Comment 89 for bug 1054776

Here's a cross-post of my comment on Jono Bacon's blog, for convenience and in case it fails moderation:

I have several questions that have yet to be answered:

One, why did the shopping lens get an "executive decision" rush pass on the feature freeze process with apparently no thought put into things like the use of HTTPS, the potential for adult content to be displayed in results, and the privacy and security implications of sending every query on the home dash out over the 'net?

Two, has any research has been done on how the shopping lens, as an opt-out component of the home lens, might violate privacy laws in countries like Canada and Germany? (From what I've read on the bug for the planned "Firefox Health Check" feature, German law is apparently pretty strict about this sort of thing.)

Three, what's so wrong about separating local and remote searching? I think having a unified, easy-to-access lens for shopping is a great idea... on the condition that searches like "my porn" and "Finan...", "torr" and "Inksc...", "TuxR...", and "disability supp..." can't leak into it. Cognitively, "all local" and "all remote" are separate, desirable, but distinct categories.

Four, does Mark Shuttleworth really believe that, when we trust Canoncal with root access to update our packages, we are also implicitly granting permission to spy on our home dash queries with only a "trust us. it's anonymous." to protect us?