• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, August 22, 2006

More than two weeks after AOL posted 20 million search queries of more than half a million members, the debacle has cost three people their jobs: Chief Technology Officer Maureen Govern, as well as two employees in the technology research division, have departed.

On a more forward-looking note, AOL also said it would reconsider privacy policies, including policies about its storage of data. In a memo e-mailed to employees yesterday, AOL head Jonathan Miller said the company was creating a panel to address consumer privacy. "Among other issues, the task force will look specifically at how long we should save data, including search data, and will make recommendations to improve the AOL Privacy Policy and our privacy practices company-wide," Miller told employees.

The committee will be led by General Counsel Randy Boe and Vice Chairman Ted Leonsis--one of the few AOL executives to publicly write about the search data debacle, or "Data Valdez," as it's called by the blogosphere. In an Aug. 9 post titled, "We're sorry," Leonsis wrote that he felt "just awful" about the data release. "After we have worked so hard to build our users' trust and protect their privacy for so many years, a single mistake can put it all at risk," Leonsis wrote. "In my time as an AOL executive, this is one of our saddest days."

Miller's memo also promises to restrict access to databases containing search data, and to evaluate new systems to exclude identifying information from databases. An AOL source familiar with the matter said that the company might figure out how to exclude, for instance, queries for proper names or 16-digit numbers (usually credit cards).

Additionally, Miller said the company would implement privacy awareness programs for all levels of employees--an initiative that probably can't hurt. In fact, whatever the official policy was in the past, it's safe to say that consumer privacy was not top-of-mind among all employees. How else could the company have posted 658,000 users' queries--and not just a few, but every single query for three months, including names, social security numbers, addresses and other identifying information.

Of course, training programs and task forces can only go so far. Whether these steps will help AOL repair its image will depend on what the company actually does with consumer information in the future, not just what it promises to do.