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March 14, 2006 10:44 AM PST
Judge to help feds against Google
Last modified: March 14, 2006 3:06 PM PST
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U.S. District Judge James Ware said he intends to release his decision "very quickly," and that he might give the Justice Department access to a portion of Google's index of Web sites, but not to its users' search terms.
Ware said he was reluctant to give the Justice Department everything it wanted because of the "perception by the public that this is subject to government scrutiny" when they type search terms into Google.com.
On Jan. 18, the Justice Department asked Ware to order Google to comply with a subpoena. It demands a "random sampling" of 1 million Internet addresses accessible through Google's search engine, and a random sampling of 1 million search queries submitted to Google in a one-week period.
During negotiations, the Justice Department narrowed its request to 50,000 URLs and said it would look at only 10,000. It also said it wanted 5,000 search queries and would look at 1,000.
Ware said that the reduced demand, coupled with the government's "willingness to compensate Google" for up to eight days of its programmers' time, had convinced him to grant the Justice Department at least some of what it had requested.
During the hearing, which lasted about 90 minutes, Google's lawyer, Al Gidari, stressed that there is an alternative for the Justice Department's social science research, which is designed to show the flaws of filtering software and defend an antipornography law in court.
Video:
Google, ACLU respond to judge
Hear from ACLU attorney Aden Fine and Google attorney Al Gidari after the federal hearings Tuesday in San Jose, Calif.
"They can go to Alexa," Gidari said. "They have 4 billion URLs."
Gidari said that Alexa Internet, which is owned by Amazon.com, is a site that offers Web analytics services that can produce similar information "without entangling us in litigation going forward."
That point was raised repeatedly by Ware, who seemed concerned that if he granted the request, "a slew of trial attorneys and curious social scientists could follow suit."
"Now Google could face hundreds of university professors (saying), 'I've got a study I'd like you to conduct,'" Ware said.
The outcome will determine whether the Justice Department will be able to use Google search terms in a social science research project that will be used this fall to defend an antipornography law. The Bush administration argues that criminal sanctions in the 1998 law--which has been placed on hold by the courts--are more effective ways to shield children than antiporn-filtering software.
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Though the Justice Department also demanded that Yahoo, Microsoft and America Online hand over similar records, Google was the only recipient that chose to fight the subpoena in court. The other companies have stressed that they turned over search terms and logs but not information that could be linked to individuals.
The dispute has elevated the prominence of search privacy, touching on how divorce lawyers or employers in a severance dispute could gain access to search terms that people have typed in. It's also raised eyebrows because Google chose to cooperate with a demand by the Chinese government to censor searches on the company's Google.cn site.
If the Justice Department does win this case, Google would likely face a second round of subpoenas from the American Civil Liberties Union for follow-up information. The ACLU is challenging the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, or COPA, which makes it a crime for a commercial Web site to post material that some jurors might find "harmful" to any minor who stumbles across it.
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I'm curious as to what that judge looks up on Google, I'm sure he wouldn't mind if that was shred with the rest of the world, now would he?
I'm curious as to what that judge looks up on Google, I'm sure he wouldn't mind if that was shred with the rest of the world, now would he?
Another conspicuous example of the Bush cronies and naive, ignorant, hypocritical Christian right to control the rest of us and inflict everyone else with their centuries-old tainted ideology. Get your nose out of my business, you religious zealouts and Republican freaks!
b) the data is google's property! google is not accused of a crime and should be under no obligation to release their property. a warrant (not a subpeona) would be needed if this was physical property.
c) this is another example of our government going too far in its attempts to be/replace our mother. how's about focusing on poverty, peace, and jobs instead?
All you pro-Bush/pro- wartime tax-cut (for the elite) folks, take note ... the very admin you voted for is stealing your rights rights and anyone's and anybody's (e.g. Google) it wants and it will stop at nothing to get it. Wake up!
1) What about the parents? Parents should be involved in what their child is doing. No, I'm not talking about standing over them while they are online. Most routers have built-in controls that can control a particular local IP's browsing habits. The parent can set it up to limit what sites are or are not allowed. Parents can review logs of where the child surfed.
