Social Media

Could Your Google Search Indict You?


"Knock, knock."
"Secret Service - open the door please."
Opening the door, you ask - "Yes?"
"Are you Mr. Smythe who writes for Extrmeme Politics?"
"We'd like to talk to you about some of your Web activity regarding assassination and our President."

A little far fetched? Maybe, but we could also have this scenario....

You watch as your door comes crashing in from the police battering ram and suddenly find your home swarming with police
Mr. Smythe this is a search warrant for your home and computer equipment
What did I do?
We have information that you have been searching for child porn and related information.

Again a little far fetched?

Maybe so, but in this day and age when you have national security agencies working with telecoms like AT&T to monitor all Internet traffic, just how far off is either scenario? In a society where even the most innocent thing we do can be misconstrued in any fashion to satisfy the people looking through the information, as bloggers we have to wonder whether some of the things we search for while writing our posts could be used against us.

How many bloggers in the political realm have conducted searches with search strings that could be looked upon as being questionable? Or how about community activist bloggers who search about gangs or drugs or pedophiles? Could their search strings be misconstrued?

As it is, Google searches have become evidence in murder trials in the United States and now appear to be considered by courts and juries as valid evidence of guilt. So really how far of a stretch is it that search strings become the warning flags that are flipped to let authorities know that someone is looking for information on a red flag subject?

We live in a society now where just about everything is suspect and there is a willingness on the part of both government agencies and broadband providers to work together to monitor all the traffic being carried through the pipes. This is a society where we also find ourselves even wondering about who we are making friends with on these social media sites and whether people will misconstrue those friendships. As Louis Gray said in a post today:

On top of the occasional annoyance that youth anywhere from 10 to 15 years younger than me are engaging in the same networks I am, there's just something that has me hesitating every time I get an invitation from a 14 year old or a 20 year old who wants to follow my updates or be connected.

At my old age of 31, were I to be a "real world" friend of any 20 year old girl, people should be asking questions. If I were palling around with some 14 year-old boy geek, they would be asking other questions. Yet, the occasional eyebrow-raising invite hits my e-mail box, and makes me wonder if somebody just might get the wrong idea.

What if I were to take the next step and move beyond a simple friend acceptance on Facebook or Twitter and try to find out more about this person?

If the point has arrived where we seriously have to begin questioning who we are making friends with online, how far off is the idea of questioning our search strings and what it could be saying about us if someone was looking over our shoulder; and are you sure someone isn't?

Load Comments

The New Stuff

The Next Big Thing

What's Hot