Big Google is Watching

I was trying to ignore the articles in my inbox from my well meaning friends about internet censorship because-truth be told- I really do not want to wrap my brain around the implications of that right now. But as an admitted insomniac I seem to have plenty of sleepless down time lately to infuse my wakeful hours with the remnants of my nocturnal paranoia fest. I used to think that if I purged my angry brain, elusive sleep would tap the peaceful void... but its like an exponential eradication...the more I vent, the more bubbles to the surface, and so it goes.
So my mind goes to the blogosphere, this quiet corner, the good folks that rant and read and share like little bics at an Elton John concert during "Candle In The Wind" before it became "English Rose". Contrived smart-ass flickers- at times. But they are little boxes of conversation. Good,bad, stupid,profound.
What does this freedom mean to us? Anything?
To me, they represent yet another form of dissent. One whose days could be numbered like so many other things. One cannot help but think about the recent news about internet censorship without getting the creeps. Its nothing new in other countries, and tech saavy folks know that search engines are manipulated all the time. Simultaneous searches in different countries, after all, yeild different results. How long before anti-war or anti-administration search terms get puched downward, before the internet goes the way of MSM?
I heard a story on public radio about google. Maybe some of you caught it. Now google has no difficulty in admitting that it keeps and archives ALL transactions. Your searches, your emails, your deleted messages, your porn, your personal chatter. Now consider how fast and efficient searches have become, and consider an internet with a matrix of behavioral formulae and couple that concept with a near limitless capacity for storage and VOILA- big brother is watching. And recording, and archiving, and profiling. With no limit in sight on its use. No discussion about ethical dilemmas. No outrage.
Now it used to be that collecting data on citizens was too long and impractical to merit use of the time required and the energy. Paranoid radicals that believed that they were being monitored were accused of grandiosity. Who would track harmless hippies? But now that the machinery is in place, such tracking is effortless. And it has seeped into our culture slowly, on cat feet. And there is no need to be discerning with its use or stingy with its scope.
We are all used to supermarket cards and EZ Pass to get through tolls quickly, all tools that can track ordinary citizens. We are used to the erosion of our civil liberties and the forfeit of our privacy in the name of security. And now we hardly blink when we consider the meaning of google's position. How long before the search records attributed to your traceable ISP are fodder for the courts? Subject to subpoena? Subject to spying? How hard would it be to do a search in this massive google archive on redhaired crazy women that hate Santorum and buy soy chai?
This is bad, folks. This needs our notice.