U.S.-China Surveillance

Google yesterday announced that it would takes steps to increase user privacy by altering its search logs after a period of 18-24 months. Google says that it will erase a portion of the IP address associated with an individual search and alter the associated cookie data in an as of yet unspecified way. Though such alteration of the data may indeed increase the difficulty of an identifying a person via an individual search record, how much more protection this is likely to give citizens from indiscriminate state and corporate surveillance is at best unclear. Below are a few illustrative examples from the Google Log Retention Policy FAQ.

Will governments be able to subpoena server log data after it is anonymized? Will anonymized data still be able to identify an individual user by cookie or IP address?
Google does comply with valid legal process, such as search warrants, court orders, or subpoenas seeking personal information. Logs anonymization does not guarantee that the government will not be able to identify a specific computer or user, but it does add another layer of privacy protection to our users’ data.

Will this policy change make it more difficult for law enforcement to prevent and detect crime or child exploitation?
No, current laws allow the government to request that companies preserve user data. We regularly comply with such laws.

What happens to the logs at the end of the expiration date? Are they deleted?
At the end of the expiration date we will still keep server logs but they will be anonymized.

Answers contained in the Google FAQ suggest the “anonymization” they have announced is such only in a very limited sense. ReallyEvilCanine over at Slashdot summed it up pretty well:

Google plan to make it “more anonymous”. Like pregnancy, data either ARE anonymous or they ain’t. You can’t qualify an absolute, and “anonymous” is an absolute condition indicating lack of information.

Although the announcement is not specific, this appears to be a global decision that would apply to nationalized versions of Google.com as well, including Google.cn. Such a policy would not be in conflict with current Chinese data retention laws which require only 60 days, and again, Google is not talking about deleting these logs.