Bush domestic spying (google version) impacting American internet users

[kpete]

After Subpoenas, Internet Searches Give Some Pause

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By KATIE HAFNER
Published: January 25, 2006
Kathryn Hanson, a former telecommunications engineer who lives in Oakland, Calif., was looking at BBC News online last week when she came across an item about a British politician who had resigned over a reported affair with a "rent boy."

It was the first time Ms. Hanson had seen the term, so, in search of a definition, she typed it into Google. As Ms. Hanson scrolled through the results, she saw that several of the sites were available only to people over 18. She suddenly had a frightening thought. Would Google have to inform the government that she was looking for a rent boy - a young male prostitute?

Ms. Hanson, 45, immediately told her boyfriend what she had done. "I told him I'd Googled 'rent boy,' just in case I got whisked off to some Navy prison in the dead of night," she said.

Ms. Hanson's reaction arose from last week's reports that as part of its effort to uphold an online pornography law, the Justice Department had asked a federal judge to compel Google to turn over records on millions of its users' search queries. Google is resisting the request, but three of its competitors - Yahoo, MSN and America Online - have turned over similar information.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/25/national/25privacy.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=53ada0c511b528d5&hp&ex=1138165200&partner=homepage
via:http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/01/bush-domestic-spying-google-version.html