Google Get Scarier: Reporting "Flu" Searrches to Gov

[angelatc]

http://www.drudgereport.com/flashgof.htm

SICK SURVEILLANCE: GOOGLE REPORTS FLU SEARCHES, LOCATIONS TO FEDS
Tue Nov 11 2008 15:34:50 ET

GOOGLE will launch a new tool that will help federal officials "track sickness".

"Flu Trends" uses search terms that people put into the web giant to figure out where influenza is heating up, and will notify the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in real time!

GOOGLE, continuing to work closely with government, claims it would keep individual user data confidential: "GOOGLE FLU TRENDS can never be used to identify individual users because we rely on anonymized, aggregated counts of how often certain search queries occur each week."

Engineers will capture keywords and phrases related to the flu, including thermometer, flu symptoms, muscle aches, chest congestion and others.

Dr. Lyn Finelli, chief of influenza surveillance at CDC: "One thing we found last year when we validated this model is it tended to predict surveillance data. The data are really, really timely. They were able to tell us on a day-to-day basis the relative direction of flu activity for a given area. They were about a week ahead of us. They could be used... as early warning signal for flu activity."

Eric Schmidt, GOOGLE's chief executive vows: "From a technological perspective, it is the beginning."

Thomas Malone, professor at M.I.T.: "I think we are just scratching the surface of what's possible with collective intelligence."

Developing...

 

[hillertexas]

what search engine is the best to use?

 

[torchbearer]

Great. I think We should all do a daily "flu" search on google just to make their data useless.

 

[BeFranklin]

Reported breakout of bailout fever in Washinton DC

 

[gls]

what search engine is the best to use?

I like to use http://www.goodsearch.com/ because it's an easy way to contribute to The Free State Project.

 

[Xenophage]

I don't understand the negative reaction to this. It seems entirely appropriate. Its Google's right to share usage information with whomever they want, and this seems pretty innocuous. If you don't like em, use someone else.

Obviously if Google were sharing information with the government with the purpose of tracking dissident citizens, I'd be in jail by now. In fact, I'd be in jail times ten. I Google "George Bush Sodomized by a Donkey" twice a day and "How to Decapitate Government Bureaucrats" at least once a week.

Now... I'm not saying that won't happen in the future, but at least I don't think its happening at the moment... and I know there are LOT of libertarians that work for Google who would likely quit their jobs if they knew about anything remotely like that.

 

[ShowMeLiberty]

what search engine is the best to use?

www.dogpile.com

or

http://www.scroogle.org/

 

[brandon]

I don't understand the negative reaction to this. It seems entirely appropriate. Its Google's right to share usage information with whomever they want, and this seems pretty innocuous. If you don't like em, use someone else.

Obviously if Google were sharing information with the government with the purpose of tracking dissident citizens, I'd be in jail by now. In fact, I'd be in jail times ten. I Google "George Bush Sodomized by a Donkey" twice a day and "How to Decapitate Government Bureaucrats" at least once a week.

Now... I'm not saying that won't happen in the future, but at least I don't think its happening at the moment... and I know there are LOT of libertarians that work for Google who would likely quit their jobs if they knew about anything remotely like that.

I agree.

If google is actually able to get useful data from this, I think it is actually kind of cool. Now of course it's a huge shame google is giving the data to the government. They should just make it publicly available to everyone.

 

[Chibioz]

I've been looking for something along the lines of Scroogle. Nice.

 

[Monolithic]

it's the flu, christ, who cares

kinda neat actually

 

[Cowlesy]

I don't understand the negative reaction to this. It seems entirely appropriate. Its Google's right to share usage information with whomever they want, and this seems pretty innocuous. If you don't like em, use someone else.

Obviously if Google were sharing information with the government with the purpose of tracking dissident citizens, I'd be in jail by now. In fact, I'd be in jail times ten. I Google "George Bush Sodomized by a Donkey" twice a day and "How to Decapitate Government Bureaucrats" at least once a week.

Now... I'm not saying that won't happen in the future, but at least I don't think its happening at the moment... and I know there are LOT of libertarians that work for Google who would likely quit their jobs if they knew about anything remotely like that.

Well if they're doing this, I think you can bet your last FRN that all the other things you search that you think are "sketchy" have already been quietly fwd'd on, and you are most certainly on the list with the rest of us

 

[bjb2412]

I wonder

if my recent searching of symptoms for canine kennel cough produced spikes in their numbers since I was searching for symptoms like cough, mucus, etc. he-he

 

[SimpleName]

Really...REALLY stupid. I'm definitely going to mess with it as much as I can. if everyone else on here joins in, could cause some problems. I'm sure others are trying to mess the thing up as well. FUN!

 

[decatren]

just use yahoo or another search engine. why everyone stuck on google?

 

[Josh_LA]

me is Josh's complete lack of surprise.

spying sold as convenience.

always remember that safety and freedom are conflicting purposes, so you can't have both.

pretty soon car theft will rise (or be media hyped to be), that people will willingly put GPS trackers on their cars.

 

[hypnagogue]

This is absurd. Would any of you bemoan health clinics reporting how many calls they receive about the flu, or even more basically, how many flu diagnoses they've made? If anything this a great use of information - anonymous and useful. I call technophobia on this thread.

 

[Libertarian Ideals]

I have been using ixquick.com and it works great for my search engine needs. I also use Cuil.com when I can, but it doesn't have the best of results as it is new. It has become better recently, though.

*See Ixquick recommendation (http://www.ohmproject.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=35&Itemid=28)

Excerpt:
Privacy International provided privacy rankings for major search engines and other widely used sites like MySpace and YouTube. At the bottom was Google that PI ranked as absolutely hostile toward its customers' privacy.

Ixquick is different. The core of their privacy policy is a commitment to delete information about your searches within 48 hours.

...

I've been using ixquick.com and found that not only does it have a better privacy policy, but its power search options and interface are more advanced and user friendly than Google. We recommend that you give it a try.