Technology Can Expose Government Sins, But You Need Humans to Fix Them

Written by Lorelei Kelly, 

01 Oct 2013 CityWatch 

This article appeared first in the New America Foundation’s Weekly Wonk and ZocaloPublicSquare.org … connecting people and ideas.) 

EXTRACT:ZOCALO PUBLIC SQUARE-The National Security Agency, in its surveillance, is unaccountable. But we don’t know what to do about it. Why?
At a recent meeting on Capitol Hill, a young Congressional staffer offered the answer. He said:
People think that tweeting or commenting online about the surveillance is actually doing something to hold the surveillance accountable. In other words, we’re confused about the connection between transparency and accountability. We haven’t defined the difference between using this era’s technological tools to shine a light on how government works and using this era’s technological tools to hold the government accountable. 
... According to calculations by the Sunlight Foundation, today’s Congress is operating with about 40 percent less staff than in 1979. According to the Congressional Management Foundation, it’s also contending with at least 800 percent more incoming communications. Yet, instead of helping Congress gain insight in new ways, instead of helping it sort and filter, curate and authenticate, technology has mostly created disorganized information overload. And the information Congress receives is often sentiment, not substance. Elected leaders should pay attention to both, but need the latter for policymaking.
Continue reading CityWatch

WHATS IN A NAME? It's all-ado-about Transliteration Mess + Noise

A perpetual question for librarians, but now also for Banks:

A quick survey of Arabic, Islamic names and issues with transliteration...

Arabic Names Spell Trouble for Banks, By DEBORAH BALL And CASSELL BRYAN-LOW, MIDDLE EAST NEWS, APRIL 19, 2011

"...Unlike other so-called script languages such as Chinese or Japanese, Arabic has no transliteration standards. Pronunciation of the same names varies by place, and written Arabic contains few vowels, opening the door to a larger range of acceptable translations. Mohamed can also be transliterated as Mahmut, Mehmud or dozens of other variants."

Kadafi, Gaddafi, Qaddafi: In The Age Of Search, News Publications Still Struggle With Libya Leader’s Name, Mar 21, 2011 at 6:33pm ET by Danny Sullivan

How are you supposed to spell Muammar Gaddafi/Khadafy/Qadhafi? June 20, 1986

Need for authority control (uniformity) in names

How to build a digital library - Page 51, Ian H. Witten, David I. Bainbridge - 2002

Note: Library of Congress has its own standardization, and has only one representation for three variants of the name: See: Qaddafi, Muammar (the other spellings are: Ghadafi, Muammar and Muammar Ghadafi)

BOTTOMLINE for Information Professionals:
This reminder courtesy: Mark Muehlhaeusler | 21 Apr, 2011, MELANET (Middle East Librarians Association).
"If you ever doubted the need for authority control in name headings,
think again ...:

CASSE-TÊTE ARABE - Les banques à l'épreuve de la traduction - Big ...[Google Translation: PUZZLE ARAB - Banks to test the translation: Muammar Gaddafi, Mu'ammar Gaddafi, Muammar Gadhafi ... There would be 110 translations of the surname of the Libyan president.]

On the same shelf:

Wikileaks: Libraries and librarians respond

Extract:

Dec 6th, 2010 | By jshrubsole, Saskatchewan Library Association
It’s hard to ignore. The news is full of information about Wikileaks and leaked documents. So what has been the response by libraries and librarians?

Some library blogs merely re-report the news (like Law Librarian), but those librarians who personally comment on the issue are as divided as all other people in society.

On the same shelf:

Wikileaks: Where the Hole is Big Enough to Drive a Truck Through, The Other Librarian

Library of Congress to block WikiLeaks Most library blogs, however, report and comment on this action.

The official Library of Congress blog explains why they are blocking WikiLeaks

Reading now: Making Knowledge Visible

Communicating Knowledge Through Information Products, by Elizabeth Orna, The Gower Developments in Business Series, Gower, 2005, 212 pp. ISBN-10: 0566085631. [Dewey Class No.: 658.4'038 / Library of Congress Classification: HD30.2 .O75

About the book:
The only way we can make what we know visible to other people is by putting it into Information Products – the products, in any medium, where users meet the information they need, and gain access to the knowledge of others.

Without them, little business would get done inside organizations or between them and the outside world. They are essential for the flow, exchange, application, and preservation of information and knowledge.

