The price of convenience: Your privacy

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I'm going out on a limb and suggesting a majority of my faithful blog readers aren't daily viewers of PBS's News Hour and missed a recent segment with two former journalists who've written books on Google. So, in the spirit of promoting widespread paranoia, I direct you to the transcript of an interview with David Vise and John Battelle. And for the time-pressed and ADD sufferers, here's something to send a chill down your spine:

DAVID VISE: I think one of the most important things for all of your viewers to be aware of is that every time they do an Internet search on Google, Google saves it on its computers. Every time, if they happen to use e-mail on Google through what's called G-mail or Google mail, all of those get saved indefinitely as well.

Think about for a moment billions and billions of searches being saved and being matched to your Internet address. Federal government investigators operating under the Patriot Act could get access to that kind of information all in one database about people. And it's a scary prospect to a lot of privacy advocates.

And what they advise is that people who -- I mean most people are not going to stop using Google because of a fear of privacy because it gives them free information fast. And it gives them relevant information fast. Most of the privacy advocates say that if you're going to continue to use Google actively as a search engine, you might be well advised to put your e-mail account someplace else because it won't be long before a divorce lawyer or someone else comes along and tries to subpoena the information that's in Google's database to try to prove that spouse who's been betrayed has actually got an Internet trail behind them of G-mails and searches that shows just how shadowy they were.

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