Now They Tell Us

Yesterday the Times had fun with a scary story about the DoJ attempt to subpoena search information from Google.  The lead:

After Subpoenas, Internet Searches Give Some Pause

By KATIE HAFNER

Kathryn Hanson, a former telecommunications engineer who lives in Oakland, Calif., was looking at BBC News online last week when she came across an item about a British politician who had resigned over a reported affair with a "rent boy."

It was the first time Ms. Hanson had seen the term, so, in search of a definition, she typed it into Google. As Ms. Hanson scrolled through the results, she saw that several of the sites were available only to people over 18. She suddenly had a frightening thought. Would Google have to inform the government that she was looking for a rent boy - a young male prostitute?

Ms. Hanson, 45, immediately told her boyfriend what she had done. "I told him I'd Googled 'rent boy,' just in case I got whisked off to some Navy prison in the dead of night," she said. 

We live in parlous times, all right - don't even think about Googling "miserable failure".

Well, fun's fun, but today Adam Liptak of the Times brings their readers back to Planet Earth:

In Case About Google's Secrets, Yours Are Safe

By ADAM LIPTAK

The Justice Department went to court last week to try to force  Google, by far the world's largest Internet search engine, to turn over an entire week's worth of searches. The move, which Google is fighting, has alarmed its users, enraged privacy advocates, changed some people's Internet search habits and set off a debate about how much privacy one can expect on the Web.

But the case itself, according to people involved in it and scholars who are following it, has almost nothing to do with privacy. It will turn, instead, on serious but relatively routine questions about trade secrets and civil procedure. 

Do tell!  And we are supposed to believe that none of the experts quoted in today's story were available yesterday?  And to compound the absurdity, the NY Times has a box of "Related Stories" on the page with the Liptak piece, but somehow, yesterday's story does not appear.  Here is what is listed intead:

Related Articles

• Version of Google in China Won't Offer E-Mail or Blogs (January 25, 2006)
• Google Video: Trash Mixed With Treasure (January 19, 2006)
• AOL Coaxes Google to Try Busier Ads (December 20, 2005)
• The Advertising Column; AOL Choice Of Google Leaves Gates The Outsider (December 19, 2005)

What a clown show.

Well, I can have my fun too - let's rewrite the scary article ever so slightly to promote the floundering TimesSelect:

The government and the cooperating companies say the search queries cannot be traced to their source, and therefore no personal information about users is being given up. But the government's move is one of several recent episodes that have caused some people to think twice about the information they type into [the NY Times] search engine, or the opinions they express in an [on line posting at a NY Times forum or] e-mail message.

I wonder if it dawned on the Times a mere day later that, as a company attempting to establish a major web presence, they were in the same boat with Google?  Or were the editors bothered by the notion that their first story looked like a scare-mongering attempt to sell newspapers, rather than a serious effort to inform the public?  Gee, why am I thinking about the NSA story yet again?

Comments

[kim]

The madness of the head is infecting the body. Where is the board?
======================================

[Attila (Pillage Idiot)]

The article merely reflects the fact that Times reporters find it easier to find members of the tin-foil brigade than to find experts.

[megapotamus]

"clown show" indeed. It is easy to find even hard-core reactionary Leftwingers who agree with that characterization, though for polar opposite reasons. Someday, and that day is near at hand, Tom spanking the NYT will be as unremarkable as the Mets trouncing the ace T-ball squad on Long Island.

[topsecretk9]

Yep, the coverage has been pretty deceptive on this story...It took quite a bit to lean that the gov't is just asking for a random sample of a say 10,000 anonymous users so they (gov't) can just look at the data and assess the problem.

Has nothing to do with indentifing people.

[topsecretk9]

Yep, the coverage has been pretty deceptive on this story...It took quite a bit to lean that the gov't is just asking for a random sample of a say 10,000 anonymous users so they (gov't) can just look at the data and assess the problem.

Has nothing to do with indentifing people.

[epphan]

I saw last night that Google's response was the "Government has no right to request that information." Really? Can't the government or anyone else for that matter "request" anything. Does it take a right to request.

How quickly "request" morphs into "demands" when the clowns at NYT get involved.

Have not followed too close, but couldn't the government "request" the specific statistics from Google they need? As opposed to the raw data itself....Not that I care, but...Oh, my God, there here and they taking me awa

[larwyn]

"I googled rent boy and the ?Navy??
is going to arrest me!"

Dr.Pat Santy (Dr.Sanity had this
post up yesterday - how prescient!

THE POLITICAL PARANOIA OF THE LEFT - PART I
(SNIP)
The hallmark of the paranoid individual and the paranoid style is constant anticipation or expectation of either attack or personal betrayal. Paranoia finds causal connections everywhere and in everything; for them, nothing is coincidental. They can develop complicated conspiracies about innocuous behaviors and seemingly irrelevant events. Their paranoia makes them constantly on guard, searching for hidden motives and meanings in everyone else's behavior. (Just go check out the Democratic Underground, where these fantasies on every action or inaction on the part of the Bush administration are immediately converted into conspiracies and plots). The tragic death of a reporter -- Bush et al had him killed because he knew too much. Osama's most recent tape -- a Rovian plot to show how frightened we should be. And so on.
(SNIP)
....... But the worse effect of this paranoid style is that it seriously impedes those who express it from being able to appropriately face and respond to reality.

Thus, those who adopt the paranoid style in their rhetoric and their behavior not only are unable to help the rest of us deal with the very real threats we face in the 21st century; they actively undermine our efforts and enable our enemies.

A SMALL EXCERPT FROM POST NAILS LEFT POLICIES:
As I have pointed out elsewhere, those whose identity is tied-up inextricably with being the champions the oppressed, must be sure to maintain an oppressed class--constantly seeking new victims to heroically stand for; otherwise what or who will they champion?

READ IT ALL AT:
http://drsanity.blogspot.com/

The NYT's buried the Google/China story on page 3 of the Business section.

Chinese Government is GOOD
US GOVERNMENT IS BAD

Dinocrat has great post using Googles own pledge to not be "evil"

And Roger L Simon thinks that Universities should divest themselves of Google stock.
FAT CHANCE! But great challenge.

[M. Simon]

It is the usual government two step. First they gather information. Then they pass laws. Then you are fucked.

But not to worry. They are only going after child molesters. You will be safe.

[clarice]

Have you ever spent much time with the NYT's Manhattan readers? They are paranoid and this story is just the sort of drivel that appeals to them.
OTOH as soon as it hit the net, it became an object of scorn. Hugh Hewitt called it the silliest story ever.
Surely, today's version must be a reflection that outside the cocoon, the paper had once again made itself an object of derision.

[TM]

I am sure you are right, and imagine Adam Liptak's annoyance that he got dragged from Alito coverage to clean this up.