This is the first book to make the case for the proper recognition of information products by organizations. It shows how they should support business objectives and processes and be incorporated into information strategy and information architecture; illustrates the value they can both add and subtract; identifies the full range of stakeholders in them; and argues that a triple alliance of information management, information systems/IT, and information design is critical for successful information products.

Stories from real life illustrate every step of the argument. The final part of the book demonstrates how an actual organization used information auditing as a tool to develop a strategic information product for an important user community.

Contents: Foreword. Part 1 Basic Ideas: Before we begin; No business without information products. Part 2 Information Products in the Organisational Context: Introduction - The context of information products; The business of the organisation; The value that IPs add (and subtract); The stakeholders and their interests. Part 3 In Support of IPs; Introduction; Knowledge and information management in support of IPs; Infrastructure for IPs: information systems, technology tools; Information design, reconciler of conflicting constraints. Part 4 Action for IP Value - a Practical Process: Introduction; An information auditing approach; Making a start; Auditing information products; Into action for value from IPs; Index.

About the Author: Elizabeth Orna is the author of Practical Information Policies (Ed2,1999) and Information Strategy in Practice (2004), and co-author with Charles Pettitt of Information Management in Museums (1998), all published by Gower. Described by a reviewer as 'too good to be a guru', she is a an information consultant and writer well known for her extraordinary insight and lucidity. She lectures internationally on information management and information presentation.

Reviews: 'This book is aimed at information and systems analysts and managers, web designers, communication specialists, plus teachers and students of business management. I think librarians, project managers, and business consultants would also have a lot to learn from what she has to say.' Mantex, August 2005

On the Same Shelf:

Mapping Information Flows: A Practical Guide, Information Management Journal, Jan/Feb 2004 by Hibberd, Betty Jo, Evatt, Allison

In her book Practical Information Policies, Elizabeth Orna states, "Experience shows that people concerned with information management have no difficulty with the concept [of information mapping], or with deriving knowledge and information needs from the objectives of their own organizations. And it usually takes no more than a few hours to produce the answers."

While many information professionals faced with the task would no doubt disagree with her assessment of the time involved, they consider mapping information flows important as a framework for analyzing how information moves within an organization and for understanding the services necessary to match the true needs of their clients.

Orna further notes, "...information flows are helpful in disentangling the reality from strings of words" and says she considers information mapping a method to "visualiz[e] the immediate and wider organizational context and the Outside world'...." In other words, the outcome of this process produces a deeper understanding of the organization that enables a more direct link to key stakeholders. This can be especially important if the IRC reports to non-information functions within the organization.

The high cost of not finding information. By Susan Feldman - KMWorld, Mar 1, 2004: [Information disasters, The costs of not finding information, How successful are most searchers?, How much time is spent reworking or recreating information because it has not been located?, Finding information][citation courtesy: Bibliography on information management @ Willpower Information]

Google: Location a "Hugely Important" Signal

If Location's Not a Big Part of Your Strategy, It Will Be, Tuesday, March 23, 2010, By Chris Crum @ WebProNews

So what next?
I compared the ads that reflect a waterfall (one in North America, another in India)
See Google ads here [not so much matching], but here it is glaring. So also with Yahoo and then the MSN's Bing.

• Hogenakkal: Niagara Falls of India
• Niagara Falls Tourism Official Website Niagara Falls Ontario Canada
• Shivanasamudra [The two waterfalls are Gaganachukki and Bharachukki and together are also known as bluff. One of Bharachukki's sections resembles a 'U', just like the famous Niagara Falls]
• Nirmala Palaniappan's Photos - Sivanasamudra @ Facebook

What I learnt about Communities of Practices - a conversation

By Abdul Jaleel Tharayil Venue: Indian Institute Of Science - Bangalore Date: Jan, 2008 ...

About the speaker: Mr. Abdul Jaleel Tharayil is working as Senior Manager - knowledge
Management, MindTree Consulting Ltd, Bangalore. [Source taken from Session invitation]

What I learnt about Communities of Practices - a conversation

View more presentations from abdul.tharayil.

The Battle of Building Library's Digital Collection

PS. Need feedback to improve this webliography relating to recent developments in this field:

Students, It’s 2010! So Let’s Go Back to Stone Age!

Google – Goodfather and/or Gravedigger?

