Michael Zimmer.org

Dan Solove points to this Salon article that reveals how Google, Yahoo and Microsoft help the Chinese government not only filter out search results that they want to censor, but also help track down the individuals engaging in criticism and dissent. From the article:
To conduct business in China, popular Internet companies Yahoo, Microsoft and Google have had to accommodate a regime that forbids free speech, bars political parties and jails journalists. This means filtering searches on their sites, censoring news and providing evidence in the trials of political dissidents — …

Bruce Schneier points us to the latest steps the UK is taking to embark on wholesale surveillance of citizens driving on the public roads:
Britain is to become the first country in the world where the movements of all vehicles on the roads are recorded. A new national surveillance system will hold the records for at least two years.Using a network of cameras that can automatically read every passing number plate, the plan is to build a huge database of vehicle movements so that the police and security services …

danah boyd has an excellent post on the recent Seigenthaler-Wikipedia controversy, focusing particularly on the academic community’s response:
What pissed me off more was how the academic community pointed to this case and went “See! See! Wikipedia is terrible! We must protest it and stop it! It’s ruining our schools!” All of a sudden, i found myself defending Wikipedia to academics instead of reminding the pro-Wikipedians of its limitations in academia. I kept pointing out that they wouldn’t let students cite from encyclopedias either. I reminded folks that the …

The New York Times finally picks up on this discussion about how some governments are concerned over the detailed images of sensitive sites Google Earth makes available to the public.

I’m late (due to end-of-semester grading) to the discussion of the recent Google-AOL deal. The key points:

Google spends $1 billion to gain a 5% stake in AOL;
Google offers special promotion and links to AOL (as sponsored links) for searches which AOL has its own content;
Google provides AOL with $300 million in free advertising on Google’s web sites;
Google would begin to test various forms of graphical ads (a bold departure from its text-only approach to ads which keeps their interface clean, fast and user-friendly);
Google will incorporate AOL video programming in …

Google announced that they are increasing the font size of the AdWords paid search results becuase “The more similar the type, the higher the CTR [click through rate].” You can view the difference: before vs. after.
By making the paid search results appear more like the “organic” results, users will be more likely to click on them, meaning more money for Google. But the continued blurring of search engine results with the paid placement of advertising might implicate certain moral and ethical values considered vital to sustaining a democratic society, …

Noting that “the realities of the world have changed dramatically since the creation of the Air Force in 1947,” the US Air Force has released a new mission statement:
The mission of the United States Air Force is to deliver sovereign options for the defense of the United States of America and its global interests — to fly and fight in Air, Space, and Cyberspace.
According to the USAF, the term “cyberspace” includes network security, data transmission and the sharing of information. My guess is that they mean to focus …

Declan McCullagh at CNET offers his commentary on the latest example of “driving big brother”: GPS tracking of vehicles in support of mileage-based road user fees. From his commentary:
In principle, the idea of what bureaucrats like to call “value pricing” for cars makes sound economic sense.
Airlines and hotels have long charged less for off-peak use. Toll roads would be more efficient–in particular, less congested–if they could follow the same model and charge virtually nothing in the middle of the night but high prices during rush hour.That price structure would encourage …

Prompted in part by the recenet story about how your search history could be used as evidence against you in court, Robert Kuttner has a scathing op-ed in the Boston Globe regarding Google and individual privacy rights titled “Google Search and Seizure” Some of the highlights:
In the era of the misnamed USA Patriot Act, which allows warrantless police searches that are not even disclosed to the target, Google plus Dick Cheney is a recipe for undoing the liberties for which the original patriots of the American Revolution bled and died. …

I’m attending the “Regulating Search?” symposium hosted by the Yale Information Society Project today. The first panel was on “The Search Space,” and Robin Sloan, co-producer of the (in)famous “EPIC 2014″ movie on “the future history of media,” posed an interesting thought experiment:
What if Google (or any equivalent search company) enabled Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests?
There are many interesting implications with this idea. On one hand, the ability to search and have instant access to all government information (that is generally subject to FOIA) is of great public interest. …

Google recently released an enhancement to their AdWords paid search results called “Click-to-Call.” When you click the phone icon on an AdWords ad, you enter your phone number and Google calls the number you provided. When you pick up, you hear ringing on the other end as Google connects you to the advertiser you clicked on.
This immediately conjours up privacy conerns, adding your phone number to the list of information Google collects about you. Google, for their part, anticipate this, and provide a detailed privacy policy. It includes more …

Siva Vaidhyanathan’s article on the Google Library project in the Chronicle of Higher Education is well worth a read:
“A Risky Gamble with Google”
I have to confess, I am thrilled and dazzled by the potential of such a machine and the research and distribution opportunities it presents. I sincerely wish every Internet user had access to a full-text search of every book in the Google libraries.
But, as we all know, we should be careful what we wish for. This particular project, I fear, opens up more problems than it solves. …

From the New York Times Editorial Observer: “What Google Should Roll Out Next: A Privacy Upgrade.” Nothing that new here for those who follow the privacy implications of Google, but it’s good that attention to the issue is broadening. Here are some highlights:
Google has been aggressive about collecting information about its users’ activities online. It stores their search data, possibly forever, and puts “cookies” on their computers that make it possible to track those searches in a personally identifiable way – cookies that do not expire until 2038. Its e-mail …

Lauren Weinstein writes about the risks of Google:
Google currently represents virtually a textbook example of the complex interplay between innovative, socially positive inventions and developments on one hand, and oppressively dangerous technological arrogance on the other. Or as the fictional David St. Hubbins of the film “This is Spinal Tap” put it more simply around twenty years ago: “It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.”
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[A] very real mix of extremely potent positive and negative impacts on society, and a range of complex risks that need to be …

Phil Bogle has an important post on the privacy implications of the new Google Analystics website traffic measuring product:
The thing that’s a little bit disappointing is that Google used their standard search engine terms of service and privacy policy with Google analytics. This seems inappropriate– even the Adwords policies would have been more inappropriate.
It’s one thing to give Google full access to all of the information I enter into Google. It’s another thing to share with a third party the complete session history of everyone on my site. Google’s privacy …