DoJ search requests: Yahoo, AOL, MSN said "Yes"

d2viant writes "Elaborating on a previous article on Slashdot, it appears that the search engines which complied for Department of Justice requests for logs were apparently AOL, MSN, and Yahoo. According to the article, Justice is not requesting this data in the course of a criminal investigation, but in order to defend its argument that the Child Online Protection Act is constitutionally sound."

Comments

This isn't news!

[syousef]

People. Get a grip. Most companies will comply with government subponeas. Don't get your hopes too high that Google will hold it's ground either. In fact I think they're playing with fire.

The ONLY way to protect against this sort of information being used by law enforcement is to never collect it in the first place. Only collect statistical obfuscated data and you won't have these problems - how valid and accurate your statistics based on aggregate data will be is another matter though.

Re:This isn't news!

[LurkerXXX]

No one knows, because apparently MSN, Yahoo, etc, just gave away all our info without a fight. Maybe a judge would never give the order on such weak grounds.

not only that

[JeanBaptiste]

I accidentally found out one day that its possible for not-so-legal images to show up on a google image search. (i was searching for something unrelated which happened to be close to the name of a magazine which isn't so nice. a european publication.) I'd bet a dollar to a doughnut that you could find worse stuff through GIS (images.google.com)

The thumbnails are stored at a google location.

Does that mean that Google itself is hosting illegal files?

Re:not only that

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

"Does that mean that Google itself is hosting illegal files?"

Yep, and so do you in your cache. Whats really fun is a 17 year old with a webcam that doesnt like you and knows you have {autoaccept | web based upload stuff | ftp | whatever}.

Kiddieporn laws badly need reformed. Why is legal to jerk it to movies of 18 year olds that are late bloomers+made up to look even younger, being simulated-kidnap and raped.. Yet its illegal for your beach vacation pictures to have a 16 year old topless in the background?

It makes about as much sense as chewbakka living on endor.

I hate children.

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

I really hate children. The war against adulthood has forced me to make a choice, and that is... I hate children. More importantly... I hate the parents of children who think they have any more right than the rest of us.

Ok, I dont really hate children, but you can see my frustration with this and the arguement "its for the good of the children"

People dont even use the V-chip, and those same people will lobby our government with hopes of ridding the planet of porn.

Microsoft and Apple should just build in a complete censorship layer into their OS that can be attributed to a certain user level account.

That way if your child searches breast... and finds a sweet pair of titties... its your own dam fault and not googles.

Re:I hate children.

[Julian Morrison]

"if your child searches breast... and finds a sweet pair of titties" - it's liable to make him think "milk please".

Seriously, the people panicking over sex aren't the kids. They could see it, snicker at how gross and icky it all is, and oh my god that's sure to give him cooties, eww - but at the end of the day they probably care a whole lot more about football. It's the adults who are going nuts here. Or at least, people who ought to be adults.

If you didn't vote Libertarian, you ASKED for this

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who voted Republicrat or Democan, shut up and go sit on the sidelines.

You've already demonstrated that you want an intrusive, activist government, you have no room to complain now. You ASKED FOR THIS.

______________________________________
A vote against a Libertarian candidate is
a vote to abolish the Constitution itself

Re:Do any Americans actually feel safer?

[x_man]

A few weeks ago I submitted an Ask Slashdot question to the editors about creating a Slashdot Political Action Network. My question still shows pending, but maybe this latest outrage is a good time for me to post my idea to the public forum. Here's my idea:

Why not set up a method in Slasdhot whereby YRO and related articles have a link that allows a registered user to forward his forum comments to his/her appropriate representative(s) in their district? Non-profits are doing this now with great effect. Instead of preaching to the choir, shouldn't our +5 Insightful comments be forwarded to our representatives and news agencies. Can you just imagine the effect we could have by Slashdotting Congress!!!

A lot of people will say that nobody in Congress reads email, but that's not entirely true. Your opinions are put in For and Against piles and some are even read; I know this from personal experience. By hitting Congress and the news agencies we also generate awareness for many issues that go largely unreported like black box voting, DMCA, and so on.

So Slashdot editors, how about it?

X

Re:Useless information

[Cattywampus]

Unless they're planning on using this data to push anti-porn decency laws (which would be an abuse of power to say the least)...

From the Google has been sued link in a previous comment:

"A motion to compel compliance with a subpoena, filed yesterday in federal court in San Jose, California, said the government seeks the data to enforce the Child Online Protection Act, designed to protect minors from pornography."

The Feds are not after this data in the matter of a criminal case. They are not after the data because they want to know how many people are searching for porn. They're after the data because they want to use it to bolster their case for the Child Online Protection Act, an act which is a thinly veiled attempt to push anti-porn decency laws.

So, yeah, you might want to think of it as an abuse of power. Whether it's a legitimate abuse of power or not will probably become a matter for the courts very soon.

Re:Big Brother

[cDarwin]

You know what I'm starting to think more and more?

Fuck this!

• Increasing intrusion into my privacy
• An $8 trillion federal debt due to insane tax cuts without offsets ($27,447.62 per American, at this moment)
• Suspension of habeus corpus whenever they feel like it
• A promise of war without end
• A farcical "No child left behind" policy that produces armies of highschool graduates who can't write a five paragraph form essay, or do basic algebra
• Et cetera, et cetera

The Republic I grew up loving is on life support, at best.

Is this really worth sticking around for? I didn't create all of these problems. Why should I pick up the tab? Plenty of very nice countries would love to have me (and my skills) and my wife (and her skills) and our kids (they can write essays and do math.) I'm keeping my passport current. If a majority of the American people are crazy and stupid enough to keep these nutjobs in power in November, I may just take my marbles and move on.