US Department of Justice demands all Google search records
January 19, 2006
In a motion filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales seeks to compel Google to comply with a previously issued subpoena asking for a week's worth of search results. The government contends that it needs the data to determine how often consumers search for pornography on the Net.
It's a fishing expedition, unconnected with any ongoing criminal prosecution.
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.
Google 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.
Other, unnamed search companies have turned over the requested material, according to a report in the San Jose Mercury News. Rival firm Yahoo Inc. didn't immediately respond to a MarketWatch request for comment.
UPDATE Yahoo acknowledged on Thursday handing over search data, but insisted no personal information on users was given to government attorneys. read more
The DOJ is seeking to defend the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down, saying it was too broad.
The 1998 Child Online Protection Act would have required adults to use access codes or other ways of registering before they could see objectionable material online, and it would have punished violators with fines up to $50,000 or jail time. The high court ruled that technology such as filtering software may better protect children.
The matter is now before a federal court in Pennsylvania, and the government wants the Google data to help argue that the law is more effective than software in protecting children from porn.
Google intends to resist. "We had lengthy discussions with them to try to resolve this, but were not able to and we intend to resist their motion vigorously, " Google associate general counsel Nicole Wong said in a statement. "Google is not a party to this lawsuit and [the] demand for information overreaches."
Although Google pledges to protect personal information, the company's privacy policy says it complies with legal and government requests. Google also has no stated guidelines on how long it keeps data, leading critics to warn that retention is potentially forever given cheap storage costs.
The case worries privacy advocates, given the vast amount of information Google and other search engines know about their users.
"This is exactly the kind of case that privacy advocates have long feared," said Ray Everett-Church, a South Bay privacy consultant. "The idea that these massive databases are being thrown open to anyone with a court document is the worst-case scenario. If they lose this fight, consumers will think twice about letting Google deep into their lives."
"The government can't even claim that it's for national security. They're just using it to get the search engines to do their research for them in a way that compromises the civil liberties of other people."
Google sets its cookies to expire in 2038, and launched products and services which make that cookie personally identifiable with a user, such as GMail, and a "personalized" search page.
"We are moving to a Google that knows more about you," Google CEO Eric Schmidt promised last year.
If, as looks likely, the DoJ succeeds, then surfers worldwide will have a US Attorney General who knows a lot more about you, too.
E-mail this story
Printer-friendly version 
Bookmark this page