<cite>Amerika</cite> Online

The New York Times today follows up on the AOL search logs debacle by identifying and interviewing a Georgia woman who was able to be found from her search terms -- which included multiple queries on health-related matters.

At first glance, it might appear that Ms. Arnold fears she is suffering from a wide range of ailments. Her search history includes "hand tremors," "nicotine effects on the body," "dry mouth" and "bipolar." But in an interview, Ms. Arnold said she routinely researched medical conditions for her friends to assuage their anxieties. Explaining her queries about nicotine, for example, she said: "I have a friend who needs to quit smoking and I want to help her do it."

Ms. Arnold says she loves online research, but the disclosure of her searches has left her disillusioned. In response, she plans to drop her AOL subscription. "We all have a right to privacy," she said. "Nobody should have found this all out."

The web is already chiming with the choruses of the faithful singing the old refrain, "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."

If you truly believe that, may I suggest removing the curtains from your house and depositing a house key and an affidavit to the local police certifying that you consent to a search of your house and papers at any time.

More to the current issue, search engine logs have always been a tempting target for law enforcement.

I would not be surprised if the FBI has or will drop self-issued subpoenas to the big search engines asking for all user logs that include a set of terms or clicked on websites that might indicate someone was interested in terrorism. Some possible terms might include 'anthrax,' 'shoe bomber,' 'jihad.' 'UBL,' 'bioterrorism.'

From there, they could then use those logs to request all the searches from people who look suspicious.

Given the FBI has also invigorated its crackdown on porn, I wouldn't be surprised if they dropped subpoenas for logs of searches for pornographic terms.

Still think you have nothing to fear?

Bureaucracies chew people and their reputations up. It's just what they do.

To wit: Wen Ho Lee. Richard Jewell. Ted Kennedy. The Center on Wrongful Convictions. The Thin Blue Line. Sister Glenn Anne Mcphee. Daniel Ellsberg. Khaled El-Masri. Maher Arar.

"Our authorities as far as I know, and I only know the lowest grades, don't go out looking for guilt among the public; it's the guilt that draws them out, like it says in the law, and they have to send us police officers out. That's the law. Where d'you think there'd be any mistake there?"

"I don't know this law," said K.

"So much the worse for you, then," said the policeman.

"It probably exists only in your heads," said K., he wanted, in some way, to insinuate his way into the thoughts of the policemen, to re-shape those thoughts to his benefit or to make himself at home there.

But the policeman just said dismissively, "You'll find out when it affects you."

Franz joined in, and said, "Look at this, Willem, he admits he doesn't know the law and at the same time insists he's innocent." "You're quite right, but we can't get him to understand a thing," said the other.

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