Have a case against hypocracy? Google will help

In a review of some of the keywords related to China in 2008, you'll likely to find words like: internet, privacy, moral, Runaway Fan, and and his self-proclaimed crusade against hypocrisy, among others. Now let's switch gear. Here is an interesting case in the U.S. where juries will try to decide whether sexually explicit material is obscene.

In the trial of a pornographic Web site operator, the defense plans to show that residents of Pensacola are more likely to use Google to search for terms like “orgy” than for “apple pie” or “watermelon.”

residents...are more likely to use Google to search for terms like “orgy” than for “apple pie” or “watermelon.”

In other words, the defense is trying to use google search to show people are really, alas, hypocrites. To achieve this, they need to intrude into people's privacy, i.e., the google search subpoena. Pure genius.

Granted, defense has still many bars to hurdle. For example, how to pick the controlling "common terms"? How to compare the popularity of sexually explicit searches versus the more benign searches? Do you aggregate them? “Orgy” or "group sex" may be the top search hit, at the same time a very small percentage of all other guilt-free hits. Then you have to worry about the distribution of hits among residents to know how representative of a community those hits are.

Chinese internet users are certainly no strangers to hypocrisy and internet, they long understand the difference in behavior when anonymously online - the so-called internet mob mentality - and offline. But notes to Chinese Fans, The U.S. is a far more conservative, if you wish, country than China, socially or legally. Such a case while may provide occasional boon to police coffer would most likely be ignored in China. And we would lose chance to see such ingenious defense. Maybe the crusaders should pay more attention to google to get the real scoop.

Watch out. Google will shred your hypocrisy.

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