Library ruling limits the rights of the TU Darmstadt

The right of prints out of digitalised medias

The 6th civil chamber at the regional court in Frankfurt decides in a summary proceeding that libraries have the right to digitalise and provide prints from their stock, no matter wether the publisher have own offers.
The publisher Eugen Ulmer filed a suit against the ULB, which offers at some selected workstations the "digital textbook collection" with 130 current textbooks.

The court confirmed the right to make prints of these files. Nevertheless digital copies are forbidden. The library was obligated to adopt precautionary measures which prevents such copies. Because of this the ULB modified their service and blocked the download on USB-stick. All other usage is as usual (please see : http://tudigilehrbuch.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de )

The court decision can be found in the law reports of the Regional Court Frankfurt with the reference number 2-06 O 172/09.
More comments :
Press release of TU Darmstadt
Press release of German Library Association(DBV)

GoogleBooks, the digital library wars, by Jack Kessler

Google Loses in French Copyright Case

"Three library associations have asked the Justice Department to oversee Google's plans to create a massive digital library to prevent an excessively high price for institutional subscriptions." New York Times

From the Chronicle of Higher Education's "Wired Campus" blog: The All-Digital Library? Not Quite Yet, By Jennifer Howard

To e-book or not to e-book, Wynken de Worde

Here today, gone tomorrow, Librarians do it Between the Covers

The Battle of the Books—Again, Barbara Fister, Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN -- Library Journal, 11/19/2009

Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper by Nicholson Baker

Vandals in the Stacks?: A Response to Nicholson Baker's Assault on Libraries
~ Richard J. Cox

Library Research Service's 60-Second Survey: Future of the Book

Recently, news outlets and blogs have been busy deriding and celebrating the recent ascension of e-readers. The growing popularity of this new format has come with murmurs about the death of paper books and some even surmise that as technology advances libraries will cease to exist!

Taking notice of the chatter, the Library Research Service has decided to survey librarians on the matter. This new 60-Second Survey asks your opinions on e-readers and how you think they will transform reading. Will e-readers be the demise of the paper book? What will libraries circulate? What is the future of the book? You tell us!

See also on the same shelf:

Libraries and Readers Wade Into Digital Lending

‘As We May Digitize’ — Institutions and Documents Reconfigured, Liber Quarterly Volume 21 Issue 3/4 2012

Adams, Anne and Blandford, Ann (2002). The unseen and unacceptable face of digital libraries. International, Journal of Digital Libraries, 4(2), pp. 71–81.

Harvard Unveils Web Tool for Studying Media Trends

Harvard Unveils Web Tool for Studying Media Trends: The Chronicle of Higher Education

"There’s a lot of debate over the state of the news media these days, but a team of researchers at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society is trying to make discussions of content and bias a bit more precise."

"This morning, the Berkman Center unveiled Media Cloud, a research tool that designers say will help researchers study news-media trends with a level of quantitative precision previously unavailable. Powered by software that automatically identifies various elements — such as people, places, and topics — contained within an article, Media Cloud allows users to query a database of online content from more than 1,500 blogs and traditional publications."

Capture, store, and share information - Sounds old rhyme, right?

But now this story is getting newer interface (call it interface 2.0). Thanks to Martha for sharing the info about the Living Library!!! I Googled to see true colors of the LL, and found the following:

Living library idea as a knowledge managment tool
by Shaunna Mireau on October 30th, 2008
A recent article in Library Journal caught my eye: “Living Library” Debuts in Santa Monica1 As the article explains the living library movement invites library users to ‘book’ meetings with individuals with special interests, beliefs or experiences.

Extract: Wouldn’t it be interesting to add information to the library catalog with the following model:

Title: Vicarious liability
Author: Partner X
Physical Description: 6′1″, folio [individual will come to your office or lunch for a discussion of the title topic].

