Given Google’s strategic location, handling by far the majority of the internet searches, and those searches themselves being effectively the ‘interface’ by which most people retrieve information from the internet, it should come as no surprise that spooks are interested in having some kind of relationship with google. I don’t see why this would come as a surprise to anyone, especially in the current climate. When news reports have spokesmen or quotation from anonymous insiders making reference to the monitoring of ‘internet chatter’, it is reasonable to assume that they refer not only to postings on internet message boards but also to the kinds of searches being done on Google. I’ve blogged before about this tool, which allows the average member of the public to get some sense of the usefulness of such data. I would be most surprised if three-letter agencies do not have access to something similar but vastly more powerful. Nor am I clear that this would be, in and of itself, a bad thing.
Update: Here is another article on Google and privacy.