My _Guardian_ column on Google Flu Trends
Why you should be concerned about Google Flu Trends
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/nov/27/privacy-searchengines
The search engine has unwittingly hung a big sign on itself advertising services for government surveillance
The title's fine, though when I submitted it I proposed "Google Flu And Monitoring Health". I was aiming for a deliberate ambiguity in the phrase "monitoring health" between the literal sense of seeing where is sickness and more metaphorical sense of good safeguards against misuse of private data. Maybe I was being too clever.
I know many people have written on this topic, but I really tried to capture the double-edged nature here. That is, the conflict between "That's so cool" for technical achievement, and "That's so scary" in terms of potential for abuse. As I think of it: Technology-positive social criticism.
I'm hoping to popularize a phrase I've used here: "surveillance engines"
[For all columns, see the page Seth Finkelstein | guardian.co.uk.]
By Seth Finkelstein | posted in google , press | on November 26, 2008 11:59 PM (Infothought permalink)
Love the notion of "surveillance engines".
Seth - I'm sure Twitter would be a better place to track flu with the advantage that tweets are public.
Totally agree that this is government (or corporate) surveillance. I wonder if Google use their search engine 'exhaust' data before making investments, partnership deals, or other financial moves. I wonder if that could be considered insider trading?