Not only is the National Security Agency (NSA) watching your email and computer traffic with Carnivore, and Altivore and your phones and computers with Echelon, but they also are monitoring you with a new trick. They now track you and watch what you type in search engines. Be careful what you type. Big Brother is watching you.

Yahoo admits it let White House access its databases

By Jenny Booth and agencies for The Times Online

Yahoo has admitted that it granted the US Government access to its search engine’s databases this summer, as a battle develops over the right to privacy in cyberspace.



Google, by contrast, promised last night to fight vigorously the Bush Administration’s demand to know what millions of people have been looking up on the internet.

It emerged this week that the White House issued subpoenas to a number of US-based search engines this summer, asking to see what information the public had accessed in a two-month period. It said that it needed the information in order to help create online child protection laws.

But Google refused to comply with its subpoena - prompting the US Attorney General this week to ask a federal judge in San Jose for an order to hand over the requested records. Details of the confrontation emerged after the San Jose Mercury News reported seeing the court papers on Wednesday.

At the heart of the battle is the potential for online databases to become tools for government surveillance.

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The government asked google to do the same thing but google is fighting the federal government tooth and nail.

Thomas Burke, a San Francisco lawyer who has handled several prominent privacy cases, said that many people contacted Google more often than they spoke to their mother. “Just as most people would be upset if the government wanted to know how much you called your mother and what you talked about, they should be upset about this, too,” he said. Pam Dixon, executive director for the World Privacy Forum, warned that the content of search requests sometimes contain information about the person making the query, such as names, medical profiles or Social Security information.

“This is exactly the kind of thing we have been worrying about with search engines for some time,” Dixon said. “Google should be commended for fighting this.” She warned people to be careful what personal information they entered into search engines.