If You're Not Breaking the Law, Whatcha Worried About?

Badness.

For years, it's already been my assumption that the government did this type of thing anyway, but doing it so openly and without hesitation worries me. Call me old fashioned, but I've grown rather fond of the 4th Amendment and would prefer to not find myself on my knees in the corner of my apartment, hands bound behind my back with those plastic zip-tie cuffs, eyes burning and ears ringing from the recently detonated flashbang, while a team of masked FBI agents rummage through everything I own because I decided to follow a link to Aljazeera(go on, click it; I dare you).

Anyway, here's a New York Times article about it. From the article:

...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.

The government and the cooperating companies say the search queries cannot be traced to their source, and therefore no personal information about users is being given up. But the government's move is one of several recent episodes that have caused some people to think twice about the information they type into a search engine, or the opinions they express in an e-mail message.

The government has been more aggressive recently in its efforts to obtain data on Internet activity, invoking the fight against terrorism and the prosecution of online crime. A surveillance program in which the National Security Agency intercepted certain international phone calls and e-mail in the United States without court-approved warrants prompted an outcry among civil libertarians. And under the antiterrorism USA Patriot Act, the Justice Department has demanded records on library patrons' Internet use.

Via AmericaBlog.

Technorati tags: Invasion of Privacy, Computers and Internet, Illegal Domestic Spying, News and Politics