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Justice Dept. Rejects Google's Privacy Concerns
Philip K Dickhead writes "The Associated Press is reporting that the Justice Department rejected Google's concerns over a Bush administration demand to examine millions of its users' Internet search requests on privacy grounds. The department claims this will help revive an online child protection law that the Supreme Court has blocked, by proving that Internet filters are not strong enough to prevent children from viewing pornography online. A federal court hearing is scheduled in San Jose, California, March 13th."
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Yes. See http://www.sealandgov.com/ and http://www.havenco.com/
Has the government really thought this through?
They have to realise they're setting a precident here.
Google works in many countries around the world. How is the US government going to react if, say, the EU requests the same data from Google? How about China? Or Iran?
Are they restricting the data they gather to searches only made by US citizens? Because here in the EU there are pretty strong laws about how companies can use personal data they gather. If the US government forces them to hand over data that pertains to EU citizens, I believe Google will be breaking EU data laws and could be opening themselves up for legal action in the EU.
Actually, there maybe something that EU citizens can do about this. Perhaps EFF Europe should start a campaign...
Or maybe I'm missing something?
Sadly, you're missing something.
Their conclusion will not be "Filters are a dead end, let's give up and throw them out."
Their conclusion will be, "Filters are not absolutely 100% bullet-proof!!! Our kids are looking at PORN ON THE INTERNET!!! Won't someone PLEASE think of the children!", after which they will be free to re-pass a controversial, struck-down-by-the-courts censorship law restricting Internet porn. Sure, this will be about as effective as a law restricting the sharing of copyrighted mp3s, but even so, it's kind of sketchy that they're making these sorts of laws in the first place...
I am the man with no sig!
That one is a hoax. When you upload a video to Google Video, you get to choose which countries you want to exclude from viewing it (say, for copyright reasons). Whoever uploaded that video of an explosion, supposedly in Iraq, chose to exclude only the US. End of story.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Well, It's American for the parents in America to take responsability for raising their children. I monitor, as well as I can, the activities of my children, whether it's their time on the web, or what movie they go see with their friends. I don't care what other adults do together. They can watch what they want. I would rather explain to my son what that lady was doing to that pig rather than explain why he had such a hard time researching breast cancer online for his health report.
Noone has, yet... this was just a filing by the DeptOfInjustice to the court. Of course they would reject the claim, if not, they would have their case thrown-out...
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
A few days ago, Google's official response to the DoJ was posted on the Google Blog.
According to Google, among the reasons they are refusing to comply is because they are trying "to protect their trade secrets and proprietary systems". They add that complying with the request would be a great technological burden, and possibly create legal risks.
There is only a single mention of concern for its users' privacy - and that concern is not based any moral grounds: they merely fear any liabilities for violating their privacy policy.
Note: I'm not critizing Google for this. Their actions are entirely reasonable; after all, Google is not a charity, it is a company. I'm just sick of all the "Google does this, Google does that" media hype distorting reality. If you're going to put Google on a stand for its China decision or any privacy-related issues, do the same for the others among the "Big-Five" search engines. I own Google stock myself; I don't care if you idealized Google and your dreams burst, I want my investment protected.
are you a tool or just a fool?
Google isn't doing anything particularly bad in China - google.com is still available just like it always was to the Chinese - uncensored. Oh wait, it is censored just the user's don't know what parts are cut out. Hrm... So now google.cn is there and censored just like google.com except now the users actually know when something is being censored AND they have a more responsive experience.
So by giving Chinese users the same access to information they had before, with better performance, and furhter insight into the dataset returned Google is wrong?
please. Google would have been worse by doing nothing or pulling out of China all together. But, of course, nobody wants to actually think about the consequences of Google fully censoring themselves (shutting down in China) or of not taking a more proactive stance towards the problems faced by the govenmental censorship of google.com