Red coupe wrote:Can anyone one explain to me what happens after google knows what I just searched for?
As far as I know,
almost 100% of the time nothing happens. But most search engines do keep fairly detailed information and track searches based on IP and potentially even down to the computer or user level using cookies.The threat is that the court will allow a subpoena of these records to show search history and online habits for various reasons (which are almost never going act in your favor in any way). Ex: if you are accused of terroristic threatening they might go look and see that you searched "buy firework chemicals" or liked to watch videos of things blowing up and use this against you as circumstantial evidence or against your character/state of mind. Now, they are supposedly not planning to use the data in a "big brother" way where they would query the records for people who, say, previously searched for info about a murder victim and do further investigation on those people or something like that. But rather they might use the records to look for anything that could corroborate their suspicions when someone is suspected of a crime (even if what they find is being taken vastly out of context.) This could eventually percolate down to more trivial things like copyright disputes of people who searched for info about downloading music or something.
A lot of it boils down to a fundamental privacy debate that is largely in principle. I.e. just because the search engines CAN keep records, should they be required to and what details will be accessible and to whom. The supporters frequently respond with the fallacious argument, "if you have nothing to hide then it shouldn't bother you." Which falsely assumes that privacy is only about hiding criminal activity.
