Judge May Force Google to Submit to Feds

illeism writes "News.com is reporting that a California judge may force Google to give the feds at least some of the information it wanted. The feds may get some of Google's index of sites but none of the user search terms. From the article, the judge said he was 'reluctant to give the Justice Department everything it wanted because of the "perception by the public that this is subject to government scrutiny" when they type search terms into Google.com.'"

Comments

Less than originally expected

[ackthpt]

At least the judge is favouring less than the gorvernment originally requested, still... I feel this is again the over-eager government wiping its feet on the flag and blowing its nose in the Constitution.

Re:Less than originally expected

[Tweekster]

if you read the article you would notice that google does not oppose the extremely limited amount of info requested. and if the govt would have asked in the first place they wouldnt have gone to court.

Re:Less than originally expected

[flyingsquid]

How much does anyone want to wager that Dubya has never even read the entire text of the Constitution?

What George W. Bush really needs is a practical lesson in checks and balances: people need to make sure they're registered to vote and then, this fall, go out and vote against the Republican congressional candidates. Even assuming their Democratic replacements aren't any better, losing a few seats will help limit the damage that Bush and the Republicans can do.

We've had a disastrously planned war, spending increases that make the Democrats look like cheapskates, a massive deficit, an incompetent response to Katrina, a gulag in Cuba, they're chipping away at our civil liberties, and they're destroying the checks and balances that have kept this country running for the past two hundred years. All of this has happened on the Republican party's watch. With complete control of Congress and the White House, the Republican Party has been free to do whatever it pleases, and the result of implementing their ideas has been a disaster for this nation.

At worst, voting the Republicans out would result in total gridlock, with the government unable to do anything. But that would be a massive improvement over the way the country is currently run.

Re:Less than originally expected

[Punboy]

Um, Google's presence in China is a good thing and they, being an all-powerful corporate entity in control of a lot of resources, can help pressure China into lessening their crazy web restrictions.

But, Google has to be ALLOWED in China first.

Re:Less than originally expected

[DoofusOfDeath]

This is so hard for me...

I really do think strict constructionism is the only correct approach to the constitution. And I'm mostly convinced that abortion is murder. And I think gay marriage is not a guaranteed freedom in the Constitution. (Perhaps there are other reasons for permittting it however.) For these reasons I am, no... was, pro-Republican.

But how do I weigh those really important issues against what Bush + the Republican congress has done to us? The deficits make me fear for my childrens' future. I think global free trade is probably a bad idea. His appointment of the inept guy to run FEMA prior to Katrina was truly, in my mind, a case of graft deserving of impeachment. And his administration's acceptance of torture, or near torture, as a good idea make me want to vomit - forget about have him represent my country. And of course there was the administrations basically dropping Microsoft's antitrust abuse culpability when Bush came into office.

It's so hard to balance these issues. Will we ever have a president we can feel really good about again? This all makes me so sad...

Re:Less than originally expected

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Here is the story in question. It's even worse than outlawing criticism, actually; it would outlaw any reporting on the program at all. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this is the worst challenge free speech in the US has faced since the Sedition Act.

Re:Less than originally expected

[ttfkam]

First, conservative and liberal mean different things in Canada and Europe. To those regions, a conservative is what the US would call a liberal Democrat. A liberal is what the US would call the Green party or a socialist party.

And before you continue to slam those regions, check out what the US spends on health care versus those countries. Bear in mind that these stats are from 1991. They are worse now in most areas except paid maternity leave (unless Bush rolled back those improvements too).

We spend more and get less. Nice.

