aerial vehicles, jet engines and quantum physics."

"Dang, I be the's one of those Islamic terrorists... hey look, back in 2004 he once searched for 'Koran' -- hell, we got ourselves a terrorist planning to launch a missile attack against the good old U S of A"

Okay, so I exaggerate (I hope) but you get the idea.

The Brits are paranoid, the yanks are paranoid and I'm pretty sure the Aussies are heading the same way.

Just look at how they're already employing the latest technology (surveillance, backscatter x-ray machines, etc) supposedly in the name of enhancing national security and protecting the public. So how hard would it be to justify pro-active profiling of potential "threats" based on the massive database of internet activity that Google is building?

Many, many years ago I mused that perhaps one day we'd need some kind of license to access the Net, so as to remove the veil of anonymity and ensure that those using it were "fit and proper" people.

It would appear that technology has eliminated the need for such a thing. There are already mechanisms for following your every move and viewing your history an the years AGA (After Google's Appearance).

Does this worry you?

If you think carefully about some of the less mainstream searches you've done and the potentially incriminating sites you've visited (that may have had Google Ads on them, thus ensuring that visit was logged), could it be that some kind of cyber-profiling might incorrectly flag you as a risk or threat to national or public safety?

Is the only way to prevent the mis-use of such data simply to outlaw its collection and archiving in the first place?

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