Thursday, January 19, 2006

Feds after Google data

I find this a bit chilling. The government cannot even claim this is a vital national security issue. It is interesting to note all of the portals turned over the information, but google was the only holdout.

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.

Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel for Google, said the company will fight the government's effort ``vigorously.''


link

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The article was removed from the Silicon Valley site, which is more chilling because I cannot find it anywhere... the archive for this article is unattainable.

July 24, 2006  

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