AOL Search Logs As Window Into The Soul Of Man
Removed pending review and input from readers.
posted by Slag at 9:53 PM
Monday, August 28, 2006
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4 Comments:
that is truly scary, not that aol did that but what the fu#@ people are thinking. Anthony Perkins was a boyscout in Psycho compared to some of the searches
1) That is truly scary, not what people are typing or any speculation as to what they may or may not be thinking, but that aol illegally and immorally posted the searches. Even worse that they posted them linked to id #s.
2) The particular log shown in the post is no more a window into the soul of man than the average episode of any Jerry Springer type show. And at least those people willingly "bare their souls".
3) If someone types "how to obtain materials to build a nuclear bomb" and "radical muslim groups by area" on slag's computer does that make him the next Osama Bin Perkins?
4) Posting these logs is equivalent to showing videos of someone having sex who didn't know it was being taped and would not want it shown. 10,000 wrongs don't make a right. If your daughter's diary or other family member's private writings were in this database would you want someone posting it or posting a link to it? If this post (and link to the search phrases) isn't stricken from the Hubbub (including xxx Bub) then we are part of the problem.
5) My logic is impeccable, I mean Ray Charles is God, right?
Oh crap here we go again (this censorship stuff is a slippery slope).
I think Stalwart makes some good points, but these search queries being anonymous, as they are, I think makes the issue not so cut and dry. Being anonymous, I think, takes this out of the realm of privacy, thus subject to rules commonly applied to issues of privacy, and makes it raw, anonymous data.
If I publish the names and ages and incomes of all people in a specific area, that is violation of privacy. But if I publish the ages and incomes of those same people without their names that is called a census report.
But I will leave it to the good readers of The Hubbub. What say ye, is this post a violaion of privacy? To paraphrase The Clash, should it stay or should it go?
30.8.06
Anonymous means someone willingly shows something he has written but chooses not to put his name on it.
This is something meant to be private. I'm sure many people's logs are being linked back to them specifically. To say that this is not in the realm of privacy because the id #s themselves give no indication of the person's identity is not in the spirit of the principle of privacy.
In some cases this will actually go beyond thought policing; people will be judged for things they did not even think.
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