Googling and Personal Privacy
Published by Deanna Hoak June 5th, 2005 in copyeditingYesterday I found myself Googling for yet another piece of esoteric information I needed to verify for copyediting, and it struck me how horribly law enforcement would look upon my computer activities.
Yesterday’s search involved how long it would take a body to begin to a) smell and b)bloat–I was verifying for two different bodies, one underwater and one not–and I Googled quite a variety of interesting term combinations before I found what I wanted. (I often use Amazon for searches, too, since the “search inside the book” can work even better than Google [sorry, fellow writers--I know], and the range of items Amazon now thinks I’m interested in is…unusual.)
Anytime I try to verify something, it’s a safe bet the author also tried to verify it, and since most everyone on my f’list is a writer, I wonder how much such searches worry you in this post-9/11 world, where it seems we’ve lost so much privacy.
Because let’s face it: A lot of things we need to verify are going to be weird. If our character has a sprained ankle or a broken bone and we’ve experienced that, there’s little need to research it. But how many of us are going to know off the top of our heads what the onset of putrefaction is for a corpse underwater? Or maybe…how long it would take someone to die if you slit his throat? Or whether a full-term fetus could survive its mother’s four-story fall and death? Those are all searches I’ve done for copyediting.
So does the loss of privacy worry you? Do you think it’s justified?
7 Responses to “Googling and Personal Privacy”
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I'm a freelance copyeditor specializing in fantasy and science fiction. SF/F novels I have copyedited have been finalists for (and have sometimes won) the Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke, Golden Spur, John W. Campbell Memorial, Quill, Locus, Philip K. Dick, British Science Fiction, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy awards. In 2007 I was short-listed for a World Fantasy Award for my copyediting.
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I don’t expect to be hauled in for questioning soon, because I’m white, female, suburban, Midwestern, Christian. There are easier targets than me. So I’m not worried on that level. I’m worried for others who don’t have that level of assumed safety, though, and I don’t think it’s even remotely justified.
My grandmother keeps saying, of airports that turn the metal detectors way, way up, “Well, if it makes us safer….” And I keep saying, “But it doesn’t.” I don’t see that it does. I don’t read of anyone caught that way. It looks to me like we’re trading freedoms for nothing, in the name of trading them for security.
Yes, it does worry me. I will be flying at the end of July and I’m already thinking about things like how my barrette set off the metal detector years ago at the courthouse when I was on grand jury, so I’d better use plastic hair clips because I don’t want to be pulled out for a body search. And thinking of the days when that would have seemed totally ridiculous instead of possible.
Yeah, I know, flying has nothing to do with googling, but I already erased several other comments so mild they didn’t even qualify as pungent. . . .I can see how the Nazis did it now.
I, too, copy edit, and I am ever researching such things as weapons specifications, grisly details of murders, and terrorist incidents. And over and over again: I’ve worked on several books about biological weapons, for example, and if another one comes out, I’m sure the people I’ve worked for will say, Oh, R. knows a lot about that stuff, let’s give it to him.
My attitude is that what I do is legitimate research for my job, and I can easily demonstrate that it is. If my name were Mohammed, I might feel differently–and there’s the recent case of those two schoolgirls who were arrested as terrorist suspects. So i do worry about it sometimes, but if I don’t do exactly what I want to do, they’ve already won.
If they want to get me, I’m sure they can find a way anyway…
Mmph. I can’t say the thought ever crossed my mind. I doubt the RCMP is going to care much about anything that’s in my history pages.
It worries me enough that I’m moving to Canada and becoming a Canadian citizen over it (plus many other issues that I have to deal with as a liberal, female, godless heathen). Because I am on so many “kick these jerks out of office” organization lists like MoveOn, Air America Radio, Smirking Chimp etc. and because I do a lot of weird research, I’m pretty sure that’s why I’m always getting stopped and searched at airports. Once someone didn’t know what my i-pod was (I kid you not the St. Paul airport security officer opened my bag and gasped in panic and threw on gloves in a fright) and they searched my entire bag while questioning the nature of an i-pod as an incendiary device.
They then jotted my name and contact information (and I even think my license or SS#) down on “a list” that they wouldn’t explain to me. I’ve always wondered if I’m now on some kinda “revolutionary citizen panic” list out there. I also wonder if it’s easy to pick on the single, diminuitive females who come through security because it’s easier than doing it to a six-foot angry man. But I digress …
I don’t think we’ve lost privacy as much as we’ve come to terms with all that has been going on around us and our mailboxes for the past ten years. Remember all those dinner time phone calls you (or your parents) got? Ever wonder why?
Thank you for the suggestion for the book: The Healer
I’ll have to hold off reading it until I’ve read all the books that I picked up at WisCon. I’ve promised myself that I’ll read them all before venturing out into the cruel world to buy more.
Regards,
D Haseman