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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."
The solution is obvious! Let's all submit pornographic requests to Google.
I guess bush really wants to know how many people are looking for 'Miserable failure' on google.
200GB/2TB $7.95 Coupon: SAVE90DOLLAR
...then there would be nothing to obtain.
I've got the results right here.
Interestingly enough, the first results all deal with being victimized by pornography. There goes my buzz.
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
But how can a law that puts no filter whatsoever in place be more effective than a software filter?
That aside, this is pretty alarming. But let's haul out two old arguments: 1. the media tends to be alarmist (true), and 2. if you're innocent, you shouldn't have to worry (true, but only if the government isn't violating the rights of the innocent, and leads to the possibility of forfeiting other rights).
I am scientifically inaccurate.
What relevance is the data if they can't divide it into demographics?
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.
"We need to see how much of the political commentary online is speech protected by the First Amendment, and how much is dangerous speech that can't be allowed in these extraordinary times," a Whitehouse spokesman said.
I really think we need an amendment to the Constitution that says "the words 'no law' shall be construed by the courts to mean 'no law whatsoever, without exceptions, and this means you, moron.'"
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
If the administration wants statistics to back up there bill, why not ask Google for statistical data regarding pornographic requests instead of records of the actually quaries?
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.
I'm sure glad no one "protected" me from porno when I was a kid. Someone always has an older brother or father with porno mags and they make the rounds. I had a pretty good collection before I turned 18 and it was legal - from playboy to hardcore. What's so wrong with pornography? I'd be surprised if Bush didn't have some stashed away in the oval office.
He can't even figure out by himself what to search for???
to track how often pornography is returned in results.
Isn't this an invasion of privacy?
What ever happened to parents and not the government being responsible for their kids?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
(no black helicopters were harmed while making this comment).
children seeing porn != child porn
Trust me, I work for the government.
Is that the government is claiming other search engines have already given up the requested data. I'd rather search with Google who's trying to protect my privacy than some other engine that coughed up the goods without a fight!
Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, which is why engineers sometimes smell really bad.
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.
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!
Don't worry, the NSA has a full profile on you to cross-reference.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The problem with this action is that if it passes, it will serve as a foot in the door so that it is possible for the Bush administration (and those who will follow it) to inspect and analyze the internet habits and actions of everyone who has an internet connection. Right now there are state agents questioning certan US citizens' because of their reading habits, there are databases ran with information on normal, law abiding citizens just because they have an oppinion different from the current administration and God knows what other things are being done behind closed doors. Doesn't this worry anyone?
US: formerly known as land of the free, currently aquiring police state status and on the fast track to fascism.
One imagines the dedicated team of talented evaluators at Justice combing the list of returned sites, carefully categorizing them as pRon or non-pRon. No waste of tax dollars there -- noooo. Glad to see we're spending our dollars on the big issues that face us as a society.
The Supreme Court decision back in June 04 went back, again, to the first amendment. The series of decisions made over the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) and the earlier Communications Decency Act, came back to the laws not being "narrowly tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest" and to whether less restrictive alternatives were available.
In response to those two reservations, Bush and company are apparently looking to prove how very compelling their government interest is -- by showing that kids are awash in the stuff on Google. Apparently the part where they get access to this enormous, open-ended source of information about searches doesn't set off any bells with them about the other half of that decision -- where the idea was to minimize the restrictiveness of the law and keep government intrusion to a minimum.
These were the "small government" conservatives, right?
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
First off, while there may be obvious pornographic search terms, the range of human fetishes is such that otherwise innocuous searches are actually searches for sexually oriented material (feet, smoking, chewing gum, darn near anything else I imagine). So, it would seem to me that it would be more productive to focus on which search results were actually followed.
Also, just because a search term has a sexual/fetish connotation is not sufficient to imply a search for pornographic material. Even if it is, it does not explain the motive. Case in point, there is a registered sex offender in my neighborhood. From the local sex offender database, it appears he had either received or downloaded child pornagraphy. I have two young children. So, I'd like to know more about this particular type of fetish. However, if my understanding of the law is correct, an attempt to research this on the internet could put me in the position of violating the same law that required him to register as a sex offender.
