The European Parliament has asked the European Commission to include search engines in the Data Retention Directive
http://www.pandia.com/sew/3001-on-the-european-union-search-engine-schizophrenia.html
The European Parliament has asked the European Commission to include search engines in the Data Retention Directive. This will force the search engines to store your searches and IP addresses, undermining the Commission’s attempts at protecting the privacy of European citizens.
Privacy and search engine data storage
It is not easy being a search engine.
Giants like Google and Bing would really like to store your searches and link them to your IP address, cookie or logon information, as this coupling gives them data they can use to improve their search engine algorithms and tailor search results to your personal taste.
On the other hand people like you and me feel uneasy about this invasion of privacy and would prefer Google and Bing to know as little as possible about our search habits.
It is not easy being the European Union, either.
The European Commission and its Article 29 Working Party (not to be confused with Written Declaration 29 — see below) considers itself a champion of the little people — that is people like you and me — and has therefore put a lot of pressure on Google and its siblings in an attempt to reduce the amount of personal data stored by search engines.
The search engines have at least partly complied, by deleting IP adresses (the id number your computer or your ISP gives the search engine when you do a search) earlier than before. Bing is to cut the amount of time it stores the IP addresses associated with search queries from 18 months to six months.
One of our favorite search engines, Duck Duck Go, does not store collect any information about its users. Some meta search engines too, like Ixquick and Yauba have made privacy part of their business model, promising not to store any personal information.
Data Retention Directive
Unfortunately, another part of the European Union wants desperately to use all this data for police work and surveillance. There has been an intense discussion in many European countries regarding the ratification of the so-called Data Retention Directive.
The very controversial directive requires the member countries to store traffic and localisation data on people’s use of phones, mobile phones, email, Internet usages and so on. This is information on who’s communicating with who, when, how and where from. The police wants this data to crack down on crime, but it can, of course, also be used for Intelligence work and surveillance.
Hence, at the same time as the Commission is trying to protect you from Google’s surveillance it is actively working for increasing the amount of public surveillance.
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“Giants like Google and Bing would really like to store your searches and link them to your IP address, cookie or logon information,”
i bet they do..no surprise the EU is playing the information game now..this started with the blackberry bans but its growing..
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