Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Feds want Google search records


Reported by the San Jose Mercury News

My home town paper, no less. Well, I guess they are almost right around the corner from Google and stuff..

Anyway, it turns out:

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.

Now why is that, you ask?

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.

OK. Now, read this next paragraph and see where it gets scary:

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 one million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.

All searches from any one-week period.

I'm sure the wire will pick this up by the time the sun comes up on Thursday morning, but I thought someone might want to have a look at it just in case it takes a while.

Why does it not surprise me that in an effort to do one thing that on the surface might seem like a good idea to some, they want to trample on Google and read the entire world's searches?
Funny timing, too, no?


5 comments:

Karen said...

Well, I'm not surprised by anything the 'bushies' do. Hopefully people will get their heads *screwed on* in the right direction for the elections this year.

Actually, I did a lot of my activism from the Internet in 2004 when I "stumbled" across Howard Dean's site. We now have =splilled over= into our own blog (Howard-Empowered People - http://howardempowered.blogspot.com/) & from there a lot of us have developed our own ~baby blogs~. Stop by Howard-Empowered People or HEP as we usually refer to it; we'd love to have your thoughts. :-)

Sar said...

As if they weren't watching & listening to us enough already.

Hello Feds, how's life treating you in big bro land today?

SheaNC said...

Soon it will be too dangerous for us bloggers.

LA said...

Maybe I'm paranoid or some kind of crackpot conspiracy theorist, but I already believe it *is* dangerous for bloggers. That is to say, I don't think the feds are going to pull up in anyone's driveway for blogging, but I strongly believe some are being watched.

It would be interesting if you could track, say, IRS audits of known liberal bloggers.

What's ironic is it seems all this extra "intelligence," whether it be domestic or foreign, would just make for a big fat plodding government, which exactly how the repubs like to characterize a Democratic administration. Oh wait, I almost forgot, they're a bunch of lying hypocrites!

Hey Mike, I'll be in your town this weekend, staying in the Gaslamp district. But I somehow doubt you'll be at the Yarn and Needlecraft tradeshow this weekend! ;)

Mike V. said...

Yea, that's why I do my taxes electronically with Ituit (turbo tax) because that lessens the chance of an audit..

I was really planning on checking out some new yarn, but I might have to miss that this year. :P