Seriously though, there are many ways to formalize tacit knowledge transfer that already happens in informal ways. It is neat that this kind of tacit transfer is being encouraged by public libraries. If a public library can work with this model, our expertise filled organizations can too.continue reading

See also on the same shelf:

• LIVING LIBRARIES, Experience that speaks volumes, Toronto Star Feb 26, 2009
  
• Doing the Library Thing by Wendy Reynolds March 1, 2009
• Living Libraries in Canada in March
  March 5-6th, University of Guelph, Ontario
  March 5th, Coquitlam Public Library, British Columbia
  March 21st, Calgary Public Library, Ontario
  March 23-27th, University of Alberta, Augustana, Alberta

Sharing Tacit Knowledge: A Case Study in the Australian Film Industry

Tacit Knowledge
“Explicit” or codified knowledge refers to knowledge that is transmittable in formal, systematic language. On the other hand, “tacit” knowledge has a personal quality, which makes it hard to formalize and communicate. Tacit knowledge is deeply rooted in action, commitment, and involvement in a specific context (Nonaka, 1994, p. 16)

Irit Alony and Greg Whymark, Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, Australia and Michael Jones, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia Informing Science Journal Volume 10, 2007

Abstract:

This paper explores tacit knowledge sharing. This case demonstrates the significance of knowledge sharing to organizational performance, by exploring the contribution of tacit knowledge sharing to the success of projects in the Australian Film Industry (AFI). The differences between knowledge sharing, collaboration and communication, and their interrelations are addressed. We also explore the concepts of knowledge, information, and data. In the interchanges reported here the knowledge shared is almost entirely tacit, and the “raw” data and information do not exist without the context that makes them knowledge. The paper includes the identification of many factors affecting knowledge sharing, not all of which have been identified by previous researchers.

This research contributes to a better understanding of tacit knowledge and how that knowledge is shared. This in turn contributes to a better understanding of how knowledge management can be supported in a modern organization, where often the technology is used in ways not well understood by system managers and software developers. A better understanding can lead to better ICT design and support of knowledge sharing both within and across organizations.

Keywords: Knowledge Sharing, Film Industry, Tacit Knowledge, Qualitative, Collaboration.
See also on the same shelf:

Return-on-Investment in library practice

Many wonder how to account for a place, such as a library, where "what goes into a library isn’t what comes out," to use Andrew L. Pearson's expression.
Here is a book in hand, thanks to Steven Bell, for identifying such an important title: Library Assessment in Higher Education--particularly chapter 5 on assessment of the library's contribution to the educational process.

Question: How do you see the ROI in your library / information practice? Will highly appreciate your response on this subject.

See also:
The Library as Strategic Investment: Results of the Illinois Return on Investment Study, Paula T. Kaufman, University Librarian and Dean of Libraries, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

How do you describe this industry, and what you do, to your family and friends?

Posted by Bryant on September 30, 2008 in Infonomics: Question of the Week
View Discussions
"I don't know about all of you, but describing this industry to those not in it can be . . . interesting. How do you convey what you do?" continue reading

PS: I would call this, if I am asked to, as Information Industry or Knowledge Management.

*Infonomics is a new title of a journal (formerly called AIIM E-DOC Magazine); see also: Knowledge Management - The Next Generation @ TakingAIIM blog

What I Know for Sure...In Information Management

AIIM > Infonomics Magazine September/October 2008, by Joan Moumbleaux*

Extract: "For readers of O, The Oprah Magazine, you will recognize my article title as a riff on the title of her monthly editorials. Oprah’s column ruminates on unchanging truths in a changing world. As I sat reading her recent editorial, I found myself pulling out a list of “lessons learned” that I have created during my 22 year career, and two things happened...

Taxonomy is a sexy word for a subject classification catalog. Historically, the term taxonomy is linked with botanist Linnaeus who used the term to describe his hierarchical classification of things. Remember learning “kingdom, phylum, class…?” During the 1990s consultants began using the term “taxonomy” to describe library science concepts of classification schemes, controlled vocabulary and thesauri. Why?

The word had gravitas. It sounded more science-y and hence more interesting, sexier, to clients. The term has come to mean a polyhierarchical classification scheme representing intellectual relationships between concepts. Let’s face it; that is a subject classification scheme created so that we can catalog information. But no one in IT wants to be called a great cataloger! Did I hear someone say “ontology?” continue reading

*Joan Moumbleaux is the Knowledge Manager for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Marine Fisheries' Restoration Center. She can be reached at 301.713.0174 x207 or joan.moumbleaux@noaa.gov. This article was previously published in “The Capitol Image,” the newsletter of the AIIM National Capitol Chapter.

ROI for the knowledge worker is ROI for all, and how KM took an ironic approach

"I perpetually point out the difference to the old and new KM in this blog, but I’ve never thought of it in terms of ROI for the knowledge worker. I have only thought of this in terms of the incentive and motiviation for knowledge sharing. When you think of the big picture of the need for a return in knowledge sharing, we can say this is the ROI for the knowledge worker.

