Can your search terms be used against you ? Part 2

In a previous post I've mentioned that the US government may contact your favorite search engine and with a mere subpoena access your favorite search terms. Reuters reports that this annoying scenario has already taken place.

In court documents filed on Wednesday, the Bush administration asked a federal judge to force Google to comply with a subpoena to reveal the search terms of the search engine's visitors. The subpoena is part of an effort to test the effectiveness of a 1998 law, the Child Online Protection Act, or COPA, which penalizes Web site operators who allow children to view pornography. It's fair to note that the requested search results do not expose information on specific home-users but are a random sampling of COPA relevant search terms and web site accesses.

It's interesting to note that Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo have all already handed the requested selection of search requests and indexed Web sites, but Google is standing firm.

Watch out what you're searching for...