DuckDuckGo: illusion of privacy?
<i>"Option 2
Many smaller internet companies, including DuckDuckGo, do not operate their own data-center, but instead are “hosted” in another provider’s datacenter.  In DuckDuckGo’s case, they are hosted by Verizon Internet Services.  We’ve all learned about the cozy relationship between the NSA and Verizon, it is quite imaginable that Verizon would simply give them access to a DuckDuckGo server, or the load-balancer which is likely owned and operated by Verizon and upon which the SSL decryption key is installed.  They don’t need continuous access, 30 seconds is all that would be necessary to copy the cert."</i><p>And Gabriel's response to that:
<i>"There are many additional legal and technical inaccuracies in this article and I will not address all of them in this comment. All our front-end servers are hosted on Amazon not Verizon, for example."</i><p>Might as well %s/Verizon/Amazon/g…<p>I also found what Gabriel said here to be interesting:<p><i>"We have not received any request like this, and do not expect to. We have spoken with many lawyers particularly skilled and experienced in this part of US and international law. If we were to receive such a request we believe as do these others it would be highly unconstitutional on many independent grounds, and there is plenty of legal precedent there. With CALEA in particular, search engines are exempt."</i><p>So apparently speaking to a couple of lawyers who are probably not upon the FISA court (who apparently pretty much just stamp what has been decided) now have a say in whether such actions can be taken by the NSA and whether they are unconstitutional are not?<p>Don't get me wrong, I've been using DuckDuckGo for a couple of years now, but that's laughable.