Americans spend $5,267 per capita on health care every year, almost two and half times the industrialized world's median of $2,193; the extra spending comes to hundreds of billions of dollars a year. What does that extra spending buy us? Americans have fewer doctors per capita than most Western countries. We go to the doctor less than people in other Western countries. We get admitted to the hospital less frequently than people in other Western countries. We are less satisfied with our health care than our counterparts in other countries. American life expectancy is lower than the Western average. Childhood-immunization rates in the United States are lower than average. Infant-mortality rates are in the nineteenth percentile of industrialized nations. Doctors here perform more high-end medical procedures, such as coronary angioplasties, than in other countries, but most of the wealthier Western countries have more CT scanners than the United States does, and Switzerland, Japan, Austria, and Finland all have more MRI machines per capita. Nor is our system more efficient. The United States spends more than a thousand dollars per capita per year--or close to four hundred billion dollars--on health-care-related paperwork and administration, whereas Canada, for example, spends only about three hundred dollars per capita. And, of course, every other country in the industrialized world insures all its citizens; despite those extra hundreds of billions of dollars we spend each year, we leave forty-five million people without any insurance. A country that displays an almost ruthless commitment to efficiency and performance in every aspect of its economy--a country that switched to Japanese cars the moment they were more reliable, and to Chinese T-shirts the moment they were five cents cheaper--has loyally stuck with a health-care system that leaves its citizenry pulling out their teeth with pliers.

...

The issue about what to do with the health-care system is sometimes presented as a technical argument about the merits of one kind of coverage over another or as an ideological argument about socialized versus private medicine. It is, instead, about a few very simple questions. Do you think that this kind of redistribution of risk is a good idea? Do you think that people whose genes predispose them to depression or cancer, or whose poverty complicates asthma or diabetes, or who get hit by a drunk driver, or who have to keep their mouths closed because their teeth are rotting ought to bear a greater share of the costs of their health care than those of us who are lucky enough to escape such misfortunes? In the rest of the industrialized world, it is assumed that the more equally and widely the burdens of illness are shared, the better off the population as a whole is likely to be. The reason the United States has forty-five million people without coverage is that its health-care policy is in the hands of people who disagree, and who regard health insurance not as the solution but as the problem.

  - Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker

Reluctance?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

...the Judge said he was 'reluctant to give the Justice Department everything it wanted because of the "perception by the public that this is subject to government scrutiny" when they type search terms into Google.com.

Perhaps he should be more reluctant because it's against the US constitution.

Re:Reluctance?

[conJunk]

no kidding. what really trives me nuts is the way that we put so much value on "reaching an agreement" in this culture that people look the other way to "doing increadibly wrong things"

doj asked for a million urls and 50,000 searches... "well," says the judge, "they've reduced that to much smaller numbers, so i'm impressed with their ability compromise, so i'm inclined to give it to them"

well hold the fuck on! discolsing private information is still disclosing private information. who cares if they're even asking for just one url and just one search term... it's still wrong. *especially* since it's (a) not for an investigation of anything, and (b) being used to try to justify their own failed attempts at legislation

excuse me, but it's not google's job to do the government's homework for them.

Re:Reluctance?

[conJunk]

from tfa:

The outcome will determine whether the Justice Department will be able to use Google search terms in a social science research project that will be used this fall to defend an antipornography law. The Bush administration argues that criminal sanctions in the 1998 law--which has been placed on hold by the courts--are more effective ways to shield children than antiporn filtering software.

from teh beeb

Essentially it wants data from search engines to prove how easy it is to stumble over porn on the net. If it can prove this the result might be onerous regulation for many websites.
In court documents the US government said it had tried to generate the same information using the Internet Archive website but did not get the results it wanted.

essentially, the doj wants this data to make a point about child porn online. they are not investigating any violations of any law. this is not an issue where a warant even *could* be issued

rather, they are trying to make a point regarding aspects of the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, which the ACLU has successfully blocked in court. the government wants figures to support it's position in that case, but those figures don't exist, so they're demanding that google *give* them the raw data they need to make the argument they want to make

Re:Reluctance?

[penix1]

It isn't a "privacy issue" it is a 4th ammendment issue. Google has 4th ammendment rights. They are entitled to the protection from unwarrented searches. There is no crime being investigated in this request. This is the government trying to build a case where none exist.

B.

Re:Reluctance?

[BewireNomali]

more for the children bullshit?

I don't understand. You're opposed to making it harder for kids to find porn online?

Re:Reluctance?