2) What about the proposal for adding a new TLD (top level domain) for all porn sites? A ".xxx". That would making any filtering easy. The only problem I see with it is who determines what is pornographic. Traditional porn (sex acts, sex stories, sites that charge for viewing nude pictures or videos, etc.) are almost universally accepted as pornographic. What about medical site that may have nude images? Personally, I feel if it's a publicly accessible site for the purpose displaying nude images, sex stories, etc., it should be listed as a ".xxx" domain.
Lets face it, if a child wants to view naked or semi-naked images, they will always have the lingerie section of the Sears catalog or The National Geographic magazine. Neither of which is pornographic.
If the information sought would be commercially available, then let the government buy it like everyone else, that's only fair.
But, what we have here is not only intrusive, privacy-demeaning government, we have lazy, expedient-seeking government.
They could do this research themselves, but chose to use a subpoena as an expedient method.
Dud!
C'mon Justice, get off your lazy duffs and do the work yourselves, or pay for it, as you should.
Diogenes
Google & Google fighting it is a Hoax. It is the classic mind game.
It is the classic "Good Cop" "Bad Cop" game being played on the people.
It is intended to create sympathy for Google, and to keep Google in daily
news coverage.
But in fact Google is as much a part of the US gov as are CIA, NSA, etc.
Do you think for one second that US gov is spending 100s of Billions of
dollars to control what people say or see worldwide from 1000s of
US bases spread through out the world, that it then would need the
permission of Google to look at its data!
Come on, how naive do they think people are!
Hek under the Patriots act it just takes an order of the right person at the
Justice department to get copies of any data, from library to email
servers to any server, to put active lessoning devices anywhere they
want, etc. etc.
"How soon we forget history.....Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force. And like fire, it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master.
Looks like the fourth amendment is now ashes in a funeral pyre, and freedom, is now a dated concept!
Can we conclude that regardless of what the DOJ actually find in the search data this study will come out in the DOJ's favor?
http://www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly/morgue/news/1998_Aug_26.JUDGE.html
Why don't we just make the internet not available to children? They can have LAN at their schools, and they can dial into their LAN at school; but any other use of the net by persons under 18 should be illegal.
It will give the little guys something to look forward to... you know... when they grow up...
meantime they can be kids and go out and get some fresh air and exercise.
These words to the wise are from a grandmother, who once had to be a mother to become a grandmother... yes we had a pc in the home... NOT hooked up to the net. We used to take the power cord to work with us to keep the kids off the pc while we were working. When we came home they each got an hour on it....
They're all grown people now with pc's in their homes. And nobody grew up stupid because they couldn't be on the internet at 12.
There is a time and a place for everything. And kids don't belong on the internet. Period. They don't need to have every single thing from the day they are born forward. A little hunger to work for the nice things in life didn't hurt me or mine a bit.
If there were no kids on the internet; there would be no excuse for the government to use TIA to spy on American citizens. We all know it is a political tool and they are practicing totalitarianism. Of course, we can't change the rules now because they have all the keys.
But I am willing to bet the idea of getting vulnerable children off the net would be a hard one to go against politically... and it could solve some problems... taking away just one excuse to spy on us.
Search term: "George Bush" + "idiot"
Results: 3,160,000
Search term: "Bill Clinton" + "idiot"
Results: 1,650,000
Search term: "George Bush" + "fascist"
Results: 1,580,000
Search term: "Bill Clinton" + "fascist"
Results: 634,000
Search term: "George Bush" + "fascist" + "idiot"
Results: 262,000
Search term: "Bill Clinton" + "fascist" + "idiot"
Results: 160,000
The government has expanded to great heights under both this administration and congress.
This is yet another fine example of our tax dollars at work. The governmant has hired someone to prove a conclusion they've already reached...
Sad.
Italy few years ago and killed like 40 people without anyone going to jail for it, to the unjust & barbaric invasion of Iraq that has killed like 1Million+ people, to kidnapping Italian citizens off Milan to take them to outside Italy, to US bases all over the Italy, that the US government does not need the permission of Google or Yahoo to eavesdrop on our searches, they can have it in a heart beat
and in fact I am sure that Google or Yahoo are as much part of the US government effort to control the world as are bases all over Italy & Europe, etc.
So I as an IT professional and professor of Computer science am urging all my colleagues to find or finance a European based search
engine, just like we created Linux & MySQL here in Europe.
- Oldest Government in the World?
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by Batchain
March 17, 2006 9:13 PM PST
- "Our" gov't is the oldest in the world? Has no one heard of Britain?
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