Saturday, December 20, 2003
Catching paedophiles or spying on the public?
Interesting to see that this story has come to light - it has been the case for a while now that search engines are monitoring and recording what you search for, though it's not been public knowledge. The police think it's great as sites they have set up will come up when certain words are entered into search engines, and then they can catch suspected paedophiles. The general public may have a wider issue, as it is clear that, without their knowledge or permission, the search engine companies have been colluding to push their details onto a third party.
It may seem fine to catch paedophiles - but what if you're a medic looking up certain things on the web - you could easily get there by mistake. And what if it's not just limited to child porn sites, but to anything the police, or anyone else, thinks you shouldn't see? I'm not condoning child porn - far from it - but we need to see and understand what technology is being used for if it is not to shoot itself in the foot. The RF id tag debate shows this only too well.
Interesting to see that this story has come to light - it has been the case for a while now that search engines are monitoring and recording what you search for, though it's not been public knowledge. The police think it's great as sites they have set up will come up when certain words are entered into search engines, and then they can catch suspected paedophiles. The general public may have a wider issue, as it is clear that, without their knowledge or permission, the search engine companies have been colluding to push their details onto a third party.
It may seem fine to catch paedophiles - but what if you're a medic looking up certain things on the web - you could easily get there by mistake. And what if it's not just limited to child porn sites, but to anything the police, or anyone else, thinks you shouldn't see? I'm not condoning child porn - far from it - but we need to see and understand what technology is being used for if it is not to shoot itself in the foot. The RF id tag debate shows this only too well.
(c) 2003-2005 Russell Beale
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