My purpose is not to obtain illicit material, but rather to get inside the head of someone who may be a danger to my children. How would Bush or anyone else know the difference based upon a Google search?
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Wait a minute, which "bush" were you talking about?
It was 1998, remember? Janet Reno was singing its praises, and Bill Clinton signed it into law.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I'm all for preventing child access to porn. But if google hands over (voluntarily or otherwise) even a portion of their logs for a specific purpose it makes it just that little bit easier for Bush (or whoever) to get their grubby mitts on log data the next time round. Where does it end?
Also, how would this play from an international viewpoint? Would the data (potentially) handed over include google.co.uk or google.de logs?
The EU is busy being lobbied (can you be busy being lobbied?) about communications data retention (e.g. pi report). Without serious safeguards in place and with all those logs sloshing around it's only a matter of time before log subpoenas become routine.
The sting operations by local police forces seems more than adequate enough to catch pedofiles. Boost funding for this and lock up these perverts with the satisfaction of knowing you caught them in the act.
Google pr0n queries?? Probably take the worlds fastest super computer a year to parse!
To be honest, I'd far rather they didn't have to fight this because they didn't actually keep the information in the first place.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
1. protecting children from pr0n is completely different from combatting child pr0n. keeping johnny from searching for free pr0n sites is not the same as preventing the sickos out there violating kids. 2. heaven forbid the PARENTS actually do something and pay attention to their kids of they're looking at things they shouldn't be online. It's not the gov'ts job to be a babysitter, parent, etc.
As if they didnt already?
Wake up people. While I am all for Google and Share the knowledge with everyone policy - I am less for the privacy issue that arises here. You all know it - Gooooooogle ADS are everywhere and you have a couple of cookies that identify you. Probably not the Slashdotters as we regularly clean our cache, but people with less knowledge will eventually suffer privacy issues.
As far as I am concerned - Google is the smartest internet move in the world. CIA, FBI and NSA loves this stuff. Why do you think the "military" abandoned the internet to the public? Imagine if you create a system that everyone uses...and Imagine you have full access to it...given all of that...you dont really need that much imagination to imagine how bad this COULD be. You can monitor just about anyone and everyone - find out their habits, what do they like? Are Johnny-Pedo watching the "family-album" on a Gooooooogle ADS partner online-photo-album today? If so...is he also logging onto his GMAIL today? Maybe Alichk-WoludbeTerrorist is visiting the do-it-yourself-bombmaker site a bit too frequently and of course using his nice free big juicy google mailbox?
While thats kind of obvious to most of us...there is something FAR more sinister at hand...something you might need to be a bit of a paranoid person to think of (like me!)
Imagine that youre a worried "family dad" and want to educate yourself, finding out what "bad stuff" there is out there and what your family could be subjected to, or just curious in general. Imagine that you are subscribing to the same Goooooogle ADS partner sites and you are a man of your habits...you read certain news in online newspapers with great interest, you also give up what you prefer to eat, what people you hang with, which chat groups you visit, what products you prefer etc. All this can and WILL create a profile of you which Google easily can use for 2 things. 1) Direct their marketing at you with almost lethal accuracy and 2) Sell your information to the highest bidder...wether this is the government that make a "sweet trade-deal" with them...or the sinister business corporate that want to make sure that they only get "pure and clean" employees that fit the "corporate profile". This kind of information is worth more than Gold these days.
All that I am saying guys...is...Honestly, if you didnt see this coming then youre simply to plain naive. Remember - Knowledge is YOUR power too.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Will there be some agreed legal "definition" of what is pornography? Or will it be a subjective defn or list of key "words"? The results will change dramatically. Of concern here is that we would have a case of "apples" and "oranges" with an ability to produce statistical results to suit any type of requirement of the asking person.
