The short story “Scroogled” by Cory Doctorow provides a particularly frightening vision of the future based on the improper use of Google technology. The indexing and databasing system developed by Google is a dangerously powerful tool which has the devastating potential to allow more efficient surveillance by totalitarian governments. Particularly with the rise of terrorism, security and surveillance has become a more significant concern with some arguing that curbed civil liberties are simply the price which must be paid to ensure safety against these rogue threats while other have asserted that this would undermine the freedoms of civil society. With the rapid new development of this technology and others like it, there will need to be clearly defined ethics and perhaps some restraint regarding some of the features which are possible from a technical level but which pose too great of a threat to privacy. Some governments have already tried to put in place laws to combat parts of this problem. The European Union has reached a new agreement with Google regarding data privacy in attempt to protect individuals. Government regulation could provide protection against this collection of personal data, but they cannot be relied upon entirely. As we saw from “Scroogled,” governments and intelligence agencies stand to benefit significantly from this data collection, therefore we are still at risk. Internet users need to keep in mind that they are not anonymous; their web browsing can be tracked and therefore they should conduct themselves with this awareness.