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July 23, 2007
Shorter Microsoft: Our Search Privacy Policy is Still Cop-Friendly
Last week I was puzzled about Google's new cookie expiration policy because I didn't see the value. The more I read about it, the more I realized a lot of people were either puzzled or simply dismissive.
One could, however, get the sense that Google has earned a lot of respect for publicly addressing privacy issues. I linked to Jim Harper who argued "As important as the substance of the new cookie policy, Google is talking about their information practices and the effects their practices have on privacy. What other company does even that?"
Well, since last week it turns out that there are a few others:
The NYTimes tech BITS blog has an entry up this morning that summarizes a few new announcements on the search privacy front.
The nut of the post is that Microsoft and Yahoo have both announced log anonymization policies (Microsoft anonymizes at 18 months, Yahoo at 13), Ask.com has announced the eventual release of a search anonymizing feature it calls AskEraser, and both Microsoft and Ask are calling for industry-wide privacy standards.
The NYTimes entry is fairly cursory. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has better coverage of Ask's news. The Seattle Times goes into more detail on Microsoft's new privacy measures, which involve more than cookie expiration dates and log anonymizing.
So the search engines are all awesome now and it's a wonderful new Golden Age of Privacy! Right?
Well ...
"Asked whether Microsoft was considering something similar to Ask Eraser, Peter Cullen not only said no, but argued that too much privacy was actually dangerous. Anonymized search, he said, 'can become a haven for child predators. We want to make sure users have control and choices, but at the same time, we want to provide a security balance.'"
(I think "child predators" means "people who prey on children," not "children who prey.")
In other words, you should read Microsoft's privacy policies as being in line with the consumer wing of privacy activism: a concern that massive collections of aggregated customer data are bad because they represent a risk of identity theft or other consumer-targeted criminal behavior if they're compromised.
But when Microsoft throws out "child predators" in defense of whatever remaining anti-privacy policies it maintains, we should read that not to mean "Microsoft is drawing the line in defense of the children," but "Microsoft is drawing the line where a privacy policy might bring the company into conflict with law enforcement."
If you were bothered by search engine privacy policies (or their lack) before this week, and if those objections came less from worrying about your credit rating and more from worrying about ever-increasing government surveillance powers, the past week's news may not seem like such a great leap forward after all.
Posted by mhall at 3:00 PM | Add Comment
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