[Anonymous Struct]

I'm opposed to it. It's not the federal government's job to make it hard for kids to search for porn on the internet. It's also not their job to make sure kids eat the right food and avoid playing violent video games. And that's coming from a guy who leans left.

Why does the government need this data?

[bcarl314]

I've said it before, but I can't understand why the government needs this data when they already have search results from MSN, Yahoo, and AOL. One would think that statistical analysis should be able to give enough information to make or break their case already. What are they looking for from a MOE perspective?

I'm just not sure what they need this data for. Are the google search results that much different than MSN or "live.com"???

Re:Why does the government need this data?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're correct, the government doesn't need this information.

What the government does desire, however, is established precedent which permits it to seize information from any company, even when no actual crime is being investigated.

Time to Google Bomb them

[WillAffleckUW]

Just imagine what would happen if people decided to rebel, and started typing in useful search phrases over and over, while hosting web pages which had those keywords.

It's like a thousand al-Qaedas all at once.

That's how you deal with an intrusive government in Soviet America.

Of course he's concerned with the *perception*.

[Elwood P Dowd]

Because we all know that if the government really wanted that information from Google, they'd have persued it via Patriot Act style secret warrants. Since I haven't heard about a bunch of Google employees going to jail, I assume they're following the law.

It is subject to government scrutiny when you type something into Google.

The reason that the Justice Department publicised this rejection from Google is because they thought it helped them. That's what baffles me about this case. Was it their public image that they thought this helped? Was it in their interest to make people think their information was safe with Google? Did they think it would cause Fox News to smear Google? (And how would that help them?) Is this information honestly going to help them get their preferred verdict? I don't see how...

Iduno. I can't tell if I'm over thinking this or under thinking it.

Re:Of course he's concerned with the *perception*.

[necro2607]

"It is subject to government scrutiny when you type something into Google."

Oh, what? So my internet browsing habits are subject to scrutiny by foreign governments? I live in Canada. IMHO the US government should keep the hell out of my personal information completely, and should have not even the slightest rights to ever know of such information unless I actually enter their country. Otherwise, GTFO ...

Re:Of course he's concerned with the *perception*.

[bnenning]

These guys proxy Google and claim to keep no permanent records.

Re:Of course he's concerned with the *perception*.

[hackstraw]

Because we all know that if the government really wanted that information from Google, they'd have persued it via Patriot Act style secret warrants. Since I haven't heard about a bunch of Google employees going to jail, I assume they're following the law.

Clearly, you know nothing about the USA PATRIOT Act.

1) There are no warrants under it.

2) You do not hear of people going to jail. They are illegally seized and detained indefinitely without charge or warrant and without legal council.

It is subject to government scrutiny when you type something into Google.

scrutiny (skr?t'n-?)
n., pl. -nies.
1 A close, careful examination or study.
2 Close observation; surveillance.

That too is illegal according to our constitution, without a warrant for a specific charge looking for specific information.

Iduno. I can't tell if I'm over thinking this or under thinking it.

I know if you live in the US, you should think more about this stuff.

sad really

[Anonymous Coward]

for the GOV to be undertaking this blatent fishing expedition (still convinced the gov is on the right path ?)

of course if Google had stopped logging every bit of shit that goes over the pipe this problem wouldnt exist, as they say "you have made your bed, now sleep in it"

How about zero search queries?

[Zarel]

From the article:

...the Justice Department...demands a "random sampling" of 1 million Internet addresses accessible through Google's search engine, and a random sampling of 1 million search queries submitted to Google in a one-week period. During negotiations, the Justice Department narrowed its request to 50,000 URLs and said it would look at only 10,000. It also said it wanted 5,000 search queries and would look at 1,000. Ware said that the reduced demand coupled with the government's "willingness to compensate Google" for up to eight days of its programmers' time had convinced him to grant the Justice Department at least some of what it had requested.

So the reduced demand somehow makes it okay to violate first-Amendment rights?

Re:How about zero search queries?

[necro2607]

Like I keep seeing quoted in the news articles about this whole thing - Your privacy will be invaded bit by bit, in a gradual, not-so-harsh manner. But in the future you'll look back and realize what has happened...

