Three AOL subscribers have filed suit against the online service in the U.S. District Court in Oakland, Calif., the Associated Press reports, noting that this is "believed to be the first [suit brought] in the wake of AOL's release of about 19 million search requests made over a three-month period by more than 650,000 AOL customers."

Apparently, AOL's abject apology, the sacking of two hapless employees, the resignation of the CTO, and the company's committment to appoint a "Chief Privacy Officer" did little to assuage the fury of these users, or the litigious enthusiasm of the law firm of Berman DeValerio Pease Tabacco Burt & Pucillo. The plaintiffs are seeking damages and also aim to prevent AOL from keeping any records of user search data going forward. TechCrunch, which neatly summarizes the case, writes that the suit seeks "$1,000 in damages per user affected and $4,000 more per user in California." That may not be much per user - "Privacy is cheap!" writes Marshall Kirkpatrick - but it's pushing $1 billion over all. Ouch!

Not that anyone is predicting such a payout just yet. Slashdot readers are, in fact, discounting the suit's chances of success. "Since search inputs are sent over the Internet as plain text, and there are often warnings generated by browsers to explain that this isn't secure, I wonder if AOL has done anything illegal and/or anything that they can be sued for in civil court?" wonders one user. Another adds that, even if the plaintiffs prevail, it's unlikely they'd succeed in preventing AOL or other search engines from storing user seach data: "No one would ever rule against [such archiving] because of its potential use as evidence; especially with the push to mandate retention policies."