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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."
...wait, I thought censorship was bad and UnAmerican(TM)?
Only if you're some sort of commie liberal! In this post-9/11 world, UnAmerican is anything that criticizes the government, and anything the government does in violation of the Constitution and its amendments is kosher as long as it's to protect Americans from Evil People.
Really, though, who's surprised at this. Their stated agenda here was to invade privacy to bolster a case for overturning a Supreme Court decision that prevents them from invading privacy... for the children, of course. Considering how much this administration has stacked every single non-partisan agency with as many political operatives as possible, it's no real surprise that the DoJ would rule in its own favor.
Hell, even without that, it's no surprise that the DoJ would rule in its own favor. They've never been the most objective of agencies.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Since when did the government start caring about our children. I have a simple solution, Don't leave your child on your computer with internet access alone. When they are old enough to browse and be responsible by themselves, they are old enough to look at porn.. BUSH ADMIN, quit wasting resources on BS and fix the real issues at hand.. Like our Deficit, the war, social security and countless other items. Leave the parenting up to us.
So... exactly what information is these representatives of the US Government after? The fact that people search for porn? If they remove any identification of who, and thus what, the person is... what's going to tell them that any given search conducted by a wide-eyed innocent (queue Bush jokes) vs. a consenting adult?
Once more, a nice display of reverse logics! If I, as a parent, fail to keep track of what my child is doing and/or looking at, I find someone to blame. And the federal government is backing me up on this one.
If you have a small child, you, as a parent, should be aware of what kind of content your child has access to. Preview television shows, whitelist certain webpages. If you leave smutty magazines lying around the house, do you blame the editor if a child finds them and looks through it?
Besides, sex is a natural thing, use education to enable your child to discern right from wrong, instead of keeping the whole subject hidden from him/her until marriage.
Google has nothing to do with this battle the right-wing christians wage against the porn industry. I'm not saying that pornsites should advertise all over the net, or judge porn altogether, but the federal government is taking a very one-sided approach in this matter. The net has always been free, and it should remain that way. I agree with Googles view on this matter.
Children need protection from porn, because it would be too bad if they would discover their sexuality on a normal speed which coupled with a good sexual education program can significantly reduce the number of underage pregnancies, on the other hand the administration encourages and is fine with the military recruiting from schools, sharing schoolchildren's data in a huge opt-out database and sending these kids to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Clearly, porn is the danger here. Think of the kids!
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Be yourself no matter what they say
Or *maybe* it's because Chinese law and social norms state that the Chinese government gets to censor. US law and social norms state that the current administration doesn't get to demand data of random companies (without criminal investigation or other justification) to push their partisian issues.
1) Much of Google's assets are their search data.
2) Google has a reputation to protect. If they don't draw a line in handing over data, people cannot trust that their searches are private. If I can go use a search engine based on Sealand instead of Google because that one is private because it doesn't fall under US law, then obviously I'm going to use that. Google is protecting their customer.
Man, you Google-haters *love* to try to use the "but teh chinks is evil!" argument.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.