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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."
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.
An article about it. http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3 578821
Someone save me from this sanity.
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.
Google states that the data being requested has no relevance to what the government (specifically, the government-hired researches) wants to prove.
Interestingly, they (the government) could just come around and request more specific data which would be relevant.
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.
Back when I was in school several Google recruiters came and during the presentation were more than willing to demonstrate technology that allows you to see what others had been searching.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Link to the blogger post, that's the article, and THEN the pdf! Thank you!
(karmawhoring)
Here's a portion of the introduction:
Google users trust that when they enter a search query into a Google search box, not only will they receive back the most relevant results, but that Google will keep private whatever information users communicate absent a compelling reason. The Government's demand for disclosure of untold millions of search queries submitted by Google users and for production of a million Web page addresses or "URLs" randomly selected from Google's proprietary index would undermine that trust, unnecessarily burden Google, and do nothing to further the Government's case in the underlying action.
Fortunately, the Court has multiple, independent bases to reject the Government's Motion. First, the Government's presentation falls woefully short of demonstrating that the requested information will lead to admissible evidence. This burden is unquestionably the Government's. Rather than meet it, the Government concedes that Google's search queries and URLs are not evidence to be used at trial at all. Instead, the Government says, the data will be "useful" to its purported expert in developing some theory to support the Government's notion that a law banning materials that are harmful to minors on the Internet will be more effective than a technology filter in eliminating it.
da w00t. mtfnpy?
If Gonzales can simply refuse to answer questions on the legality of domestic searches when he goes before Congress, then Google can refuse spurious warrants from Gonzales. The DOJ doesn't have a right to simply request any information for any reason, and its good that Google are fighting what seems to be a political thing rather than a law enforcement request.
Yahoo fought hard the request from RIAA a while ago for identifying information of owners of IPs that they logged on Kazaa. In the end they lost and a court ordered them to provide such information. In this case, the information provided contained no identifying data. Only statystics on searches.
Now, if you put in identifying information on the web search, then that is your own folly. My startup page is on my own domain, which is comprised of my last name. You can be sure that I never pull up any pages from that startup page becase I don't want my domain -- and my last name as a result -- to pop up on various sites' Referrer field.
They just need to make it clear that it would be a violation of the DMCA for the DoJ to look at this stuff!
Stop! Dremel time!
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?
The funniest part of TFS follows:
n /etc/links.html contains the word "porn" but
"The Government, of course, has told the Court none of this. Instead, it relies on a
talismanic incantation that the standard of relevance is met 'so long as [the request] is reasonably
calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence.'"
Talismanic incantion! LOL!
Google's lawyers appear to be a good job refuting the Government's "expert":
"The court should view the Cutts Declaration as standing in strong contrast to the
Government's declarant, Professor Phillip Stark, a statistician who apparently has been hired to
produce a study to support the Government's contentions. The Stark Declaration is vague,
cursory, and uninformed about the operation of Google's search engine. In any event, Professor
Stark's opinion ought to be viewed with some scrutiny. Although positioned as the Government's
expert, he has not yet been qualified as a reliable expert by the Pennsylvania court trying the
underlying case pursuant to Federal Rule of Evidence 702 or Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharms.,
Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993). The Pennsylvania court has thus not yet determined whether Professor
Stark's testimony is reliable and of any assistance to the trier of fact."
And I'd have to side with Google on this. I'd venture to guess that most of google's data is completely irrelevant when taken out of context, which Stark is trying to do. If Google does have to turn the data over, I wouldn't be suprised if Stark tried to strongarm his way into learning Google's methods, algorithms, etc.
Another good argument is the following:
"In addition, the Government will not be able to ascertain the content of a Web page from
its descriptive URL name. A Web site's name that suggests potential harmful material may be
benign. Conversely, a URL that seems innocent may actually return pornographic material. The
classic example is www.whitehouse.com, which was a pornography site. Here, the adage "you
can't judge a book by its cover" applies. A URL such as
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/prontline/shows/por
actually provides links to anti-pornography organizations."
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.
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.
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.
No. Their stock dropped because earnings were below forecasts, not because of this incident with the DoJ.
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.