Well, not if the president orders it, dummy. Thank God we here in the U.S. has a leader with the courage to come out and say "I am above the law as long as this war, which will never end, goes on."
I only wish he would take the next logical step and declare that presidential elections in a time of war could make us vunerable, and therefore they must be indefinitely suspended until we defeat terrorism.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
GWB was sppoked by his daughters' spring break videos.
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.
Why should the government be able to access Google's privately-held database, which contains sensitive information about millions of users, just so the government can try to defend a poorly written law? I see this as nothing more than a fishing expedition. Lord knows half the searches on google are probably for porn-related stuff, which the government could use damned lies and statistics to "prove" is bad for children. But the government has no right to demand this information.
You know what's really bad for children? A tyrannical government bent on taking away the rights and liberties of its citizens. Will a child born today even taste freedom after they reach age 18? The way things are going, I rather doubt it.
I hope Google fights this all the way and wins.
Electric Monkey Pants
So, we should believe that when the federal authorities are given access to something like 600 million Google searches per week indexed to specific IP addresses, they're only going to use that data for the specific purpose of fighting child pornography? That the NSA, for example, would decline to data mine that information?
Given that the current administration has shown that they're willing to spy on US citizens domestically without warrants, even though warrants are easy to get retroactively, why should we trust anything they say regarding 4th amendment rights?
I think the Administration and their "base" really need to start thinking about that.
If I have a child that needs to be protected from porn, then he'll neeed to be protected from that violence and sex that's in the Bible.
Sorry if I'm interpreting your comment unnecessarily literally, but this isn't a real quote. Just wanted to point that out.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
...beat a dead horse. Is protecting minors from unwanted and unintended exposure to pornography a good thing? Yes! Can the government mandate it? No! It goes back to the problem of parenting. If parents are giving their kids unfettered access to the Internet, they're going to see this stuff. It's no different that parents not watching what programs their kids see on TV. The US Government is trying to parent the nation's kids, when it can't even govern the country effectively (NOTE: this is not Bush-bashing; the Democrats are just as ineffectual as the Republicans).
It's good that Google has drawn the line. They aren't responsible for what their search engine turns up; the Internet is free territory and if you put up pornography or any other type of content someone finds objectionable, it may turn up. That doesn't make it Google's responsibility to police what its users are doing, anymore than it makes it the government's responsibility. At some point parents need to take back the power.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Considering that Bush has already shown that he is more than willing to spy on American citizens in the "homeland", and that he feels the rights accorded to him by the Patriot Act afford him anything he demands in the way of National Security, we should be warned. How long will it be before there is connection made, however farfetched, between terrorism and pornography that makes Google complicit in "giving aid and comfort to the enemey". Remember, if you're not with Bush & Co., you're with the terrorists.
I can't read the above without realizing how paranoid it sounds. Still doesn't make me any less apprehensive.
For example, they could ask for the percentage of searches that returned results with adult material that got clicked on.
The fact that they're looking for raw data clearly indicates that they want to do something with it that they'd prefer others to not watch - which, incidentally, is the only reason that fits for why they decided to evade judicial oversight of domestic wiretaps.
A Nerd Looks At Politics www.blueworksbetter.com
I want it too. I want to see how many searches for pornography originated from White House and Congressional IPs my tax dollars are supporting.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
How long are we going to try and censor a picture of a breast before we accept that it is just a breast. Sex, and nudity is a fundemential part of being. Unless we plan to move the ways of creation into the lab (for all pregnancies) then the idea of censoring sex images is mindless. It is a fact of life. (Almost) none of us were created in a lab. Some were, that is understandable, but the vast majority of us were not delivered by the stork. Are you ready for this, our parents... HAD SEX. I know its a scarey thought, but its a fact. Once a child learns that it came from a man and a woman engaging is sexual intercourse, what is the harm in them seeing a depiction of it. We are arguing, essentialy, for this realization to be delayed 6-8 years. Why is some 10 year old seeing a picture, or even a movie, of a sex act so horrible. In the world we live in today there is no way to prevent this anyway. Lets say somehow, and it would have to be an act of god, they (bg brother) is able to prevent any minor from accessing a picture of anykind that depicts any sort of sex act, or nude body part; then what. This minor will simply look to another medium. This means no more cable TV, Playboys, Pinups, or R-rated movies for anyone. Becuase lets face it, there is no self destrucing mecanism on a playboy that will keep a minor from ever glancing over the pages.
