sEaRch

It is interesting how the activity of search engines that are built into other applications seem to be more than simply intrusive. Facebook “suggests” friends, and matches ads to my profile content and to my friends’ content and to my friends’ friends content and to my searches within the entire Facebook platform. You actually have to “opt out” to stop that cookie from connecting. LinkIn matches members to me, suggesting, suggesting. Classmates continually asks their users to view who “signed” their guestbook, using “signed” to signify a mere “visit” to their profile (unless opted-out), sending emailed reminders of search results, the reminders progressing  exponentially month by month to non-premium-services’ subscribers. Any user can be a member but must upgrade to “see” who “viewed” their profile listing as reported by their search. AOL’s search engine saves and shares their users' searches (for cash money). And then there’s Google leading the way with all these intrusive techniques. Would you be surprised to discover that a special “clean” building was built in San Diego to house the servers and computers that Homeland Security uses to track ALL cell phone calls and ALL emails sent from and received in the USA? It is rumored that the Google algorithm was adapted to track certain combinations of keywords within each email and cell phone call in order to identify whomever they wanted to identify. This week’s key words are Charlie Sheen and Winning, last week’s were White+House, and bomb. I have no verification of this urban myth (other than to reference the Executive Order that Bush signed authorizing a type of this surveillance designed to ferret out terrorists –see text, below). It would require just such a search engine to search a database such as would be produced from this type of massive surveillance- and admit it- you can believe it is possible just from the knowledge gained from merely reading Halavais’ book.

President Bush issued an Executive Order shortly

after the terrorist attacks of September

11, 2001, authorizing Keith Alexander,

head of the NSA to engage in the

warrantless wiretapping of international

telephone, cell phone, email, and

internet based conversations with at

least one of the participant’s side of

the conversation originating outside of

the USA. But, whoops! a glitch caused

the system to record an undisclosed

number (shhh it’s classified!) of such

conversations of United States citizens,

in which all participants’ participation

originated on US soil. We have the 
requisite tools, why not just listen in?