Insider Blogging looks at the blogs about our favorite companies, exposing the last legal way to get "inside information."

I'm what you might call a First Amendment scholar, having taken law-school-level courses on the subject and researched a number of such cases for my various, data-rich employers. And even though I'm a political liberal, I have a bias against extending "privacy" laws to online behavior, especially when said online behavior is conducted on very public services. I just don't agree that there is a "compelling interest" in protecting one's search behavior, especially if it can't be definitively traced back to the individual. In a free society, private enterprises should be able to do whatever they wish with the information you type into their tools; unless they've told you otherwise. In my opinion? Your behavior on a search engine is just as protectable as anything else you do in the public realm; what groceries you purchase, for instance, or what car you drive.

So I'm entirely not shocked that AOL put a bunch of customer search data (without, it must be noted, any identifying information about who did the searching) online 10 days ago. Now, apologies have been issued ("This was a screw-up, and we're angry and upset," says a spokesperson). I seem to be in the minority, however; the internet, it is horrified.

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch seems to be most shocked, saying that "The utter stupidity of this is staggering ," [emphasis his] and he claims that "the abilitiy to analyze all searches by a single user will often lead people to easily determine who the user is, and what they are up to ... 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."

Wow. That's a bit inflammatory, Michael, don't you think?

Continue reading Insider blogging: the great AOL search caper

Insider blogging: the great AOL search caper originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 07 Aug 2006 20:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Insider Blogging looks at the employees blogs of our favorite companies, exposing the last legal way to get "inside information." And Jason Calacanis, my boss and one of the subjects of today's look inside, loves this feature!

We've quoted Mini-Microsoft, famous for his anonymous look behind the silicon curtain, but it seems that this time will be one of our last (until, Robert Scoble-like, he rises from anonymity and keeps his criticisms to the immaterial). He didn't say we were the reason he stopped blogging -- actually, it's his wife, who he never told about the secretive blog (so she would avoid the stress), or maybe his too-honest talk with Seattle Times reporter Danny Westneat (Mini was "weary," said Danny, and Mini realized: it's true!).

But wait! He's not totally stopped blogging. We're just going to see a mini-Mini-Microsoft from now on. I truly have no idea what that means.

Maybe it was encouragement from Jason Calacanis, the insider blogger who dares to (a) speak his name and (b) criticize his own company. Earlier this week he took AOL Search to task, offering some criticism for "too many ads and too much collateral" that fills the screen. AOL should love its users more than Google, Yahoo! and MSN, he says, but only including one ad before the search results. Jim Kukral gives him some "credit" for his analysis and finally tells him: "good advice."

So which is more valuable: employees who are too stressed to blog critically in secret, or those who boldly take their brethren to task in a web site that bears their own last name? I won't opine, but I will point out that Microsoft was down 50 cents today, to $22.65 (flirting again with a several-year low), whereas Time Warner was down just a penny to $17.21 (comfortably in the middle of its 52-week range).

Insider blogging: Microsoft blogger won't, but AOL blogger will originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 31 May 2006 20:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Insider Blogging looks at the employees blogs of our favorite companies, exposing the last legal way to get "inside information."

Insider Blogging: Google and webmasters, Eye-Fi for Xbox originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 27 Apr 2006 07:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.