US Government Wants Google’s Data
January 19th, 2006 by Michael Gray in Google, Media, NewsIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone as it was bound to happen sooner or later, but the US Government wants Google to turn over some of it’s search records and history.
MercuryNews.com Feds after Google data
The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order Google to turn over a broad range of material from its closely guarded databases.
The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law was meant to punish online pornography sites that make their content accessible to minors. The government contends it needs the Google data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches.
In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Justice Department lawyers revealed that Google has refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year for the records, which include a request for 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.
The Mountain View-based search and advertising giant opposes releasing the information on a variety of grounds, saying it would violate the privacy rights of its users and reveal company trade secrets, according to court documents.
Good on Google for standing up to the feds, whether they will succeed or not is bit iffy right now. Kinda makes you regret installing that toolbar, webaccelerator, using personalized search, and GMail now doesn’t it?
Categories:( google | google | government | government | privacy | privacy | security | security)
Sphere It
January 19th, 2006 at 11:48 am
One of Google’s initial business models was selling statistical data that it collected via user searches. That makes said data ripe for the picking as far as the government is concerned.
Now after years of saying how much they respect user privacy, it could come out that the so called innocuous data could in fact be used to track your every move, and they are scared of how that makes them look.
I’m sure this is just another entry in the epic battle between Google and Government that will be gaining momentum over the next few years.
January 19th, 2006 at 10:06 pm
If Google gives in or is even forced to give in this would really be a black eye for them.
January 20th, 2006 at 10:14 am
It seems crazy the government could force Google to give up user information. I remember a court battle in which the government tried to force a lawyer to reveal confidential client information. I believe the lawyer won. (Of course, the stakes were probably much lower in that situation.)