Babes, Spychips, Ixquick and Morons

1. Katherine Albrecht is a babe.  But I digress. She is also one of the leading privacy advocates in the United States and she is waging a campaign against Google, that cute HUGE outfit that keeps all of your queries and associates them with your IP address forever. That sweet little search engine company that in 2006 came up with the cool idea to have your computer’s built-in microphone be used to listen to the ambient sounds in your room and then give you advertisements based on what TV show you are watching. Yeah, that company.  This is also the company that has come up with Google Latitude so your phone can be used by your “friends” to track your every movement. She notes that Privacy International says that the software on your phone can be turned on by someone other than you. Gee. How sweet.  Google also wants to use your medical searches to predict flu outbreaks.

So what’s a bird to do? Well, Ms. Albrecht (did I mention that she is a babe?) recommends that you can at least stop using the Google search engine so that Google can’t log any more of your search data. She also recommends the search engine by a company named Ixquick which, according to her and to its website, does not ever record any IP addresses and deletes queries with 48 hours.  We’ve been using it exclusively at Mantiq al-Tayr for the past week and find that Ixquick is a great search engine. For example, if you enter “Anonymous Arabist” in the engine, you immediately get links to pictures of dead cats. Just kidding.  The first two hits (after the ad links) take you to that artful, tasteful and relevant blog. So give it a try.

2. This dog is dead.

This is why. Ms. Albrecht has been campaigning against RFID chips for many years.  More than this cute little doggie’s life is at stake.  But it is sure is a sad story.

3. These people are morons. More on their ilk later.