Late update

Been almost a week since my last.... It is not that the world has been static in terms of offense-worthy items,... its just that I could not give a toss.

But the US Justice Department provokes me to spew forth some drivel: they want Google to fork over 1 weeks worth of searches (they orginally wanted a whole month) to their clutches for review. The ostensible reasons are to check out searches for child porn and other heinous concepts ... but who the fuck would believe the Justice Dept.?

No, this is far more serious: the integrity of the internet. If Uncle Sam is watching every search that you make, it is only a small step for every vicious politico getting info on everything that you do behind a closed door. Look, if you want to scope the people looking at kiddie porn, put tag on the site and trace the weirdos that spend time on them and then bust into their houses, search their computers and whack their pee-pees. Confiscate their houses, make creative use of electrodes and rheostats -- but leave me and my searches alone.

Of course, the other side of this is "who in hell gave you the reason to assume that your searches should be privileged?" And you know, if you really think that people don't look at where you have been, you know nothing about computers, cookies, spyware, malware and Sears-frikkin-hardware. Really. Haven't you even bothered to learn about proxy sites and servers? And scrubbing your dirty recycle tid-bits? This stuff exists for a reason: the free internet is not free. Someone pays for this stuff and, generally, it is business trying to figure out how to sell you something.

Reasonable expectations aside -- and there is no implied Google/client privilege to my knowledge -- you have look at this latest move as as something that is not in the right direction. First we have Boosh wiretapping you, now we have Gonzales looking into what porn you are groovin' on. Not good. If he wants to know, he should get a search warrant and then bug my computer. If I am minding my own business checking out Latvian dwarves in bondage, then a judge should be able to tell the thought police to look for their jollies somewhere else.

Anyway, can't the government just hack like everyone else? Sure, that might pose some 4th Amendment issues, but we could readily exlude whatever was sourced prior to a search warrant. But this Google search thing ... its more like having everyone at the I-95 stop in Jersey before you get to NYC submit to a strip search. Not cool. The wiretap stuff has some basis in national security ... but to dragnet Google, no, that's too far.

BTW, the Germans have told the Brits that they may have gone too far in proposing to restrict travel of certain Iranian abroad. Let's consider that for a second. Since they seem comfortable in courting the psychos in Tehran, let's back Tehran's concept of setting up a nice little Zion on German territory. After all, there's still a huge pay-back out there -- es war nur Befehl did not cut it then, now should it now. And let's think of where we might site such a homeland: Berlin sounds good. And we should make sure that the persons working in Israel should get full privileges too, that would mean some million or so Palestinians needed to keep Zion moving along.... Yes, that is an excellent idea.