Reporters Without Borders wrote last week that it was concerned Microsoft personalization research in China would be used by the government to identify dissidents:

“The technologies Microsoft is working on would allow it to gather information about Internet users without their knowledge,” the press freedom organisation said. “These technologies could eventually lead to the creation of programmes that could identify ‘subversive’ citizens. This is obviously not Microsoft’s intention. But we believe it is unacceptable to carry out this kind of sensitive research in a country such as China where 50 people are currently in prison because of what they posted online.”

The particular research that is raising their hackles is a technology designed to guess a user’s profile based on their surfing habits. However, Slashdot readers tore that presumption apart, noting that the technology can only guess the gender 80% of the time and the age 60% of the time—hardly enough to provide an opressive regime with the home address of a likely rebel.

Nonetheless, the story raises some serious questions about privacy and government access to Internet data. And it’s not only the Chinese who are asking these questions; according to Wikipedia:

Some critics [of Google] have pointed out the dangers and privacy implications of having a centrally-located, widely popular data warehouse of millions of Internet users’ searches, and how under controversial existing U.S. law, Google can be forced to hand over all such information to the U.S. government, or any other government of a country which Google serves.

It has been claimed that Google infringes the privacy of visitors by uniquely identifying them using cookies which are used to track Web users’ search history…Chris Hoofnagle, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, DC warned that, “As courts become more frequent integrators of electronic records, there is a greater risk of Google … becoming a serious privacy threat.”

These stories, of course, relate to governments and their perceived rights, or lack thereof, to access data about our activities. What I am interested in uncovering, though, is the true scope of the privacy issue. Is it just because we don’t want the US government to know we’ve been Googling for porn? Is it because we don’t want anyone to know? Are we offended by advertisers trying to know more about us than we know about ourselves?

At the risk of sparking some controversy, I will say that the privacy issue may be similar to the environment issue. We all care about the environment, or claim to, but how many of us live off the grid? Would we truly be willing to live the life implied by sustainability? And here’s the privacy connection: Microsoft and Google collect personal data in an attempt to supply a willing market with ever-more-tailored service and advertisement offerings, the very same service and advertisement offerings that fund our fabulous ‘free’ Internet.

I’m really playing devil’s advocate here, and to be clear, VortexDNA never tracks search history, ever. But to truly understand the privacy issue, we have to be willing to ask some hard questions.

What are your concerns about privacy?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 at 4:47 am and is filed under Privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.