Policy questions

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Is search a public service on a public good (web)?
  -> should it be regulated as such?
  -> some moves for nationalized search engines
  -> analogy of search index to local phone companies open lines to long distance companies
Cross-national position of search engines
  -> exporting censorship
  -> accountability of search companies across borders? (kinda talked about already, with respect  to china and server location)
Transparency
   -> algorithms
Aggregation of Information and Privacy (the big one)
   -> laws against selling data of particular formats?
   -> making data/privacy policies clear
                 - tied to web browser?
                 - http://www.w3.org/P3P/
   -> how should data be scrubbed?
            - transparency of scrubbing procedure
   According to Chris Hoofnagle (from http://islandia.law.yale.edu/isp/search_papers/hoofnagle.pdf):

   "A privacy dialogue concerning search histories would include:
   • A discussion of identification: do search engines need to identify users? Can they
   do so pseudonymously? In personalized search situations, are there ways to
   divorce identification data from historical search results (that is, by applying a
   profile to the user rather than use that individual's specific search history for
   analysis)?
   • A discussion of data retention: how long is too long?
   • A discussion on government access: what barriers (legal and technological) are
   there to law enforcement access to personal information collected by search
   engines? What will prevent a search engine from making law enforcement
   requests for data too easy (as AOL did by establishing data retention policies
   favorable to law enforcement, and by waiving service obligations to speed
   government access to data)?
   • A discussion on commercialization of data: what limits are there are the resale of
   search engine history information?"


Themes to keep in mind during discussion:
   --transparency of search algoritms
   --readability of privacy/data policies