Trying to restrict the internet is a loosing battle. Why not put the efforts twards educating our children about the truths of sex, and sexual images. Because has anyone ever held up a town because they saw a naked woman with a naked man having sex. The answer is no. A resounding no. Perhaps if there was no reason for a child to have to scour the web to see what all of his friends are talking about at school, he wouldnt.
But thats just my opinon
Here's a recent story by her concerning CP80, the latest attempt to make pornography go away: http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/30342/. *Don't* *miss* the "educational" Flash video by CP80 about pr0n http://www.cp80.org/solutions/CP80-Flash-Overview. html , which is a contender for the title of "The 'Reefer Madness' of anti-porn propaganda". Anybody know of others?
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.
They grab power.
Give them the right to fight child porn "for the children", and the next thing they're doing is searching that data for "terrorists".
Give them the right to set up a retirement plane "for your security", and they take the money and the next thing you know the retirement plan is broke.
Give them the right to set up health care "for your health" and they ration the care and make you wait in line even if that means you're going to die.
Give them the right to set up a welfare system "to help the needy" and they set up a system that keeps you dependent upon government largess for the rest of your life.
Give them the right to spy on those that deserve to be spied on "to keep you safe" and they turn it around and use it on their citizens (and the US is by no means even close to being in the forefront on this issue, FWIW).
That's what governments do - they accumulate power. And in accumulating power that get it from somewhere else - from YOU.
And money is the lifeblood of any government's attempt to encroach your rights. And encroach them they will. Without money they can't pay for the "needed" programs that are nothing more than systems to entrench the powerful by giving them even more power.
Anyone who thinks he's for individual rights and doesn't support MASSIVE and IMMEDIATE tax cuts and locking debt limits in place to shackle the power-grabbing aspects of any government is a blithering idiot who doesn't understand what all governments do.
Hey All, I was just thinking that Google has a reasonable case under the 4th amendment to block the seizure of this information. And just to make sure everyone who's reading this is on the same page, the 4th Amendment Reads: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searced, and the persons or things to be seized." My interpretation of the text is that the government can't seize your effects, which includes information, without substantial information that suggests that the information to be seized would help prosecute a crime, and after attaining the probable cause, a warrant must be issued. Now, what I don't know is how this would effect subpoenas, but this seems more like an seizure than compelling someone to appear in court. So, if Google argues that this information is the property of the end users and only held by Google with their consent, then the Government would need a warrant for each user's search data that they want to use. If the courts agree with this argument it would essentially make it impossible to obtain such information as the Government would not have probable cause to seize the effects of a random million or so people to make their case for the COPA law. The fact that they're not attempting to prosecute any of the people would make it even more difficult. Any real legal experts secretely trolling slashdot forums that want to comment?
Google could log the MD5 of the IP address, the MD5 of the cookie, and what was searched for.
When someone logs in, or provides their cookie, Google could continue to provide more targeted ads, because they can match the MD5 of your IP and cookie to their logs.
When you use GMail, Google could log the SHA-1 of your IP and cookie.
Later on, when Big "bush" Brother comes knocking, they can provide the logs. Niether the search engine nor gmail logs reveal your IP or cookie. The search and gmail logs cannot be correlated at a later time. (Thus any correlation analysis of your gmail for concepts relating to ads would need to be done "right away" before the original IP/cookie information is discarded. For any suitable definition of "right away".)
