When I wrote an article about the Yahoo compliance guide for law enforcement, I had no idea it would get the response that it did.  One of the more interesting side effects is that the article shows up in searches for the Google compliance guide for law enforcement.  This is interesting because there apparently is no Google equivalent to this document at Yahoo!  This means that many of those people looking for such a document actually find and visit my Yahoo article.  I don’t care too much about the increased site traffic.  The really interesting side effect is that the tracking software we developed shows some pretty cool behavior when law enforcement starts snooping around!

If any of you out there actually trust Google or any of the other search engines with your privacy, maybe you should reconsider your beliefs.  You may think that preserving their reputation (Don’t be evil) is enough to motivate them to keep your searches private.  You were wrong!  When you search for something using Google, then visit the results, the sites you visit know what search queries you used to find them! I can hope that intelligent police officers and other law enforcement show some discretion with their searches.  The trouble is that I already know that they don’t!  The tracking software we developed at ELW tells us what you were searching for when you found us.  It tells us what you looked at.  It also tells us your IP address, and ISP which gives us a very good idea of who you are.  Sometimes it tells us exactly who you are if you are silly enough to use a government computer!  Have I said enough to give you the picture?  The information you are so desperate to obtain from search engines, with or without a warrant, is usually right there in plain sight on some other web site.

If you are involved in law enforcement, you need to understand what is going on.  Cops who search for criminals using search engines may actually find them!  The problem is that the criminals can see cops coming too, and they don’t need a warrant.  This website doesn’t need a warrant to see who visits us.  Google doesn’t need a warrant to see what people search for.  Yahoo doesn’t need one either.  This begs the question:  Can law enforcement set up a fake web site to obtain this information too?  I’ll bet many of them actually have.  In fact, I’ll bet the present infiltration of the internet would boggle your mind.

If you are involved with law enforcement and need some help in this arena, I strongly suggest you seek the advice of a professional.  It isn’t helping your reputation to be searching the internet like amateur private investigators.  ELW is willing to help set up websites, give training, and develop strategies for obtaining information through the internet.