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."

Comments

Today Search, tomorrow Desktop

[clevershark]

All of you who use Google Desktop might want to uninstall it, just in case the "DoJ" starts going after that data next.

Great Moments in Hypocrisy

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Can the government really go after Google for aiding Chinese censorship and for NOT aiding US censorship AT THE SAME TIME?

Re:Great Moments in Hypocrisy

[voice_of_all_reason]

Is it possible to host a datacentre out at sea?

Yeah, but if open water is a lawless land, can't a displeased government just blow it up without penalty?

So what if a child sees pr0n on the Internet?

[phlegmofdiscontent]

I saw plenty of nudie pics and porn as a child and I'm pretty well-adjusted as an adult. Yes, seriously. I'm getting pretty sick of government types thinking they can run our lives better than we can.

It could be worse ...

[dc29A]

Oh wait, it is worse. Let's hope it's not true.

No suprise here.

[AltGrendel]

.. the Justice Department rejected Google's concerns over a Bush administration demand to examine millions of its users' Internet search requests on privacy grounds.

This administration has no concept of the right to privacy, except when it come to them and their friends.

Wedge Issue

[Valdrax]

You're close but not quite on the money. This has wedge issue written all over it. Much like gay marriage in 2004 (and soon to be gay adoption in 2006), this is an issue to draw out the single-issue conservative voters to the polls. The point isn't necessarily to win this battle, though that'd be feather in the cap of the Republican Party, as it is to have the fight in the first place.

The majority of American's wouldn't support a conservative agenda on the environment, healthcare, and corporate welfare, but they will support an agenda about terrorism and "protection of values." This is known as a "wedge issue." It's designed to drive a wedge between the conflicting loyalties of swing voters to force them to choose between two different positives and to draw out partisans from the woodwork who couldn't care enough to vote about economic policy issues.

Bringing back up net filtering and monitoring gives the Republicans another chance to decry "liberal judicial activism" in a bid to install more pro-executive power, pro-business judges. As a bonus, they get to legislate morality and provide an in for more monitoring of citizens. In case you don't recall, sexual scandals are just about the only scandals that have any traction in the media any more, so the opportunity to catch a current or future politician looking at porn is a great tool for whoever's in power, and it's even better if your opposition consider using that power against your people to be wrong.

This is just a win-win fight for the Republican Party no matter how it plays out.

Not really accurate

[brunes69]

The SC *is* the last word when it comes to interpereting the constitution. If the SC rules a law is unconstitutional, the other branches have basically four options - re-write the law so that it is constitutional, give up, wait until the structure of the SC changes enough that they may win a reversal, or amend the constitution.

The last option, is of course, difficult to pull off. So for the majority of issues you only have the first three options. But none of this says that the government can not continue to push new evidence before the SC to try and get it to reverse it's opinion. Then again, the SC doesn't have to hear those cases either.

What's really going on here, is the government is trying to get new evidence just as *an excuse* to place the issue befor ethe SC again, because they think that with the recent change son the bench, they will prevail regardless of the new evidence.

Re:Not really accurate

[acvh]

you left out an important option: remove the SC's jurisdiction from the matter at hand.

The only reason the SC is treated as the last word is because they claimed that right in Marbury v Madison. There is nothing in the constitution about it.

Re:War on porn

[typical]

I'm reminded by Ashcroft (Bush's last Attorney General -- remember him?) covering up the statue "The Spirit of Justice" with curtains so that its one bare breast would be hidden.

I thought that that was rather nicely symbolic.

I rather figured at that point that things were probably going to keep going downhill.

I like to consider the implications of that.

It means that the British (who have *toplessness* on their television) are all hopeless perverts. Cultured? Certainly not. At least, they certainly don't give a damn about their children. In the eyes of the Bush Administration, that is.

The British *invented* Victorianism and decided that it was a bad idea long ago, and moved on. We still haven't figured it out. I'm reminded of the Imperial unit system.

We invaded Afghanistan, and encouraged women to throw off their burkas afterwards. We freed them from their social norms and gave them ours, because ours are clearly best.

Fishing expedition?????

[gstoddart]

Isn't this really just a fishing expedition? The law they wanted to implement to protect children from porn was struck down by the Supreme Court.

Now, in an effort to get evidence that what they wanted to do isn't really in violation of the constitution, they want the chance to go on a fishing expedition and get the information they've been told they can't have.

So now the DOJ is saying they reject the right of Google to not furnish information to allow them to appeal the constitutional ruling which went against them?

So the DOJ is, in effect, saying that they require the search engines to provide the information they need to appeal a court ruling? (Which if enacted, would be the search engine's responsibility to implement.)

So, why is Google being forced to help make the government's case, when the SCOTUS has already told them they can't have it?

Why is the government priveliged in this case?

[snowwrestler]

The Justice Dept. is not prosecuting a crime, they are appealing a ruling. And the data from Google would not prove the DOJ's case (it is not direct evidence), but would rather assist in building circumstantial support for the case.

So why should Google be forced to comply? In such a proceeding it's not clear to me that the DOJ somehow has "greater" rights than any other appellate litigant. If I appeal some ruling someday, can I force Google to give up their trade secrets, on the basis that they might provide circumstantial support for my case?