When Big "bush" Brother comes knocking on your individual door, they can retrieve your cookie and correlate you individually to your gmail and searches. (Note: It may be unnecessary to obtain a court order or have any judicial or congressional review, since, after all, you might be gmailing to or searching for... gasp... Nuculoor Weapons or Al-Queda, located in Iran, which needs to be "liberated".) Nevertheless, they might need to come to you to obtain your cookie individually, rather than just be able to massively sift through Google records.
In the end, it would be simipler if the government were our ISP's, and we all used government provided e-mail servers and search engines.
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
Just the political value of the data -- to discredit or spy on enemies -- is so great that I can't imagine it will stay secret forever. With it, the Bush administration (or Putin or any other) can gather dirt on everyone, from congress to the dog catcher candidate. In fact, for censorship purposes it almost doesn't matter if it leaks: By merely seeking the data, the gov't raises legitimate questions in many minds and will have a 'chilling effect' on what they search for.
I think that, until now, most people looked on privacy as something that idealogues worried about and which had no practical significance. I think that attitude was only a lack of experience and foresight. Unfortunately, their information is already on Google's servers; there is no going back.
Google should simply anonymize the data: They can collect aggregate market research, or even person-by-person research, yet remove all identifying information. Until then, I would seriously consider avoiding using Google, or use an anonymizing proxy service to protect yourself. The standard of behavior in privacy matters must be raised.
just to have basics like ROMS, torrents, pr0n, and other important info, including legitimate info. Well, the only good that may come of this is a generation of 1337 h4x0rz. https://beijing999.com/ https://proxify.net/ https://pimpmyip.com/ proxyswitcher, etc. are your friends and filters are your enemy (because filters are freakishly ineffective at hitting their target, but good at getting everything else).
Can you really trust any studies that show up on TV or the newspaper anymore? Pr0n, weed, videogames, global warming, indooor pollution, and everything else under the sun are GOING TO KILL YOU or MAKE YOU KILL OTHERS. Jesus H. Christ! (as if people haven't killed in His name...) 40 years ago scientists were worried of global cooling. The Earth has naturally warmed and cooled many times in the past - and things died, but that's nature. We're still alive. Today's youth are, according to the FBI - the least violent generation in American history, maybe, maybe, because they are inside playing videogames? Oh, and now masturbation may prevent prostate cancer - that's what I call wanking now, cancer prevention. I really just wished people weren't so ready to believe _everything_ the media, a Nigerian email, or a politician (all parties, Libertarians too) tells them to. There's a reason what you watch on TV is called programming...
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
Google could log the MD5 of the IP address
Bad Idea!
A brute attack is trivial here. There are 2^32 IP addresses so building a complete inverse mapping for this data can be done on an ordinary PC in no time.
With Judge Alito's confirmation, the Supreme court will certainly back the right of the Federal Government to request Google's data. You should expect to see a number of such cases resurface once Alito is confirmed.
I doubt it is a coincidence that the Bush administration is bringing this up again.
Funny thing... I do not hear any complaints from Microsoft and their search engine... Do you think the feds forgot to ask Bill for his data?
This is a common problem when dealing with people. They piously clamor for what they're supposed to want. Just imagine the improvement in governmental service if our legislative technimicians could see what people really want.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
You could salt the hashes to increase cost. But you make a good point.
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
The ACLU also defended Rush Limbaugh against what it considered to be government intrusion into his medical records -- you recall his Oxycontin "doctor shopping" case. They've represented unpopular opinions at most points on the political spectrum.
Yes, it's a group that operates according to principle and not partisan positioning. That earns it the eternal enmity of those whose real credo is maintaining the status quo in order to keep a grip on power. (Let's all take a moment to consider which of our two parties essentially supports the ACLU, and which made being a "card carrying member" of the ACLU a dirty epithet in the 1988 election cycle.)
(The parent poster missed the distinction between the law that was passed and the overreaching attempt to get Google's records, of course.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
There is the also the fact that certain searches, local.google.com in particular, can rapidly identify a person, hashing of IP or no.
While there are technical solutions, we can't even begin to step down this path. I hope the feds get smacked down for this.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Out of all my friends and all of the girls I've dated, I'm the only one I know of whose parents took an interest in teaching them about sex. Fortunately, for my friends, they had sex ed in school. This is, increasingly, no longer the case.