From forum

[Viraptor]

Probably someone from Justice Department asked something on a web forum and got standard "STFW" with google link.
Some people should just learn to use google, not ask feds to force informations out of it, really... ;)

What happened to less government regulation?

[Serveert]

I'm very confused here, I thought that a certain party was for less government regulation? Is this justified because we must "protect the children"?

Re:What happened to less government regulation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly that party is either out of power, or no longer exists, or is too small.. Since Reagan's time, the Democrats have been the party of fiscal responsibility and minimum regulation in your personal life. The Libertarian party is the only party that ever really wanted less government regulation overall.

I just don't get it

[phoenix.bam!]

What standing does the government have to even ask for this information?

I see no reason whatsoever that google should be forced to provide for the request other than the DOJ saying "Can we see your information?"

No law has been broken, no crime is under investigation... Can they come to my house next and ask to see the last 1,000 things I searched for? Why can they do that to google? This is insane and that judge is a moron.

Time to move servers again...

[Anonymous Coward]

No problem, Google can just move their servers to China to keep them safe from a government that thinks it needs to track every citizens activity.

Re:Why is it...

[adisakp]

That Google bends over backwards when it comes to Chinese censorship, but stonewalls the U.S. Justice Department when it comes to our civil liberties?

Google is offering Chinese citizens the rights and protections they have for computer access under Chinese law. Unfortunately under these laws Chinese citizens DO NOT have a right to privacy and DO NOT have a right to search sites censored by their government.

Google is trying to offer US citizens the rights and protections they have for computer access under US law. In the US, there are constitution rights to free speech and to privacy (as interpreted by previous Supreme Courts). Google is trying to uphold these constitutional rights and the US Justice department is trying to circumvent these rights.

I fail to see how Google has done wrong by trying to protect the rights that citizens of a country have been given by their respective governments.

You may be sadly deluded

[LunaticTippy]

All I can say is Never check your parents browser history.

Re:Gotta Maintain The Illusion

[ScrewMaster]

What constitutes terrorism is relative to that which you are afraid.

They're justifying it under the takings clause!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll bet Slashdot that I've figured the judge's legal reasoning out. The key is here, from TFA:

"Ware said that the reduced demand, coupled with the government's "willingness to compensate Google" for up to eight days of its programmers' time, had convinced him to grant the Justice Department at least some of what it had requested."

The government is claiming the data as private property to be taken for public use under the 5th amendment. I'm pretty sure this is unprecedented, anyone heard of anything like this before?

Missing the real issue

[Billosaur]

Gidari said that Alexa Internet, which is owned by Amazon.com, is a site that offers Web analytics services that can produce similar information "without entangling us in litigation going forward."

That point was raised repeatedly by Ware, who seemed concerned that if he granted the request, "a slew of trial attorneys and curious social scientists could follow suit."

"Now Google could face hundreds of university professors (saying), 'I've got a study I'd like you to conduct,'" Ware said.

Further on...

The dispute has elevated the prominence of search privacy, touching on how divorce lawyers or employers in a severance dispute could gain access to search terms that people have typed in. It's also raised eyebrows because Google chose to cooperate with a demand by the Chinese government to censor searches on the company's Google.cn site.

If the Justice Department does win this case, Google would likely face a second round of subpoenas from the American Civil Liberties Union for follow-up information. The ACLU is challenging the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, or COPA, which makes it a crime for a commercial Web site to post material that some jurors might find "harmful" to any minor who stumbles across it.

The point becomes: if Google complies with this request, either voluntarily or by court order, then that open's a Pandora's box for any group that wants a crack at their data, to prove their pet theory or compile information to use in other court cases. Ultimately, the government doesn't care about the actual data. They'll find enough porn searches in MSN, Yahoo, and AOL to keep them salivating for a good while. But if they can't bring Google to heel, they will a) look powerless in the face of one of the world's largest Internet companies and b) lose any grip they have on the others, who will say "if Google doesn't have to do it, we don't either."

