In the beginning of th
e summer, I posted an item discussing potential privacy breaches and legal violations associated with the use of Google Apps in general and Google Translate in particular. At the time, some of the readers thought the risks seemed too hypothetical.
Now, a landmark New York lawsuit has taken these concerns out of the realm of potential and made them very real. In August, a New York court ordered Google to reveal the identity of an anonymous blogger accused of libel, in what is sure to become the groundbreaking case for all issues of Internet privacy. The ramifications are clear; any veneer of privacy and anonymity for web users is just that, a veneer.