Bush wants google to turn over their records

[Randall]

yahoo, msn, and aol all complied!!

 

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/19/_doj_...h_requests.html

 

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I won't use them again. I don't go to porn sites, but don't trust this govt at all.

[Front Row]

They want info on people who search online for child pornography, thats all . Once again this admin. is doing something about a serious problem and not just debating what they might do. Surely even those that don't support the admin can understand the need for this info gathering.

Or maybe they think child pornography should be legal ????

 

link

Edited January 20, 2006 by Front Row

[Randall]

They want info on people who search online for child pornography, thats all .  Once again this admin. is doing something about a serious problem and not just debating what they might do. Surely even those that don't support the admin can understand the need for this info gathering.

Or maybe they think child pornography should be legal ????  

 

link

 

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That's what they say.

 

Do you trust that's all they want? And even if it is will they handle this properly?

 

You say they are acting rather than debating, but in what have they been successful?

 

And in domestic spying, what have they stopped? I don't get any evidence from them on successes.

 

What potential attacks have they stopped?

 

A new story.

 

"Google fighting U.S. over data

 

By John Shinal & Bambi Francisco, MarketWatch

Last Update: 6:27 PM ET Jan. 19, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Google Inc. said Thursday it will fight an attempt by the Bush administration to force the company to turn over to the Justice Department information about what its users are searching for on the Internet.

 

The world's largest online-search company intends to "resist the government's efforts vigorously," Google associate general counsel Nicole Wong said in an emailed statement.

 

Google issued the statement in response to a motion filed in a federal court in San Jose, Calif., Wednesday by U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The motion seeks to compel Google to comply with a subpoena issued last summer that sought extensive data regarding search results.

 

The Justice Department also issued subpoenas in 2005 to other large search companies, including Yahoo Inc. and Time-Warner Inc.'s AOL unit, which both said they have complied with the government's request, but on a limited basis. Microsoft Corp. declined to comment on whether it received a subpoena.

 

The attorney general's motion is part of a legal effort by the Bush administration to revive a 1998 law aimed at combating online child pornography. The government wants the information to build a case that the law -- struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004 -- is needed because pornography-filtering software isn't effective.

 

Privacy advocates criticized the government's effort as a misguided and overly broad attempt to peer into the search results of U.S. citizens regardless of whether they've committed a crime.

 

"The place to control what is displayed on a home computer screen is in the home," said Jim Harper, director of information-policy studies at the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank. "It's up to parents -- not the government -- to control what kids see online," Harper said.

 

Information on every query

 

The Justice Department's original subpoena asked Google to produce an electronic file containing every query typed into the company's search engine between June 1 and July 31, 2005.

 

After what the government called "lengthy negotiations" with Google, it narrowed its request to a file containing "the text of each search string entered into Google's search engine over a one-week period." The requested file would not contain "any information identifying the person who entered such query," according to the Wednesday filing.

 

But Google remained adamant about not giving out information about its users or their search queries, given that it was not a party to the original lawsuit -- filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and others -- that led to the 1998 Child Online Protection Act's being struck down by the U.S. high court.

 

"Google is not a party to this lawsuit and [the] demand for information overreaches," Wong said in her statement.

 

The government is hoping that if it can prove that online pornography filtering software isn't working, it would bolster its legal argument that a new law is needed to protect children from online pornography.

 

In its decision affirming a lower-court ruling against the 1998 law, the Supreme Court said the government hadn't allowed enough time to pass to determine whether technology -- in the form of filtering software -- could accomplish what the law intended.

 

A spokesperson for Microsoft's MSN unit said the company doesn't comment on specific government inquiries, but added it's the company's policy to respond to legal requests "in a timely manner in full compliance with applicable law."

 

Yahoo and AOL said they complied with the government's request in a way that protected their users' privacy.

 

"We did not provide any personal information in response to the Department of Justice's subpoena," said Mary Osako, a Yahoo spokeswoman. "In our opinion, this is not a privacy issue," said Osako. "We complied on a limited basis and did not provide any personally-identifiable information," she said.

 

AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein said the company "did not comply with the specific requests in that subpoena." Instead, AOL "gave them a generic aggregated list of anonymous searches from a one-day period."

 

The Cato Institute's Harper called it "very disturbing" that the government would request such data and that Internet companies would provide it.

 

"What we're seeing is just the start of a trend in which government prosecutors will use (Internet) search results in criminal investigations," Harper said.

 

"History shows that, when given that power, the government will take it much further than most Americans would want," he said."

Edited January 20, 2006 by Randall