And yet retaining information is only part of the problem. The Patriot Act can put some pretty demanding requirements on companies such as Google. They can be asked, if not obliged to cooperate with investigations by providing search data or email headers.<p>Take for example this article by the ACLU, in particular the <i>Pen register searches applied to the Internet</i> section (<a href="http://www.aclu.org/national-security/surveillance-under-usa-patriot-act" rel="nofollow">http://www.aclu.org/national-security/surveillance-under-usa...</a>). I'm not a lawyer, but given those guidelines the query string variables used by Google seem to be within the purveys of the law. Subsequently they are required to allow the appropriate government agencies to access these requests if they so desire.<p>In brief, Schmidt's quote is incredibly relevant, because people might be mistaken about what is private under the law. He suggests that people adopt a common sense approach to their activities, especially the ones they consider of a sensitive nature. Instead of suggesting people become familiar with very complex legal documents or adopt a false sense of security. People need to stop thinking that all transactions with web servers are somehow private or privileged, when the government clearly does not want them to be.