In the mix...Google reveals how many government requests for data it gets, Amazon tries First Amendment privacy argument, and the World Bank opens its databases

1) Google is providing data on how many government requests they get for data. As various people have pointed out, the site has its limitations, but it's still fascinating.  We've been thinking a lot about how attractive our datatrust would be to governments, and how we can best deal with requests and remain transparent.  This seems like a good option and maybe something all companies should consider doing.2) In related news, Amazon is refusing the state of North Carolina's request for its customer data. North Carolina wants the names and addresses of every customer and what they bought since 2003!  They want to audit Amazon's compliance with North Carolina's state tax laws.  I think NC's request is nuts--are they really prepared to go through 50 million purchases?  It may just be legal posturing, given Amazon already gave them anonymized data on the purchases of NC residents, but what's really interesting to me is Amazon's argument that its customers have First Amendment rights in their purchases.  I heard a similar argument at a talk at NYU a few months ago, that instead of arguing privacy rights, which are not explicitly defined in the Constitution, we should be arguing for freedom of association rights when we seek to protect ourselves from data requests like this.  Interesting to see where this goes.3) The World Bank is opening up its development data. This is data people used to pay for and now it's free, so it's exciting news.  But as with most public data out there, it's really just indicators, aggregates, statistics, and such, rather than raw data you can query in an open-ended way.  Wouldn't that be really exciting?