What's the point, really?

[illspirit]

The whole reason the DOJ wants the records is to prove that filtering software isn't as effective as COPPA, no? So how exactly is any number of random queries or page indices going to prove this? Even if the random sample was all hardcore porn pages and search strings, there's no way of telling if it was a child who did the search (or viewed the page). And if they're not asking for IP addresses (which they claim they're not), there's no way to know if a search or page even originated in this country, right? So, in theory, the data the DOJ is after might contain the results of people looking at porn in other countries in which it isn't illegal.

So, basically, they want to prove that someone, somewhere, might be breaking a US law, possibly in a country where said law doesn't apply, as evidence to support said law. Brilliant. What's next? Since other countries allow boobs on TV, we should ban TVs here?

Re:What's the point, really?

[Lehk228]

they are not looking for people searching for porn. the investigation is how often SFW search tems give NSFW results....

Re:Gotta Maintain The Illusion

[Spy der Mann]

We have ALWAYS been at war with the terrorists.

Yeah but when will they pack and leave the White House? :(

Eh..

[neurokaotix]

Before anyone spreads anymore misinformation, it's not to stop child pornography. It's to stop children from looking at porn, which, anyone with half a brain can tell you, is impossible because of how the Internet works. There is no identification layer to the 'net. The only way these extremely prude, old ass ignorant senators are going to be able to stop kids from looking at porn (and we all know they don't like porn at all, for anyone anyway) is to simply ban porn sites. Or forbid the viewing of any pornographic material to anyone who hasn't used a credit card to pay for it (this kind of indentifying the person as being at least over 18). The government is out of control. The time to start bearing arms and getting ready for the revolution is now.

1776

[the_REAL_sam]

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

A FASCIST in power is a tyrant, right?

The administration's CLAIM is that they want to sort the data to find the child porn downloaders. But all that means is they would like to be able to search in a blanket way, without first meeting the requirements set forth in the bill of rights.

From Article 4 of the Bill of Rights:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

The article spells it out: blanket searches are unconstitutional b/c they do not spell out the particular place to be searched. Just saying "there's got to be SOMETHING on that server that's illegal just isn't good enough.

On those grounds, conducting blanket evesdropping on server(s) that THEY DON'T OWN is completely unconstitutional; furthermore, there is already a supreme court ruling which says they cannot perform ANY evesdropping on THEIR OWN servers. So they couldn't "work around it" by putting "snoopy routers" at various checkpoints.

Re:exactly, gov't doesn't want to do their OWN wor

[pete-classic]

Its fully open to the public and viewable by all.

What? What the fuck are you talking about?

I'm going to do a search on google right now. I'll check back and see if you can tell me what it was.

HTTP in the clear is potentially viewable by a reasonably determined attacker, but that's a hell of a long way from "fully open to the public and viewable by all."

Its not like what you transmit to a search engine via the internet is private and secured.

If it's not private, why is there a privacy policy governing it?

-Peter

Re:Yeah

[IPA]

Google's PigeonRanking is going to be totally screwed when the bird flu gets here.

Parking Garage

[tilrman]

Suppose Google owned a parking garage with valet service. It lets people park there for free, with the understanding that you'd receive advertisements on your windshield. The Justice Department steps up and says it that Google should hand over the keys to every car so that the government can check them out, just in case.

And the judge is "reluctant" to give them what they want because it might somehow give the appearance of Big Brother.

Thanks for sticking up for us, Your Honor.

UnREASONABLE search

[TheConfusedOne]

The 4th Ammendment protects against unreasonable search not all unwarranted searches.

The issue in this case is that the information request in question isn't really a search as it's not being used in a criminal case. Also it is not being used to prosecute anyone and the information, by itself, does not uniquely identify anyone. So this makes the whole issue a lot more complicated than simply slapping down the "4th Ammendment Trump Card(tm)" and walking away from the table.

Of course this great defender of freedom is also busy making sure Chinese people don't see tanks with their searches. Also, do you think that China allows Google to keep the logs from search request to google.cn private?