Googol & Ashcroft

[Jasper Fidget]

Damn, I actually flipped out for a moment there.  (I would be so
*utterly* screwed if such became public!)  I wonder if AOL might really
keep logs of these conversations?  A nice reminder that nothing on the
internet is really private once it passes your own firewall....  (I've
actually tried building in a PGP encryption shell for AIM, but there
were problems.)  The question now is, has hybernaut been keeping logs of
the aim-names people have submitted to spy on, maybe tying them to ip
address...?

Jasper Fidget

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
Behalf Of Simon Bryquer
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2002 8:51 PM
To: Pynchon-Posting
Subject: Googol & Ashcroft


Has anybody seen this yet?

http://aimsearch.hybernaut.com/3.html - Search 5 Years of Instant
Messenger Logs - "In November of 2001 AOL Time Warner, responding to a
subpoena from Attorney General John Ashcroft, made available to the
Justice Department a complete archive of all private conversations held
over AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). Through the power of the Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA), Googol was able to obtain a copy of this entire
logfile, totaling over 2 terabytes of conversations previously thought
to be private. This unique resource provides insight into the minds of
potential anti-American terrorists, cheating spouses, and countless
computer neophytes."

http://aimsearch.hybernaut.com/aimsearch - The search engine is here

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/23610.html - an article about
the whole thing.


SCB