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Google should keep data private, surveys say

Elinor Mills Former Staff Writer
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service and the Associated Press.
Elinor Mills

Two surveys show that most Americans think specifics on what people search for on search engines should be kept confidential.

More than 82 percent of 2,327 respondents to an online CNET News.com survey said search engines should not be required to give the U.S. government details about what people are searching for. Just over 14 percent said "maybe" to that same question and 3.7 percent said "yes."

According to a survey conducted over the weekend, most Americans do not want Google to turn over Web search information to the government. Google is the only one of the top four search engines to fight a subpoena from the government seeking search data as part of an investigation into how often people search for porn online. Of the random sample of more than 1,000 adult Internet users, 56 percent said Google should not share the data with the government, according to the survey by the Ponemon Institute, a privacy research group. The Ponemon survey was reported in The San Francisco Chronicle.