It's Late, You're Alone at the Computer ... and Google Is Watching

Google, the federal government, and invasion of privacy were the topics of today's media note. We listened to a recent NPR report entitled "Google Has Mixed Motives in Fighting Data Request" and then threw the discussion open to the class. The Justice Department, as part of its war against child pornography, has subpoenaed the records of terms that people have been putting into search engines. MSN, Yahoo! and AOL all complied. Google refused. So is Google doing the right thing? Does it creep us out that the feds want to know what we're googling? Does it creep us out that Google has records of this stuff? And are we creeped out enough that there should be a law against this sort of thing? The NPR story can be heard by following this link.