People need to realize-- teenagers will have sex whether you like it or not. Do you bury your head in the sand, or do you teach them the one thing that we know will make a difference? If anything, sex ed decreases promiscuity because girls are informed of the consequences. I just can't believe the kind of cultural 180 that has happened in this country in the last few years.
There is legal precedent for a recipient standard which causes the most easily offended micro-minority's sensabilities to rule. Take for instance the "Hostile Environment" standard in sexual and racial harrassment cases. According to the law, no obscene or offensive intent is required. If the most easily offended receipient or observer in a work environment decides that something is offensive, then by law, it is. Of course, this has a chilling effect on speech. But then again, that is the point. The feminist and civil rights lobbies (who
Of course, any suggestion to roll back the draconian restrictions on free expression are instantly labled "racist, sexist, reactionary, etc, etc, etc." Seems that a lot of people who have problems with the standard applied to porn have absolutely no problem applying the standard to other things.
I just reset my Google cookies and logged back into gmail and all cookies set expire at end of session. After I "logged out" of gmail a few were left - S,TZ.GMAIL_RTT from google.com, and GMAIL_LOGIN from mail.google.com - all still set to expire at end of session. I'l lhave to exit this browser to figure out where those go away when I exit Firefox.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
How about instead of trying to prevent children from being able to access material that the government (not society or the parents) deems inappropriate, perhaps they should consider funding a program to teach parents how to talk with (not just lecture) their kids, and perhaps monitor what they are doing online. My child will definitely not have unrestricted access to the internet when she is old enough to use the computer on her own. This will be for her protection, for my (computer's) protection, and for my whole family's protection. She is 4 years old, and she knows our address, our phone number, and the name of our city and state. (The problem with this is that she does not yet realize there are people who she should not give this information to.)
This has been said over and over again. Instead of relying on the religiously-minded government (can this really even be denied?) to TRY to prevent inappropriate material from being seen by children, lets get the parents to take on the responsibility that they should have had from the start. Should you blame HBO or one of the other uncensored premium channels because you let your 8-year old watch "Casino" on TV and now they're cursing like Nicky Santoro? Do we really need the government to decide what is appropriate? Would they have said I shouldn't have been allowed to watch Friday the 13th when I was young? My parents thought I was mature enough for it, and considering how I am 2 decades later, I'm inclined to agree with them. Granted every child is different, which is exactly why it should be left up to the parents. If the parents don't/can't/won't take on this responsibility, they should have thought about that before having children. Unplanned pregnancy you argue? Grow the hell up and deal with it. Its the parents responsibility to decide whats good for their kids and what isn't. Some laws exist to protect children because of stupid or ignorant parents. We don't need Mr. Bush telling my child that she can't watch Spongebob Squarepants on TV because some fundamentalist group said he was homosexual. That's not the issue here, but how much farther would it have to go to get there? Not very far.
And they said zombies weren't real!
See search engine watch for extensive
details, but the upshot is that the administration only asked search engines
for a week's worth of search terms data and the request didn't include
asking for anyone's personal data, just a list of terms and related search
frequency statistics. Almost all the other major search engines have
released the requested data and publicly stated that the data didn't include
anything personal or threatening to individual privacy. Google's refusal
probably has more to do with competitive reasons more than any privacy
issues.
Don't believe all the hype you might read in the Mercury News.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
The gub'ment just sued them:
Gonzales v. Google Inc
bloomberg
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
--Stars & Stripes by KMFDM
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
Why not use a non-US based version of google.
The US government would not have the right to collate responses from non-US based search engines.
So why not use www.google.co.uk, or www.msn.co.uk as your search engine of choice.
Then if the British Government decides to follow the American lead, then change again. Anyway I don't think the Goverenment will be able to report any searches from non-British connections and I think the amount of information they collect from the British ISPs will keep them occupied for quite a while, anyway.