I don't like the sound of this

By BJ

Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube, a US court has ruled.

As has been pointed out more than a few times, search engines like Google possess a virtual treasure trove of private data on the people who use their service, and this ruling may have just opened up the floodgates to corporate and government access.

Sometimes it almost seems as though privacy is becoming a thing of the past.

Comments

[Zifnab]

Yeah, seriously. Good luck with that.

I have no doubt that a committed party could take all the data Google regularly distributes and map some interesting trend lines or track a specific notorious individual. If, for instance, you knew the IP Address of a certain bathroom toe-tapping Senator, it might be interesting to see what series of YouTubes he frequents. But if the Senator takes his laptop home or visits a wireless hot spot in town or picks up wireless from across the street... he's vanished.

I think this is ultimately much ado about nothing. Anonymity, with the right aps and a little know-how, is easy. People have to be actively out to get you if you genuinely don't want to be found. Proxy servers, terminal servers, free wireless hot spots, networking tricks... they're wasting their time.

This sort of data mining is good for catching a few big fish - guys who regularly rip and upload pirated music and tv. And, frankly, I don't see why policers shouldn't be allowed access to this kind of data. But if you're afraid cops are going to come knocking on your door because you visited "Young Girl Suggestively Licking a Popsicle" back in 2005... I think you're worrying too much.

[BJ]

if you're afraid cops are going to come knocking on your door because you visited "Young Girl Suggestively Licking a Popsicle" back in 2005

Listen! It was an accident! My finger slipped! I didn't mean . . . Oh, never mind.

In seriousness, this is actually a bigger deal than you make out. The ruling gives Viacom not just the IP addresses, but the associated information in the logging database. Alone the IP address may not be enough to identify savvy web-users, (though just how many is that?), but the additional info would make it much easier. If you remember a while back people were able to identify users based solely on their search history. Given the database includes things like login IDs, this probably won't even be that hard.

Sure, maybe they won't do too much with it, but given the Movie and Recording industries lawsuits against folks who share, view or listen to copyrighted material, how long do you think before they start looking at that YouTube data in the same way?

[Georgette Orwell]

Please, zinfab, not the "If you aren't doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about" position. Yes, of course it's a logistic improbability that they'd use the data on just anyone, but I simply don't want them to have the data to begin with.