Here are more good analyses of the DOJ/Google spat:
- John Batelle thinks (correctly, IMO) this is more about Google protecting trade secrets than its users’ privacy.
- Dan Solove has two important posts related to the broader issues of commerical data aggregation (and its passing into government hands) as well as how this relates to the recent ruling in Northwestern Memorial Hospital v. Ashcroft where the courts held that even de-identified data can still lead to privacy violations.
- Seth Finkelstein is equally skeptical about Google’s real intentions in fighting the subpoena, but maintains hope that “there’s a way in which this could be consciousness-raising, regarding the privacy implications of the huge amount of personal data collected by search engines”
- And, the folks at Search Engine Journal speculate whether today’s 8.5% drop in Google’s stock price might be related to these general privacy concerns.
MichaelZimmer.org 