Google fielding more legal demands for user data
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Google says it is fielding more legal demands from governments around the world seeking to learn more about the people using its Internet search engine, email and other services.
The latest snapshot of law enforcement agencies' efforts to extract personal information from Google emerged in a Wednesday report from the company.
Governments presented Google with 21,389 requests for information on 33,634 of its users during the last six months of 2012. The number of requests was up 17 percent from a year earlier.
More than 8,400 of the requests came from the U.S. government, more than anywhere else. Subpoenas accounted for 68 percent of the U.S. requests.
Google Inc. has been disclosing the total number of subpoenas, search warrants and other legal requests that it receives since 2010.
The latest snapshot of law enforcement agencies' efforts to extract personal information from Google emerged in a Wednesday report from the company.
Governments presented Google with 21,389 requests for information on 33,634 of its users during the last six months of 2012. The number of requests was up 17 percent from a year earlier.
More than 8,400 of the requests came from the U.S. government, more than anywhere else. Subpoenas accounted for 68 percent of the U.S. requests.
Google Inc. has been disclosing the total number of subpoenas, search warrants and other legal requests that it receives since 2010.
Google is nothing compared to the *SA data gathering center in *tah. They will not need Google for anything shortly. The *tah center will gather pretty much every bit of traffic going across the web. The place is the size of a small city. Emails, search queries, chatrooms, online auctions and everything else will be stored. Should "they" ever have a need in the future to prove anything against you, they will be able to pull up everything you ever did online and use it to build a profile or case about you. No joke, Google it.
 @Mr. Carbon FootprintÂ
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As a person who only has to sift through a few gigs of data a day, and who assisted hundreds of people to analyze that data, I can say more is not better and will not mean anything unless it can be scrutinized.
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That takes more power than storage.
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I don't worry about this short term as it will take too much time and resources to implement any methodology to getting real actionable information on any random person. Within that timeframe the only way the data is useful is to gather all the data available from a single set of pre-screened sources for a already determined purpose.
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Otherwise you have a few yottabytes of unusable noise.
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Long term it will prove to be the First Amendment undoing. Such a system would need to be sundowned.
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But putting asterisks in place of other characters won't hide you from them if they are looking for you. I hope you know that.
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:)
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This is more of a function of Google now doing EVERTHING than governments getting more information.
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Back when Google was just a search engine that's what governments would ask for information for. Then they added G-Mail, so when investigating people governments might ask about that AND searches people did. Then there is YouTube. So government agencies might ask about, AND G Mail, AND searches. Then Google added Googledocs. So governments could ask about that AND about mail AND...
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So it's more a product of Googleâs diversification than governments getting more intrusive.
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If you want a comparison, what information has AOL given out? I bet it's shrinking. Just like their client lists.
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