Patriot Search

April 15, 2007 9:36 AM

Patriot SearchWhether you are a normal searcher, someone trying to download illegal material, a terrorist looking to build a bomb, or just hunting porn, we at Patriot Search welcome you! Our mission is to provide the best possible search engine to you while at the same time, making sure the government is informed should you search for something obscure, illegal, or unpatriotic
posted by Postroad (13 comments total)

The chances are quite high, given what we know about the NSA broad-spectrum wiretapping, that they already know without Google being involved at all.
posted by Malor at 9:38 AM on April 15, 2007

Heehee.

I appreciate that it's not particularly nationalistic. (emphasis mine): "Thanks, your search has been recorded and will be shared with the governments of the world!"

Also, I like the advanced syntax missing from Google:

By typing terrorist:true preceding any search query, you tell us and the governments of the world that you are in fact a terrorist, or involved in terrorist activity, or planning to get involved in such activity, or that you once met a terrorist (or you met someone who met a terrorist). If you are no terrorist, you can type terrorist:false.

posted by Bugbread at 10:21 AM on April 15, 2007

Man, and here I was wasting time on form 26/B, sitting around and reporting my searches manually! What a timesaver!
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:44 AM on April 15, 2007

Patriot Search sounds like a new name for sneak and peek searches.
posted by sebastienbailard at 10:56 AM on April 15, 2007

Now come on... where's the window-dressing security? I demand that this patriot site keep file copies of our ID for weapons-related searches. Of course a YMCA card or Sams Club ID will be sufficient, but we've got to be secure and all and make sure it's uploaded with 128 bit encryption in case any terrorists intercept it.
posted by rolypolyman at 11:12 AM on April 15, 2007

Love the privacy policy:

We believe privacy policies are only of value for those who have something to hide. We further believe that only those who are engaging in criminal activity have something to hide in the first place.

In fact, your motivation to read this privacy policy seems highly suspicious to us. Rest assured you've just been reported to the government.
posted by mediareport at 11:22 AM on April 15, 2007

From the page linked from that page:

Furthermore, Google was asked to provide a list of URLs of all pages in its index.

I think they should provide that information, printed out at 12pt, in a random order. Just turn up at the head office one day, and deliver it.
posted by Grangousier at 11:26 AM on April 15, 2007

Or maybe some 1920's style ticker-tape paper RSS feed directly to POTUS's office?

That would be a fun project.
posted by YoBananaBoy at 11:48 AM on April 15, 2007

If I were the NSA I'd tap search request traffic going to Google from / through backbones rather than wasting time trying to subpoena anyone.

Maybe I'd also tap traffic coming from here to Google.
posted by fleetmouse at 2:44 PM on April 15, 2007

YoBananaBoy writes "Or maybe some 1920's style ticker-tape paper RSS feed directly to POTUS's office?"

Google stopped announcing pages indexed back in 2005, and at that point there were 8 billion pages. Let's be really conservative and assume that it now has only 2 billion more, for a total of 10 billion pages.

Let's see...1 URL, printed out, average length of, say, 3 cm?

That makes 30,000,000,000 cm.
300,000,000 meters.
300,000 kilometers.

That's a tickertape strip long enough to circle the earth 7.5 times.

Of course, tickertape machines are slow. Let's say a tickertape machine can do 10 cm a second.

30,000,000,000 cm of tickertape would take 3,000,000,000 seconds.
50,000,000 minutes.
833,333 hours.
34,722 days.
95 years.
posted by Bugbread at 4:00 PM on April 15, 2007

Sorry, you got my mind in number-crunchin' mode.

Let's assume, instead, that Google decides to do things the way the government intended, printing out URLs at a reasonable side on regular paper, doublesided. 10.5 point font would result in approximately 80 URLs per page.

For 10,000,000,000 URLs, at 80 URLs per piece of paper, that's a 125,000,000 page document. Doublesided printing, and we have 62,500,000 pieces of paper.

Average weight of a piece of paper: 5 grams.
62,500,000 pieces of paper at 5 grams per page = 312,500,000 grams. 312,500 kilograms.
Upper limit of weight of an adult African elephant = 7,000 kilograms.
Therefore:
Google URL index = 44 large adult African elephants.

Printing speed of fastest, most expensive Fuji Xerox printer: 110 pages per minute.
125,000,000 pages = 1,136,363 minutes to print up the URL list.
That's 18,940 hours.
That's 789 days.
That's 2.16 years.

...

Ok, I think I've got it out of my system now.
posted by Bugbread at 4:16 PM on April 15, 2007

making sure the government is informed should you search for something obscure, illegal, or .....

So searching for something obscure is reportable? Ah man, am I ever going to get in trouble for my interest in 17th century animal husbandry.
posted by jlowen at 4:54 PM on April 15, 2007

Isn't this satire?
posted by Mister_A at 7:53 AM on April 16, 2007