Prof Urges Internet Search Purges

Big Brother could be watching you online.

That’s what one Kennedy School associate faculty member cautioned yesterday, calling for a change in the way that internet activities are monitored and recorded.

In “Useful Void: The Art of Forgetting in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing,” Associate Professor of Public Policy Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger argued for computer systems to regularly delete information, a practice he calls “data ecology.”

Mayer-Schoenberger—no stranger to technology, having founded a data security company called Ikarus Software in 1986—focused on Google.

Google keeps records of every search inquiry made using its search engine with a Google account, including the IP address, according to its Web site.

“The problem, as is usual for anyone who has read Orwell’s ‘1984,’” Mayer-Schoenberger said, “is that once anyone has installed a surveillance, someone is always wanting to use it.”

In this case, the one who wants to use it is the U.S. government. Mayer-Schoenberger said the U.S has subpoenaed Google and a number of other popular search engines for use of their personally identifiable search inquiry records as a counter-terrorism measure.

“Google is committed to protecting user privacy while abiding by the law,” said Victoria Grand, a Google spokeswoman. “Last year, we went to court to resist a [Department of Justice] subpoena for millions of search queries on the grounds that it was excessive and invaded our users’ privacy.”

“The judge ultimately ruled in Google’s favor, establishing an important legal precedent for protecting user privacy,” she said.

But Mayer-Schoenberger said that search engines could sell personally identifiable information to outside organizations, such as the government, businesses, or even health insurance providers. He proposed a hypothetical case where a health insurance company might raise a premium for a client who searched online for “cancer.”

In the paper, Mayer-Schoenberger writes that a limit should be set on how long information remains personally identifiable. While Google announced in March that it would make server logs anonymous after 18 to 24 months, the rest of the internet has not taken such steps toward protecting a user’s privacy. The purpose of Mayer-Schoenberger’s paper is to begin to create a discussion on the topic and, he hopes, lead to a new law allowing people to choose just what information about them remains forever recorded on the internet.

“Is this government going to be looking at this favorably?” Mayer-Schoenberger asked. “No. But there are elections in two years. The beauty of the American republic is that its citizens viscerally understand when it is time to emphasize openness of government as well as limits of government.”

Professor John G. Palfrey VII ’94, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, believes that this is an important issue.

“There is very long term problem about the information that is being recorded about us by internet companies,” Palfrey said.

“The notion of limiting the time that [personally identifyable information] is collected and maintained about individuals should be the subject of government consideration.”