data retention
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Yahoo to retain search data for 18 months, says it's in your best interest
We've heard this one before: a seemingly well intentioned corporation makes promises to uphold user anonymity, but when market pressure proves too much to handle, it's left to weigh the benefits of privacy over profit. Well, it looks like Yahoo's not immune to such goings on, as it's just announced that it will renege on its previous data retention promises and hold on to raw search data for 18 months. That's a pretty significant change, as the previous policy boasted data retention limits of only 90 days. If you ask Yahoo, though, it's just good business. In a post to its policy blog, Anne Toth said "we will keep our log file data longer than we have been – offering consumers a more robust individualized experience – while we continue our innovation in the areas of transparency and choice to protect privacy." We suspect "more robust individualized experience" actually means more aggressive targeted ads, but we'll just have to wait and see. The new policy goes into effect this July.
EU Written Declaration 29 wants you to think of the children, hand over all your search results
Oh boy, the EU's back on the crusade path again. This time, the Brussels brain trust has decided it will end pedophilia, child pornography, and other miscreant activities by simply and easily recording everyone's search results. Because, as we all know, Google searches are the central cog by which the seedy underworld operates. Here's how Declaration 29 sees it: Asks the Council and the Commission to implement Directive 2006/24/EC and extend it to search engines in order to tackle online child pornography and sex offending rapidly and effectively. Directive 2006/24/EC is also known as the Data Retention Directive, and permits (nay, compels) states to keep track of all electronic communications, including phone calls, emails and browsing sessions. Describing the stupefying invasion of privacy that its expansion represents as an "early warning system," the European Parliament is currently collecting signatures from MEPs and is nearing the majority it requires to adopt the Declaration. Guess when Google does it, it's a horrible infraction of human rights, but when the EU does it, it's some noble life-saving endeavor. Unsurprisingly, not everyone is convinced that sifting through people's search results will produce concrete crime-reducing results, and Swedish Pirate Party MEP Christian Engstrom puts together a very good explanation of what Written Declaration 29 entails and why it's such a bad idea. Give it a read, won't ya?
