Quote:The news that major search engine operators Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp.'s MSN division and America Online Inc. complied with a U.S. government subpoena that Google Inc. is resisting has prompted strong reactions from Internet users on both sides of the issue.
Many users are expressing anger at what they perceive to be a governmental intrusion and an unwillingness by search engines to protect their privacy. Others feel the brouhaha is much ado about nothing.
full article:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/01/2...ena_1.html
Some Yahoo and Microsoft MSN users are vowing to boycott the companies.
In addition to this latest incident, both companies have been in the news recently for their willingness to help China enforce its policy of human rights violations (see this topic for more information on Yahoo and Microsoft in China
http://community.tuliptools.com/index.ph...ml#msg7595)
Related opinion piece on the increasing loss of individual privacy in the digital age:
Quote:Google knows a lot more about your personal life than you think. Oh, and so do hackers and the State . . .
SELF-AVOWAL is invariably the toughest of the 12 recovery steps. So here, gratifyingly, let me publicly confess: I Was A Guardian Journalist. Having submitted to a searching personal moral inventory, I admit, to God and myself, to having swallowed the entire liberal schtick, from the presumption of corporate irresponsibility to the grinding paranoia about Big Brother surveillance. It is therefore disconcerting, just as I was finally re-integrating into mainstream society, to find Googles fight with the US Justice Department provoking an almighty storm over web users fast-eroding privacy rights. At the risk of relapsing, may I now convince you that they really are out to get us?
The truth is that Google can never be trusted to protect your personal information. As ever more aspects of our lives are conducted through electronic databases, it is safe only to assume that your internet search history, your email trail, even some of your physical movements are being logged by organisations that care little about your privacy. As your data trail grows, its value increases to any hacker or petty bureaucrat who is motivated to trawl...
full article:
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/arti...82,00.html
I'd say "privacy" in the electronic era is really a moot point.
From what you purchased at the store to were you traveled and the hotel
you stayed in overnight. To where you surfed online, who you e mailed
and what you said in a cell phone or even land line conversation for that matter.
Someone may and certainly does have access to that information.
If using a debt or credit card or any electronic means, your information
and movements are surely available.
We may not have anything to hide and hide we will not.