Posted on 02/10/2006 12:50:45 AM PST by WaterDragon
Google Inc. is offering a new tool that will automatically transfer information from one personal computer to another.
Anyone wanting that convenience, however, must authorize the Internet search leader to store the material for up to 30 days. That compromise, sought as part of a free software upgrade released Thursday, might be more difficult to swallow now that the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush is demanding to know what kind of information people have been hunting through Google's search engine.
Google is fighting the Justice Department's subpoena in a federal court battle that's focusing more attention on the risks of personal information held by Internet companies being turned over to outside sources, including the government.
Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Time Warner Inc.'s America Online already have surrendered some of the information requested by the Bush administration.
All three companies have said their co-operation didn't violate users' privacy.
The ability to search a computer remotely is included in Google's latest upgrade to its software that scours hard drives for documents, e-mails, instant messages and an assortment of other information.
To enable the computer-to-computer search function, a user specifies what information should be indexed and then agrees to allow Google to transfer the material to its own storage system.
Google plans to encrypt all data transferred from users' hard drives and restrict access to just a handful of its employees.
The company says it won't peruse any of the transferred information.....[more]
Methods of searching our transferring data on other computers should be dependent on the nature of the data and how it’s stored, dispersed and used. Solutions vary from central repositories, private networks or virtual private networks and remote login tools like PC Anywhere, Carbon Copy and http://www.gotomypc.com. Each of those suffer from being either cumbersome to install, use or secure.
Google’s tool seems like a very good solution in limited circumstances, and AFAIK it’s not promoted for other circumstances that would make it a security threat. It might be useful to teams working on a school or research project or any other kind of file sharing where privacy from the government or an organization with much better things to do than watch you isn’t an issue. Like the existing Google Desktop search, I’m sure it allows you to specify what folders to share or not share.
If you’re politically active, working with financial or business data, you probably want to go with something more private.
bump
Let's see. . . Yahoo turned over its records to government scrutiny. Google is going to effectively do the same thing. What's left? Lycos? Alta Vista? Are there any "secure" search engines anymore?
Didn't show up in a search because that's a different headline for the article (if it's the same exact one) in a different publication.
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