My post the other day, 'Things Google Knows About You', picked up quite a few misinformed comments but also a few excellent additions.
On the good side, George Hotelling wrote "I guess the question about trusting Google comes down to this: do you trust this information to be available to anyone who gets a court order for it?"
It's the same problem that was discussed for data retention by ISPs, in the US and the EU, where a number of authorities could request details of your internet traffic. Many people say they have nothing to hide, but that's irrelevant when someone else has the power to decide what it is that you should have to hide.
An illustration of the data gathering that *anyone* can do with Google's database of web content can be found on Trevor Smith's weblog, where he gathered data to find out more about (and perhaps to intimidate) a possibly suspect business operator. It's not hard to imagine that if Trevor had connections to a government authority he could request data from an ISP, and if he had a reasonable suggestion that there was fraud involved then the authorities could request Google to provide, for example, all of the searches that this person had run and all the rest of the linked data. If the checks on the authenticity of and evidence for those claims aren't rigorous, as they didn't seem to be for requests for personal information from ISPs for file sharing under the DMCA, there are many opportunities for blackmail and persecution which would be quite easily avoided by simply not storing the data in the first place.
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I am in no way trying to intimidate Shahriar Chowdhury, as that tactic rarely works in any positive manner.
As I was putting together the post it became obvious that Shahriar had a strangely large number of domains and addresses under which he was doing business, so I thought I'd just put them all on one page for easy googling.
I really don't know whether he's inept, a fraud, or something else entirely, but it seemed like a good idea to put together an informative page about him for others to find.
How is someone's information being available on the web related to persecution for something they never did? ANY business lists their contact info on their website (or you can request from them by sending an email or calling up). That does not mean anyone can think up something and going against them? TigerDirect and lot of bad reseller at www.resellerratings.com have known history of cheating people off thousands of dollars. I have maintained a successful, almost no profit after the expenses, open-source oriented business that makes switching to linux less troublesome for under $5. Lindows and others are doing the same (may be by modifying the sources here and there) and selling for a bigger price tag and almost no customer service. Any emails to these big companies take forever to be replied, whereas Trevor got most his email replied within a few hours, and his order reshipped immediately. It's a fact that most Linux related companies suffer huge losses in the initial year (lindows inc bleeds a few million dollars every year, despite the hypes), but that doesn't equal to a business turning fraudulent.
You've heard stories about people setting up websites to collect data like your address, phone # and other things, by promising free money, gifts etc. But unless these address-submitters are really doing something wrong, and you're really watching them and they caused you strong enough harms to be a lawsuit, what will you do with the information? You reveal a LOT more information on your blogs (what you do and think every day). That doesn't mean authorities will ask google to provide all the searches you did if I go and tell them that you defrauded me of $5.95! This thing has gone far beyond it should've and I gave proof of payment to USPS to Trevor. He has politely asked me not to send a replacement any more after all the problems he faced receiving a package. I have not received any of his packages back, so I don't even know what the problem could be.
As for the domain names, owning domains is not a crime, when they start at $4.95 or so. Even Trevor's signature lists 2 domains
http://trevor.smith.name/
http://transmutable.com/
For different programming and business projects I did in school, it was easier and more professional to get a related domain name than giving them someuniv.edu/~somename01/someproject/index.html
I own this domain LinuxGiveAway.com - which really gave away few hundred linux CDs, causing me enough personal financial problems for me that I had to stay out of school for a semester, since I maxed out my cards buying those CDs and stamps. Is this some information I shouldn't post over the web? Well, then none of the Blogs should ever exist! :)
I think Alf's point was not that Shahriar did anything wrong, but that it is startling how much information can be found out about many of us on Google with just a little work. Google, usenet, and the wayback machine know so much about us it's not even funny.
Alf seems to believe that privacy isn't dying, and that data can be made to reliably disappear. I've seen the inside of enough IT departments and the Internet archives to know that isn't true.
Bandwidth and disks for crawlers get cheaper every day, but security gets harder.
After all these fights, USPS did indeed deliver to Trevor, which he never admitted.
Trackable at www.usps.com
You entered 0101 0521 2978 4186 1655
Your item was delivered in BERKELEY, CA 94705. Additional information for this item is stored in files offline.
I'm not sure what package that tracking number is for, but I haven't received the CDs.