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Google's Response to the DoJ Motion
neoviky writes "Google Inc. on Friday formally rejected the U.S. Justice Department's subpoena of data from the Web search leader, arguing the demand violated the privacy of users' Web searches and its own trade secrets.
Responding to a motion by U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Google also said in a filing in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California the government demand to disclose Web search data was impractical."
So the government goes after Google- what about others like Microsoft? Or is this The Evil One's plan- the government is their largest contract. Hmmm
If Google hasn't done anything wrong ... then they shouldn't have to comply. Good job google.
The only way they should get the data is if Google volunteers to give it.
What's the government thinking anyways? If they just tapped on Microsoft's shoulder I'm sure Bill would hand over all of MSNs search data.
The world is going in a direction where a lot of lawsuits and such are really "fishing expeditions" to you create overly broad subpoenas and then hope to find something in the material to back you view.
I am amazed that people do not see Google's action for what it is -- a huge and hugely inexpensive public relations stunt. From a legal standpoint, Google does not have much ground to stand on. Yahoo and Microsoft realized this and that is why they complied. However, from a public relations point of view, it costs Google a small handful of hours of legal time and in return, Google gets featured on Slashdot and the countries newspapers, television and radio outlets, in addition to all over the internet numerous times. In the vast majority of cases, Google will be featured as the do-gooder ("do no evil") standing up to the U.S. Government on the public's behalf meanwhile making its competitors (Yahoo and Microsoft) look bad in the public eye.
In the end, expect Google to comply with the DOJ's request but only after getting all the (almost) free publicity it can from this. I hope that there are some writers of marketing and public relations books paying attention to this stunt because this has got to be one of the best (and least expensive) public relations coups in recent history.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Or am I just cynikal?
From what I understand, the government asked for web search strings alone. No identifying information at all.
Google claims to be fighting the good fight of protecting their users' data, but how different is the data that the government wants, from the data the Google itself uses to comprise the various lists of most popular searches, the 'popular topics' are in news.google.com, etc? I'm not sure that I'd like my search to be part of such a public display. Is Google's users' data being user improperly in that case, too?
The way I see it is that Google is simply grandstanding. There have been some voices recently that Google has been getting too powerfull and encompassing. They have your email, they know what you search for, and they search your entire hard drive and call back home with their toolbar.
From what I understand, the government asked them for similar search data, with no identifying information, for their own statystical analysis. Is this Google's chance to get back to the good graces of the Internet's geeks, stick to their missions to "do no evil" and retain their image of the anti-corporation, the underdog, and the rebel, while trying to get back to their $150 billion market cap?
For google, a core part of their PR strategy is 'do no evil', and therefore any opportunity to grandstand in a way that appears to comply with this core promise is gold for Google.
The other sites don't have that as a PR strategy at the moment. Therefore, they would perceive little to no value compared to their costs.
Of course, it does sound good to stand up to the government lately with all the negative trends against privacy going on, but as many have pointed out, google themselves is using the data in ways not that much different from the government plans, so it isn't 100% as good as they like everyone to think...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Google specifically states that they will use their information for their own internal purposes to improve searches and such. They specifically state that they will not hand out that information to 3rd party. The government is 3rd party.
Everyones complaining about googles hypocracy needs to get off their silly "they are a company now and like all companies have to be selfish and everything they do is public facing deception only".
I'm by no means claiming they are protectors of the smaller people but they have done NOTHING wrong or hypocritical at all. In fact they are holding up their end of the promise they made to the smaller people.
Some public relations stunt. It caused their net-worth to drop billions this quarter. If I were an investor, I'd say try something else.
And another rabid liberal raises his ugly head. Care to make any more incorrect analogies to show your ignorance? There is a huge difference between refusing to answer questions in a confirmation hearing and refusing a legal warrent. Google hasn't refused any warrents, they refused a REQUEST for information, if it had been a warrent they would have turned over the information already.
Maybe there's some hidden legal merit I havn't seen through the /. filter, but the Government's audacity in this situation astonishes me. It seems like they had no legal ground to request this information from search engines, and their following through with a lawsuit when Google saw through their BS is amazing.
I imagine people asking their local photo shop to invade their customer's privacy and give them a few thousand random photos (all for ), then suing when the shop tells them to fuck off.
