Search Engine Journal reports that Google recently filed two patents dealing with ad targeting based on user search history behavior and personalization in what seems an attempt to leverage their Gmail/personal search/toolbar data, reminding us that all those free tools…
Category: Issues
Google Updates Privacy Policy
Google announced an update of their privacy policy: Google Privacy Policy (October 14, 2005)Google Privacy Policy (July 1, 2004) Aaron Swartz's useful web-based HTML Diff web-based program also offers a comparison of the old and the new and is available…
New York taxi drivers protest proposal to install GPS in vehicles
NYC cab drivers are rallying against the Taxi and Limousine Commission's plan to outfit cabs with Gloabl Positioning Satellite systems, claiming that it violates their right to privacy. In an article in AM New York, the head of the New…
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Automatic License Plate Scanners & Wholesale Surveillance
The Boston Transportation Department is engaging in what Bruce Schneier calls "wholesale surveillance" in order to collect unpaid parking tickets. A white SUV equipped with two video cameras on top and a laptop computer running license plate scanning software drives…
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Missouri: State Spies on Drivers Through Cell Phones
The state of Missouri has begun a program to track individual movements on highways through cell phones:The Missouri Department of Transportation will spend $3 million annually on a program to monitor the movements of individuals on highways via their cell…
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Paper: The Value Implications of the “Google Paradigm” for Organizing, Distributing and Accessing Information
I am presenting this paper today at the 6th International and Interdisciplinary Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (AOIR). The panel is titled "Search Engines - Their Politics; Their Logics":The Value Implications of the “Google Paradigm” for Organizing, Distributing…
Let Wikipedia Write Your Next Paper
According to News.com, Esquire writer AJ Jacobs put a badly written and error ridden article on Wikipedia and let the Wikipedian community have at it. Within days, the article had received hundreds of edits, was cleaned up, proof read and…
‘UnGoogleables’ Hide From Search
This Wired News article, 'UnGoogleables' Hide From Search, offers a profile of Geri Agalia (not her real name), a person who values her privacy and is trying to keep info about herself out of the Google database: Geri Agalia doesn't…
Push for the “Perfect Search”
There's been quite a push lately for what I'm calling the "perfect search" - a search engine that is personalized, local, implicit, predictive, etc. This is something I will be writing more about soon, especially whether there will be room…
Microsoft Plans to Sell Search Ads – Privacy Concerns?
Microsoft has announced that it plans to enter the search advertising market, creating their own advertising system to rival Google and Yahoo. Microsoft's "improvement" is to by allow advertisers to aim ads on its search pages to users based on…
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