A recent statement by MSN’s Ken Moss (General Manager, MSN Web Search) defends Microsoft’s decision to hand over search records to the US Department of Justice. On the MSN Search Blog, Moss states that even though records were submitted to the feds, user privacy was not compromised.
According to Moss, “privacy of our customers is non-negotiable and something worth fighting to protect.â€
More from the blog:
Over the summer we were subpoenaed by the DOJ regarding a lawsuit. The subpoena requested that we produce data from our search service. We worked hard to scope the request to something that would be consistent with this principle. The applicable parties to the case received this data, and the parties agreed that the information specific to this case would remain confidential. Specifically, we produced a random sample of pages from our index and some aggregated query logs that listed queries and how often they occurred. Absolutely no personal data was involved.
With this data you:
CAN see how frequently some query terms occurred.
CANNOT look up an IP and see what they queried
CANNOT look for users who queried for both “TERM A†and “TERM Bâ€
A few weeks back, the US Department of Justice issued a subpoena for the major engines to hand over millions of search records, under the Child Online Protection Act. The controversy has created quite a stir. Google made big news by refusing to comply, and now faces a potentially huge legal battle over the matter. Both MSN and Yahoo abided by the government’s order.
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