How about this: Google reports to Feds locations of "Flu" search
 

SICK SURVEILLANCE: GOOGLE REPORTS FLU SEARCHES, LOCATIONS TO FEDS
Tue Nov 11 2008 15:34:50 ET

GOOGLE will launch a new tool that will help federal officials "track sickness".

"Flu Trends" uses search terms that people put into the web giant to figure out where influenza is heating up, and will notify the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in real time!

GOOGLE, continuing to work closely with government, claims it would keep individual user data confidential: "GOOGLE FLU TRENDS can never be used to identify individual users because we rely on anonymized, aggregated counts of how often certain search queries occur each week."

Engineers will capture keywords and phrases related to the flu, including thermometer, flu symptoms, muscle aches, chest congestion and others.

Dr. Lyn Finelli, chief of influenza surveillance at CDC: "One thing we found last year when we validated this model is it tended to predict surveillance data. The data are really, really timely. They were able to tell us on a day-to-day basis the relative direction of flu activity for a given area. They were about a week ahead of us. They could be used... as early warning signal for flu activity."

Eric Schmidt, GOOGLE's chief executive vows: "From a technological perspective, it is the beginning."

Thomas Malone, professor at M.I.T.: "I think we are just scratching the surface of what's possible with collective intelligence.

Interesting with other implications.

I am not sure that it will have any validity.

Well, the article says it was valid last year. Still, it does seem ... using google to find the flu? Seriously?

What's next?

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Someone actually spent money to produce that, pretty crazy.:D

Shu shu retarded flu. Too damn funny.

As long as they don't give up the locations of the "big-boobie teen nympho sluts" searches, I'm safe.

Just watch out for this guy:

http://pysih.com/wp-content/uploads/...to-see-you.jpg

Don't worry, I'm sure nobody monitors or reports on "assult weapons" or "handgun" or "concealed carry" threads. Just stuff the government can use to keep the citizenry "safe".

Big bro is going to know when you take a dump as well, it's only going to get worse.:D

This is based on the concept of "collective intelligence" which has significant possibilities and is finally getting traction via widely distributed tech like the internets.

See MIT's page on collective intelligence here:
http://cci.mit.edu/

Us humans have got to get this stuff right, but the "rub" is misuse of data, of course.

FWIW.

"collective intelligence" sounds like an oxymoron to me!

If we can have the above then I suppose we can have "collective ignorance" as well. People will believe what they want to believe, so much of what is on the internet is rubbish anyway. Most are not smart enough to look for the actual truth in what they read. They are just believers not seekers of actual knowledge.