Google Tracks Flu, But Ignores Hackers

Drudge has an interesting note up on his site today that reports that the Centers for Disease Control are working with Google to track, in real time, influenza hotspots based on user-input search queries.

Hmph. To my knowledge, this is the first time Google has voluntarily worked with the government on anything.  Oh, they will work with the Chinese to censor the populace from offensive words like “Falun Gong” or “Tiannemen Square massacre.” But when it comes to protecting people from hackers, Google is mum.

Google is in the unique position to be able to spot global trends for searches for web-based vulnerabilities. For instance, if there was a vulnerability in a specific PHP file that was common on many websites, and the search for that specific file were to spike suddenly, likely caused by hackers looking for weaknesses, Google could report the trend to the government’s cyber centers.  Likewise, Google could easily write software that would recognize credit card numbers in search results, and report such instances to the federal government too.  This could go a long way to protect people against identity theft.

Maybe the coming administration can have better success getting Google to create public services such as the tools I mentioned.