AOL is Watching You
By David White
Late last month, AOL released a list of more than 20 million search engine queries for 657,000 AOL users on a public Web site the company had created for the academic community. Although the information escaped notice for more than a week, technology blogs erupted once it was discovered.
AOL has since removed the records, but several copies remain online—including one that allows users to filter the results.
Buried in the search data was user No. 17556639. As for other AOL users who made the list, the company had compiled all search queries made by that user over a three-month period, along with whether or not he clicked on a result and where the result appeared on the search page.
User No. 17556639’s search history, however, was a bit more disturbing than most. On one particular day, the user spent much of his time learning “how to kill a wife” and looking for “pictures of dead people.” Interspersed through the day’s searches were queries for “poop” and “steak and cheese.” Perhaps he wanted to use the bathroom and enjoy a tasty meal before murdering his wife. Or perhaps user No. 17556639 is a mystery novelist. The problem with drawing any conclusion, of course, is that there’s no way to determine the user’s motives or intention.
Hundreds of AOL users searched for information on “committing suicide,” thousands used AOL’s search engine to find pornography, and dozens learned about “growing marijuana.” User No. 18037801 joined many users in searching for “cheap Viagra,” and user No. 15571535 spent weeks learning how to “purchase prescription drugs,” with a particular fondness for Vicodin. Other users sought to “buy cheap Ritalin,” purchase Percocet without a prescription, and find online pharmacies that could overnight Xanax. In late May, user No. 15571535 decided it was time to search for information on “prescription drug abuse.”
As one would expect, the searches were innocuous for the vast majority of users. One of these users, for example, was Thelma Arnold, a 62-year-old widow from Georgia whose identity was discovered by the New York Times. As the Times explained, “In the privacy of her four-bedroom home, Ms. Arnold searched for the answers to scores of life’s questions, big and small. How could she buy ‘school supplies for Iraq children’? What is the ‘safest place to live’? What is ‘the best season to visit Italy’?”
The Times was able determine Ms. Arnold’s identity because, as the reporters wrote, “search by search, click by click, the identity of AOL user No. 4417749 became easier to discern.” Like many Web surfers, she typed in the names of relatives, searched for businesses in her hometown, and even searched for “single men.”
As the popular blog TechCrunch explained on Sunday, “The most serious problem is the fact that many people often search on their own name, or those of their friends and family, to see what information is available about them on the net. Combine these ego searches with porn queries and you have a serious embarrassment. Combine them with ‘buy ecstasy’ and you have evidence of a crime. Combine it with an address, social security number, etc., and you have an identity theft waiting to happen. The possibilities are endless.”
Google recognized those possibilities earlier this year, when the U.S. Department of Justice demanded that they turn over two month’s worth of users’ search queries. Google challenged the subpoena, and a federal judge sided with the technology giant. Upon learning of the judge’s ruling, Google declared the win “a clear victory for our users and for our company.” But AOL and several other search companies complied. So if you use anything but Google—and are prone to ego searches, looking up directions, and finding restaurants near your home—there’s a good chance that the Justice Department knows exactly what you searched for in June and July of last year.
And even though the Justice Department requested the information to help it defend a challenge to the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, the potential ramifications are quite worrisome. What if a novelist were researching smallpox, anthrax, sarin gas, and New York City’s subway? What if that novelist were a Muslim engineering student? That may be illegal in Stephen Spielberg’s Minority Report or George Orwell’s 1984, but with the wounds of 9/11 still fresh, would it result in a federal investigation in today’s U.S.?
And if so, as the Irish Times asked this week, “How closely should a State monitor its citizens? Should it track every letter you send and receive? Should it fit you with a transmitter, broadcasting your location throughout the day? Should the library inform it of the books and magazines you read, and shops pass along details of items you browse and buy?”
In the opening pages of 1984, the novel’s protagonist, Winston Smith, returns home to his rundown apartment where he is forced to climb the steps because the elevator is always out of service. At each landing, Smith is greeted by a poster with an enormous face bearing the message “Big Brother is Watching You.” And as readers later learn, it is the Thought Police who monitor the thoughts of Oceania’s citizenry.
When news of AOL’s search-record release hit the Web, a company spokesman described it as a “screw up” and promised that the company was “angry and upset about it.” But when companies insist on holding onto their search records—and readily comply with federal subpoenas—Orwell’s dystopia is closer than even he ever imagined. So watch what you type.
David White, a former assistant editor of The American Enterprise, is a writer in Washington.
