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

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?

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.

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.