Privacy on the internet

Interesting article this morning over at CNN.  The General Petraeus scandal has many of us intrigued by the made for TV movie of it all, but there is one thing that we all are missing.  As the article asks, "When the CIA director cannot hide his activities online, what hope is there for the rest of us?"  Here is the quote that got me:

Still, search engines may pose the biggest privacy threat: It's worth noting that when you send an e-mail or post something on Facebook, you usually expect someone else to see it, although maybe not everyone, and probably not the FBI. As John Herrman writes for BuzzFeed, however, search engines such as Google are the ones that know your "real secrets" since it doesn't feel like anyone else would see what you're searching for.
But, because of search, Google "knows the things you wouldn't ask your friends. It knows things you can't ask your spouse. It knows the things you haven't asked your doctor yet. It knows things that you can't ask anyone else and that might not have been asked at all before Google existed," he writes. "Google's servers are a repository of the developed world's darkest and most heartbreaking secrets, a vast closet lined with millions of digital skeletons that, should they escape, would spare nobody."

I guess Big Brother really is watching!
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