The U.S. government wants to revive a 1998 federal law called the Child Online Protection Act, a law that seeks to ban Internet sites from displaying content that the government deems harmful to minors.  A very good law if you ask me.  Since the Internet cannot guarantee a total filtering of contents, a law forcing websites to police their own content would help children from accessing content not suitable for them.

The problem is during that time, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked it from taking effect two years ago stating that the law cannot be enforced unless the government shows that other intrusive measures like Internet filtering are inadequate.  And for whatever reason, the US Justice Department wants to pursue this law and have asked the world's top search engines to submit one million random Web addresses from their databases as well as records of all searches entered on their site during any one-week period.  America Online (AOL), Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Network (MSN) complied with this request, except for one company - Google.

Google maintained that giving out those information will compromised their commitment to their users - to protect their privacy.  Perhaps Google is saying that they are not part of the crime, they are just a repository of information that people access.  But the U.S. department is insisting that the information they can get out of search engine results would help them determine how pervasive pornography is on the Internet and how often pornographic sites come up in random Internet searches, which will prove their cause that the Child Online Protection Act is necessary.

First of all, let me say that a law protecting our children from unwanted content is necessary.  But will the search engine results help in any way to prove that pornography is all over the web and is being accessed by minors?  Isn't it already a given?

Before we go any further, let me say that everytime we access the Internet - be it search engines or any other website, we are actually giving some of our information to them.  Information like our IP address (Internet Protocol), a unique numerical address assigned to every computer on the Internet.  Treat your IP just like your telephone number.  A site can actually identify where we are located everytime we accessed the Internet using the IP address.  Have you noticed that if you visit Google, you will be directed to www.google.com.ph?  Because Google server knows you are from the Philippines, provided by your IP address.

Aside from the IP, servers can also determine the date and time of your visit, the links that you visited.  And of course, if you signed up for any of their services, all those information will be with them.  How will they use it is a big question, we just basically trust them that it won't be used for other purposes, and will not be shared to anyone.

Now going back to Google's defiance, let us examine whether the U.S. government can actually anything out of the information taken out of search engines.  To the best of my knowledge, if we're simply talking about keywords typed by users, it will only give us surfing habits and behaviors of users.  What do they access, what time and day and nothing more. 

Secondly, having a list of most commonly keyword searched does not reveal anything for the U.S. government except that it is the most frequently searched.  What sites was displayed after the search will not even give them anything because search engines do not rank data.  Thirdly, for whatever reason, we as users don't actually get the exact information we need after a search, that is why we need to drill down to other pages of the search result until we arrived to what we are looking for.  And during this drilling down, we can encounter some sites that contains obscene materials.  If this is the case, am I now guilty of accessing lewd sites?

What the U.S. government should do is to try the service by themselves.  They should pretend that they are minors and try typing some keywords and check what sites are displayed during their search.  Here they can monitor how websites like Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN are implementing their intrusive measures if any.  You don't implement something that would make everyone guilty just to be able to capture the culprits. 

Why Google is refusing to provide the information is another puzzle.  If the keywords will not provide any good to the U.S. government cause, then why not just provide it to avoid any problems - anyway it's useless.  Google said that by providing those information, it will somehow reveal Google's trade secrets because the total number of queries receives in a day is a trade secret.  We can also say that it can also be a marketing ploy for Google, a subtle way of telling their users that their information is secure with Google.  Of course the discussion will go on and on.  One proving they're right and the other one proving that the other party is wrong and they are right.  But one can't stop but think - what information does Google has? 

In case you're wondering why we are even discussing this when this is a U.S. problem and not ours, it's very simple - because most of us are Internet users.  And even if we are not part of their area of jurisdiction, our information are stored somewhere among those servers.  Taking it to another level, all of us should also think about how the information that we have given to banks, mobile companies, membership clubs, schools, and others are being used, and are they secured or are they shared to others for business gains?

I just want to tell you that if you access the Internet in your office or Internet cafes, those information are stored in their servers.  Your bosses can actually monitor the sites you visited and the emails you sent.  In other words, most of your web activities are recorded.  A little short of technology-tapping if you asked me.  A lady employee sued her company for snooping through her emails.  She contended that it was private and the company she is working for has no right to record and read her emails.  Guess what, she lost.  The court contends that the company has all the right to monitor those information because they own the computer, infrastructure and anything that resides in their storage device are owned by the company.

The bottomline here my dear readers is privacy in the technology world is a rarity.  What information you have given, who has it is and how it's being used is something that will haunt us for the most part of our lives.  We just have to be vigilant and be careful everytime we reveal something personal about ourselves.  To parents, make Internet surfing a family activity and always keep an open communication with your kids.

And let me also remind you that these things don't only happen in the online world, it is also happening in the real world.  So the next time somebody calls you on the phone and is offering their services (insurance, club membership, banks etc), stop and think for awhile and ask yourself - How and where did they get my information?  Magic maybe?

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For your questions, comments, suggestions, press releases and stories, simply e-mail techtvhost@yahoo.com or visit www.infochat.com.ph for more articles.  God Bless us all!

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A Secret No More
Who is this I.T. executive (ITE) who is getting the ire of his lady friends?  During parties and press events, this ITE is a smooth operator.  He is not contented with the usual kiss on the cheek (beso-beso) type of greeting but he has to touch any girl (that he is attracted to of course) here and there, to the extent that the lady will feel being taken advantage of already.  I saw this ITE in action again just recently when he attempted to do his patented move to a lady guest until he found out that the guy friend of this lady was around.  He chickened out.  Let me remind this ITE that we are about to welcome the year of the dog, you might get bitten soon so you better stop your actions, you "Man...".  Your move was so abused that is why your secret is a secret no more.

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