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U.S. Government Wants Google Search Records
JimBridgerBowl writes "According to the San Jose Mercury News, The Bush administration wants access to Google's huge database of search queries submitted by users to track how often pornography is returned in results. This information would be used for Bush's appeal of the 2004 COPA law, targeted to prevent access to pornography by children. The law was struck down because it would have restricted adults access to legal pornography. Google is promising to fight the release of this information." From the article: "The Supreme Court invited the government to either come up with a less drastic version of the law or go to trial to prove that the statute does not violate the First Amendment and is the only viable way to combat child porn. As a result, government lawyers said in court papers they are developing a defense of the 1998 law based on the argument that it is far more effective than software filters in protecting children from porn."
...then there would be nothing to obtain.
When did Google start asking for your age along with your query? How are they going to tie queries to ages?
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
Both the summary and the article speak of child porn and protecting children from accessing porn as if they're interchangeable. Well, they're not - which one is it?
There's no more sure-fire way to push people's buttons than to mention child porn... bah. Always makes me feel that it trivializes the problem when it's being used to push someone's agenda.
ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.
children seeing porn != child porn
Trust me, I work for the government.
Easy: it can't. The Internet is a global thing now, and a law here in the USA isn't going to mean jack in China. They might come up with some sort of legal statement saying that any porn site must be blocked by ISPs in the US. Then again, we've seen how effective these have been for other countries, not to mention that censorship has up until now been one of this country's "great ideals." I still say nothing beats regulation by parents. Inform your kids about what's appropriate to say and do online in a public forum. Monitor their net surfing either in person, with a filter (NetNanny, etc), or by checking your cache after they're done. If they're not behaving, then it's good parenting to take whatever action is appropriate.
I thought the two salient points from the article were
1) Google were resisting the subpoena
and
2) Others (unnamed) had complied with the subpoena
which is slightly worrying for those that use other search engines.
Statement 2 is FALSE.
Being a innocent can cost you your home and job. It does not have to be a government that violating your rights;
It can be a name that matches yours. Then you have to prove that you are not the matching person. Think Indentiy Theif.
It can be looking like another person. Then you have to prove that you are not that person. Think Misintification.
In both case you are out the money it cost you clean it up. The public memory can be short, but with the internet... it can be long. This means that you will have do the fight over and over.
Isn't there already a country that filters all the content that they allow within their borders on the internet? Hmmmm......oh yeah.
Welcome to China!
That's not the impression that I got FTA. Poring through a massive database of search logs would be much more difficult, time-consuming and inaccurate than simply writing a script to query Google with ramdon words and logging any results that lead to porn.
It seems to me that they want to do some data mining, maybe to identify terrorists (or dissenters), and they could just be using the "what about the children" thing in their attempt to gain access.
If Google is to remain un-evil, maybe it's time for a solar flare to wipe out the records (until the backups can be restored after this is all over).
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
What's truly frightening is that, in todays America, you had to give some consideration to whether that quote was factual or not.
rev.jsfk
That's the logical fallacy of the sheep. Why is it so many people prefer to bury their heads in the sand, and refuse to learn?
Sir, please open your eyes. Millions of innocent people have been slaughtered throughout human history (often within their own laws) by various governments. As shocking and frightening as it must seem to you, being innocent is no safeguard. Indeed, innocence has nothing to do with it when government officials are granted vast, unchecked power.
The only safeguard between yourself and unjustified prosecution and imprisonment (or even death) is a thin, old piece of paper. And people's willingness to uphold the words written on it.
I suggest you acquaint yourself with it.
Or perhaps I should make it more simple. The Bush administration has shown itself willing to abuse the power it had before the Patriot Act was passed. The question now before us is what are the limits to its current power?
You may not like the answer. Your "rights" have been redefined, and so has the definition of "abuse".
Innocence isn't going to save you if you are currently viewed as the wrong type of person. Indeed, in such cases you no longer have a right to legal counsel, or to let other people know you have been detained. Or the right to a speedy trial.
Welcome the new world that your elected representatives have given you. But please don't be under the mistaken assumption that innocence will protect you, or that the government isn't abusing your legally defined rights.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
This was already used years ago to try to shut down the mail order porn industry - a DA would order something (via mail) to some county with a sympathetic judge and file suit there for violating community standards where it was recieved. It's an unacceptable burden to require someong fulfilling a request to first analyze the community standards of the reciepient, and the problem is even worse on the internet.
Lastly, it's important to remember that the internet is *not* like the real world, and that "community standards" a pretty questionable standard to apply to it anyway. Unlike physical locations, you can't be required to pass by a porn site in order to get to somewhere else. If you're looking at porn on the internet, then you're either doing it with full knowledge of your circumstances, someone has subverted your computer, or you're doing foolish image searches. And even if it's the last, I think it's extremely questionable that we need legislation to "protect" against this. I suspect that the amount of porn "delivered to children" when those children weren't actively seeking it out is extremely minimal and unlikely to happen enough to damage someone.
I'll give an allegory for the whole "accidental search" thing. When I was in high school a few friends and I were on a road trip to Seattle. We were wandering around the city and saw a sign for some shop that was something like "fantasy bookstore". I'm sure you can see where this is going - it was, of course, an adult sex toy/bookstore, not at all the right kind of fantasy. But just like when you mis-click on a search result, it took about 10 seconds for us to realize that we'd made a wrong turn and go back out. The fact that a minor can accidently walk through the door of an adult bookstore (much less a minor who actively tries to sneak in past the proprietor) does not mean we need legislation to "protect" that.
Child Porn is the root password to the Constitution.
(Terrorism is the alternate password).
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Karma be damned, here I go.
You mention that kids entering a porn shop should be shown the door. That's 100% correct. However, kids entering a website. How is the owner to know that it's a kid? What if the kid lies and says "Sure, I'm 18!" There's nothing anyone can do about that, and I don't care how great your programming skills are.
The truth of the matter is that porn is going to be on the internet, the mail, the TV and video etc because there are a lot of legal adults that are interested enough in it to make it profitable, so it's not going to go away. What needs to be done is place the responsibility of supervision firmly where it belongs... the parents or guardians. If little billy-joe-bob is wandering the llama sex sites, why should the llama sex site owner be sued? (ignoring the obvious llama activity) billy-joe-bob's parents should be supervising his internet usage and controlling his access.
There also needs to be reasonable limits set on accesibility. Sure an 11 or 12 yr old kid shouldn't have access to porn, although I know a few that would actively look for it if they could. Hell damn near every 13 yr old (or older) boy on the planet is most likely actively looking for porn. I personally feel that if a child is able to decide to go looking for the stuff, and his or her parents aren't monitoring that connection, the website owner shouldn't be penalized. If the website owner is spamming porn or placing links in google that are deceptive that's another story. Luring people of ANY age to your porn site should be illegal period. However if a 13 yr old clicks on a link "RED HOT TEEN PUSSY THAT WANTS YOU!" well.. that 13 yr old certainly isn't looking for pictures of burning felines waiting to be adopted.
The world according to SComps