My thought are if the ROI for the knowledge worker is high, ie. high reciprocation of value for participating, then in aggregate the enterprise ROI from a social computing ecosystem will be high.

The old KM was not about people, it went for the knowledge as a separate thing, and knowledge as a separate act approach, where the participants really had no return on their contributions, and no self motiviation to want to participate. In essence this process didn’t blend with human nature at all. Plus there is the other end of naturally seeking know-how off people, that’s just it, you were meant to seek it from a database (not people), and what you find, if you do find something relevant is meant to be context objective so it will suit all needs.

Whereas the new KM is not really KM at all (considering the key to KM is sharing what’s in our heads), it’s not a separate act, it’s embedded into our regular routines. In an ecosystem where we are networked to people and we participate as we do our work, as well as the finished product of our work, there is no conscious effort to make sure you are sharing your know-how, it’s just happening from being, just like in the offline world. In the offline world I don’t make sure I’m sharing know-how, it’s just blended into how I am as a person, it comes out when I act and speak whether I like it or not...." continue reading: John Tropea @ Library clips

5 ways to apply management principles at home

By MERCEDES M. CARDONA
For The Associated Press

(AP) - Five workplace management techniques that experts say can bring harmony at home:

• Mission statements are not only for corporations. Patrick Lencioni, author of "The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family," says households should establish first what makes the family unique _ its core values.
• Break down the household into manageable parts
• Get help.
• Develop systems.
• Evaluate progress

KM & E-Social Science - Revisited

Knowledge Creation, Knowledge Sharing, application of Knolwedge Management (outside the corporate work culture) in the social and cultural lives of the Netizens is the focus:

4th International Conference on e-Social Science

philbu's blog: Report on the CRASSH Workshop “Subversion ...

CRASSH Workshop “Subversion, Conversion, Development: Public Interests in Technologies” Cambridge, 24-26 April prepared by Philipp Budka

Public & Private in the Blogosphere

See also on the same shelf and aisle:

• Knowledge Management: Society / Community Wise
• Knowledge production in a profession: Use-inspired...
• Body-Mind-Soul - KM initiatives
• Tacit and Oral knowledge @ FaithCommons Forum

Info courtesy: Professor Neelameghan and Ann the Librarian

Web self-service: searching for answers

By Judith Lamont

Few people who visit self-service Web sites have escaped unscathed from the frustrations that all too often accompany their use or attempted use. Simple transactions such as checking a bank balance can usually be accomplished efficiently, but more complex needs such as finding information about a health insurance policy or how to obtain replacement parts for a product can throw the visitor into an inescapable loop.

Zachary McGeary, principal analyst at Jupiter Research, explains, "Customers often are not sure how to phrase their questions or search requests. In addition, over half the customers who report usability problems say that their searches offer too many results to be helpful."
Ideally, the Web site will offer flexibility in how the user seeks information, including the ability to process natural language queries phrased in a variety of ways, and will tune the search engine to produce a relevant and specific answer. continue reading

info courtesy: Knowledge Management (whatever it is)

Cyber Worship Resource of the Week is A Buddhist Prayer for Lost Information

... According to the Web site guide to Buddhist memorial services, on October 24 of every year, at the Daioh Temple of Rinzai Zen Buddhism in Kyoto, Japan, the head priest conducts a prayer for lost information. Recognizing that "many `living' documents and software are thoughtlessly discarded or erased without even a second thought," the sect hopes that through the holding of its "information service" the "`information void' will cease to exist."

Paradoxically, at the same time as institutions in the United States and elsewhere may be in danger of losing their collective memory due to routine deletion of information in electronic form, the typical end user is most likely experiencing the opposite sensation: drowning in information overload. A recent Washington Post cover story characterized the time we live in as the "Too-Much-Information Age," going so far as to declare in a bold headline: "Tidal Wave .of Information Threatens to Swamp Civilization" (Achenbach 1999). cited in Recordkeeping in the 21st Century. By:BARON, JASON R.

• More details of this Buddhist Prayer are in my book: Cyber Worship in Multifaith Perspectives, (p. 168-169).
  
