An academic paper on whether google (information extraction) invades your privacy

["Subbarao Kambhampati" <rao@asu.edu>]

I mentioned an anecdote last class about how Google's cache inadvertently outed 
a colleague's as-yet-not-public plans to move from his home institution. 

Here is a paper on whether information extraction of the sort exemplified by Adwords
can be seen to be invading your privacy. 

http://rakaposhi.eas.asu.edu/cse494/google-privacy-ijcai.pdf


I mentioned this paper to a couple of you. Here it is for everyone. We will read this
formally at some point of time--but until then, you might enjoy the arguments
(the one I like best is the argument that as the sophistication of NLP techniques used in the 
information extraction increases, and as search engines/portals extract and keep large volumes of
text tucked away in their cluster farms, they can be *held liable* for not acting on information they have
if for example, people use email to hatch plots and then carry them through.. This is one reason why
increasingly many institutions now have a standing policy of removing all email every year..)

Rao
ps: Sergei related an anecdote where Google started giving out addresses of various people because 
it had access to a large library of resumes and did some elementary address extraction..