They aren't ignoring copyright law. They read it differently from the copyright cartels, but then they have vested interest in doing so, as much as Google would have the other way. Currently, the courts are agreeing with Googles interpretation, so it seems more correct to say that the publishers' guild are guilty of ignoring law by asserting righs they do not have.
is why the DoJ thinks they have a legal right to access Google's information/logs?
Do they have any credible evidence that Google broke the law? Or that a particular user broke the law? If so, they they should subpoena an individual users records.
It seems to me that the DoJ merely wants Google information because they want to go on a "fishing expedition". Google should have no obligation to assist the DoJ in a "fishing expedition".
The DOJ on "information and belief" have some theories apparently. Just because Google has information that may or may not disprove their theory, no one should compel Google to turn over that information. It's up the the DoJ to get their own information if they believe such. If they don't have their own independent source from which to obtain it, then too bad.
What evidence do you have that this "PR Stunt" was the primary cause of the stock to drop? If you actually knew, you could make a killing on the stock market, as nobody has figured out how to predict the exact causes of why stocks go up and down 100% of the time.
The response letter said the DOJ wanted a list of every URL that could be returned by a search query in the Google database. I can't even imagine how much data that is. I'd comply with that bit, print it all out, and send the DOJ the bill...
Is it just me or does it sound like the DOJ had no idea what they were actually asking for?
// Dumps core here
But there is a difference.
With the RIAA, a crime had been committed, and Yahoo was asking to not turn over information identifying the offenders (more or less, yes, this is simplified).
In this case, the government has *no* committed crime, and is not trying to track down any criminals. They are simply trying (or at least, this is their justification) to obtain Google's search data to support GOP initiatives to spread pornography filters based on the fact that N% of searches return pornography hits.
My take is that Google is completely in the right. The federal government has absolutely no right to that data, nor do I want them to be able to subpoena it.
As for not being identifiable, give me a break. You surf sites with ads served by people like Doubleclick and Google Ads. Google can match all past searches from your IP or from a machine with any cookies that they've set on your machine. This is not speculation -- they have specifically stated that they have this ability. It's a pretty good bet that a number of sites on the Web have your real name. Maybe it's not a drop-in "Google has a complete database", but it only takes Google + *one* other website you visit that has your personal name, and there's a damned comprehensive list of your thoughts, research, summary of what you're reading about and so forth available to the federal government.
I don't think that this is a very good thing.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
What happened to the thing about complying with laws?
... all the other US companies that do manufacturing there ... but we won't talk about that, otherwise you wouldn't be able to buy cheap goods here in the US), and in the second case they are preventing our own government from breaking US law.
As far as I can tell, that's exactly what they're doing in both cases.
They are complying with Chinese law in the first case (just like, oh, I don't know
- Brian Roach
So, Google launches Google.cn to comply with Chinese censorship laws, but doesn't comply with with a US DoJ subpeona?
This is getting confusing.
Man this crowd is nasty!
Google *adds* a local search service (google.cn) to the people of China that complies with local laws and censors it results, this service is somewhat more transparent than other search engines offerings in China as it actually shows *what was censored*. Not a whisper is heard about Yahoo and MSN's local services. Now all of a sudden Google is the new poster boy of *Evil, will sell mum for a buck*, what gives??
Do people actually know that this is an *added service* and that the exact same google.com that was available to the Chinese people before, that was behind 'The Great Firewall', slow and unresponsive and not accessible 10% of the time - is still available?
Does anyone know what the people of China (who are the ones affected) actually think of the new service? who finally have access to a fast, resourceful search service that we take for granted?
God dammit people we are complaining about a *FREE* service, that people can choose to use on their own accord. If it actually gets used it's because that it provides better experience than the google.com offering.
Since then anything good they do that benefits us all - fighting for our privacy, hell they even told AT&T and Verizon to stick their cyber extortion plan (which if enforced would benefit them in the long run), is overshadowed by one of their *FREE* services.
I don't know about the rest of you but I haven't paid *a cent* to Google yet use their services daily. (google.com, maps.google/Google Earth, Google Talk, Gmail, Google Groups, Google Desktop). For me they are still the same *Do no evil* company that existed when they only had one *FREE* service.
Some people need a hobby.