• See also related content: Cyber Worship Resource of the Week is The Jewish Prayer While Logging Onto the Internet
• THE LIBRARIAN'S PRAYER / PRAYER FOR LIBRARIANS

Knowledge Networking in ICT Era

International Conference on "Knowledge Networking in ICT Era"
during January 22- 24, 2009 - Conference Brochure

Call for Papers
Submit Papers by November 30, 2008 to
Organising Secretary: Mr. P. Panneerselvam, Librarian,
B. S. Abdur Rahman Crescent Engineering College
G.S.T. Road, Vandalur
Chennai - 600 048, India

More details also at: AllConferences.com

Who's tracking your health? Paging Dr. Internet

IVOR TOSSELL, The Globe and Mail, May 23, 2008 [posted here with permission of the author]

Google, pursuing its strategy of monetizing omniscience, has launched a product that will track every bit of your health information. Everyone together now: Yikes!

Called Google Health, it seems destined to exacerbate the pent-up fears that underlie our increasing reliance on massive technology corporations. But the scariest thing about Google Health is how useful it looks like it will be. It's an oasis of sanity in the madness of health-care record-keeping that we know and loathe. But will its Googliness be enough to keep people away?

Following in the footsteps of other companies - including Microsoft, which launched a competing product called "HealthVault" - Google Health made its debut this week in the United States, though Canadians weren't barred from signing up.

The site offers a handful of linked services. First and foremost, it wants to be a storehouse for health information, everything from the names of conditions to the nitty-gritty of test results, including blood tests and imaging results. Users can input this information in one of two ways: They can plug it in by hand or by choosing options from Google's exhaustive lists, from "Aarskog syndrome" to "zits." But American users who signed up also discovered that Google Health not only lets them punch in their own test results, but import information directly from the handful of health-care networks and pharmacies that have partnered with them.

The service is simple and elegant, but more to the point, it highlights a glaring need. Too many of us are trapped in a nightmare where our medical records are scattered across the offices of every clinic and surgeon we've ever visited, instead of one central location.

Referrals are accompanied by faxed wads of paper, which may or may not contain all the relevant information, and occasionally get lost in the shuffle. Patients have become used to starting from scratch with every new physician they see, sometimes needlessly duplicating tests.

The ramifications for quality of care are enormous, and in emergency situations, digital record-keeping can go from convenience to life-saver. The upshot of the present systems is that if you want to guarantee that results will be there when they're needed, it's best to keep copies for yourself - which is something the system discourages, too.

That's not to say that things aren't improving. A patchwork of digital-record initiatives have sprung up across the country, though many of them work in isolation. Many clinics and hospital networks, for instance, do keep electronic medical records, but don't freely share them with other providers on account of privacy concerns.

Most promising of all, Alberta and Prince Edward Island already have province-wide electronic record-keeping systems that store records centrally for each patient, giving them the same kind of one-stop access to their records that Google is offering.

According to Richard Alvarez, executive director of Canadian Health Infoway, a non-profit organization that's spearheading the drive for electronic records in Canada, the rest of the country should follow suit over the next couple of years.

Even if government steps up to the plate, however, private services like Microsoft's and Google's will still be around. In fact, Infoway is working with them to see that their products will be able to talk to the systems that are being built in Canada.

The question is whether Canadians - who have never had a huge fondness for privately delivered health care - will entrust their most sensitive secrets to a company that's made a fortune by selling ads on cat videos.

In time, we might. Rather than being rendered obsolete by province-wide electronic systems, the likes of Google Health could remain a useful complement.

As Alvarez suggests, snowbirds might find it useful for keeping their health information together when they travel beyond their province's borders. And Google Health does things that austere government systems might not, like link to extensive reference pages that detail various medical conditions.

By the same token, Google's servers are located in the United States, and as such are subject to the Patriot Act, which can see data handed over to the authorities. (Though the idea that U.S. authorities might actually wait for legal sanction before intercepting data seems increasingly quaint.) And, as American observers have pointed out, Google claims that it isn't subject to the U.S. laws that regulate the handling of health records.

All of which will likely give a lot of people pause before spilling their guts to Google's servers. But in time, others might realize that online privacy has always been a bit of a mirage, especially where Google is involved.

Anyone who's spent a morning searching Google for a health concern has already told that company what they've got - or worse, what they think they've got. And it's been shown that an anonymous user's identity can easily be deduced from what they search for.

Google Health, then, is a test of how comfortable we are confronting the reality of omniscient, inscrutable databases. Odds are, Dr. Internet already has your chart. Will you own up to it?