I have no desire to do so, lest I wind up in Guantanamo for some “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques,” but if I were to Google “How to Shoot Down a Drone” or “How to Make Molotov Cocktails” or whatever, would the results be filtered if I logged in from the US?
What exactly do you mean by “filtered”?
Google filters out tons of stuff. There is something called the Darknet, which is accessed via the Tor network, that has all kinds of seedy stuff you probably had no idea was on the Internet. Remember when Bitcoins were invented and people posited that they would be used for all kinds of black market trade? Well, even though it didn’t take off as a general currency, Bitcoin is very much alive and well on darknets. I won’t say any more than that.
OK, except for one thing I totally missed the opportunity for but thought of later: :smack:
You’ll not find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy in all the Interwebz.
As in, molotovcocktails.ru might really be a web site, but Google wouldn’t show it in the search results if I were to search for “Molotov Cocktails.”
Well, Google does sort by relevance and popularity, so molotovcocktails.ru might never show up until a few hundred pages in.
Google receives millions of takedown requests - over one million last month alone. But most are for copyright violations. There are some requests received from state governments. Requests from the US Government:
According to Google’s own transparency report, 97% of takedown requests were granted last year.
I’m not sure if Google filters stuff, but I’m sure certain terms are “monitored” by the US Gov’t. Someone might know you’re searching those topics, but they won’t necessarily care…unless you…
It’s a tricky balance the Gov’t plays between Americans’ civil rights and privacy with the need to keep people safe.
Well, you can still get the Anarchist’s Cookbook on Amazon, so…<shrug>
Yeah, it is probably better for them if they just leave everything freely available and track those of interest who look at it. You can’t stop information but the feds are getting good at tracking everything. Check out the gigantic new NSA super-computing center being built in Utah whose goal is to capture the vast majority of all digital communication including phone calls and e-mails worldwide and analyze it in real-time and archive it forever. Wired magazine had an expose on it a couple of months ago. 1984 called, it wants its government back.
I have more but I have to run. Somebody is at the door.
Yes, but the Anarchist Cookbook is mainly good for cooking anarchists.
To Serve Anarchists
I was watching Breaking Bad and I was curious about how to make Meth. One of the first hits was a site explaining all the different ingredients, the tools, safety precautions, and basic method used in a Meth lab. Seems that If google was filtering out potentially-illegal content, that website would not be around for long. As i recall, the site mentioned dates around 2008.
Did the recipe really work and was it any good?
No idea if it works. But knowing some basics makes the show more entertaining. If someone actually wanted to risk blowing themselves up and start a meth lab, Google sure as heck isn’t stopping them from trying.