Andreas: It's not just the Chinese government. The
US government is demanding that Google turn over
information on users. AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft
have already complied.
Eric: My understanding is that the government is
NOT getting any information on users, but is
receiving billions of unidentified search
requests. Correct me if I'm wrong on this please.
Andreas: The Bush White House is illegally engaged
in massive domestic surveillance of US citizens.
They are reading emails, watching what webpages
people look at, and so on.
Eric: I complained about the data-mining
techniques back in 2002, when it was real news
rather than political football. If you look in the
ancient archives, I cited the case of a
government-funded, Carnegie-Mellon computer
scientist who had developed a data-mining
algorithm that kept user identities secret until
the desired profile pulled up a "hit," at which
time the program could backtrace the data-mining
to the identity of the source. Ashcroft never
implemented her program, but instead chose to use
a method of data-mining that kept all the
user-identities available to the government.
Concerned, the scientist went public with her
story. Perhaps there were reasons for using the
other technique (better data-mining), but this
news item started to make me suspicious of the
Bush administration's intentions.
There is a real need for data-mining and
government surveillance, but the instance above
makes me think that the government's constant
bipartisan need for control and power are also
part of the mix.
As for privacy, my understanding is that every
computer chip currently in use has a back door
designed by the makers to allow government access.
And that this back door was created in Clinton's
first term as part of an NSA initiative. Again,
please correct me if I'm wrong.
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