Slashdot Mirror
Google Avoids Surrendering Search Info
Mercury News has details of a San Francisco judge's decision that Google should give the DoJ some details on its search engine, but is not required to turn over records to the government. From the article: "McElvain emphasized the study would be more meaningful if it included search requests processed by Google, which by some estimates fields nearly half of all online queries in the United States. Ware concurred with the Justice Department on that point, writing in his order that 'the government's study may be significantly hampered if it did not have access to some information from the most often used search engine.' But Ware said the government didn't clearly explain why it needed a list of search requests to conduct its study, prompting him to conclude the Web site addresses would be adequate." Reaction to the news is available on the Google Blog.
So the government isn't allowed to troll the personal information of every American without the slightest probability of cause? What happened to the "If you're not a terrorist, you have nothing to hide" doctrine?
Making you think you're crazy is a billion dollar industry.
request that it turn over anonymous search data for some lame research project.
But they roll over when the ChiCom dictatorship orders them to censor democracy.
Color me not impressed.
Now we just have to fight "if you're not doing anything bad, you've nothing to hide" -- in a country such as ours, that is heresy against our constitution and the people who live under it. Our general need of having privacy and not being exposed to the world is a natural one and must be protected at all costs. Those who seek to undermine this principal are very treacherous indeed.
-Drache Kubisuro
Well, the DoJ isn't likely to send in armed police rather than take the matter to court...
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Color me not impressed that the second post to a Google article is a Google troll.
Some information is better than none at all. Don't we all know that??
But Ware said the government didn't clearly explain why it needed a list of search requests
Tell me what you search for and I tell you who you are. Kind of obvious what they need this for. I wonder why they do not even come up with a fake reason to hide their true intentions. Are people already considered THAT dumb?
Well, yes. Google denied giving over information that would be considered a breach of privacy for citizens all around the world to a government that is considered bad all over the world. And I'm not talking about China here. And it is censoring searches in China but at the same time not limiting the people's ability to 'out-smart' google and eventually find what they want about 'tiennamenn square'. So, the coloring part is right to the point. ;)
First of all, lame research project is a rather mild way to describe allowing the government to legally data mine America's online usage. If you think anonymous data is "useless" or "lame" you may want to take a look at google's business model and an even harder look at their current market capitalization. Not to mention that once a judge allows the government access to an unlimited amount of anonymous data it becomes a precedent for future hearings on subpeonas for say two or three people's full search/URL history.
Making you think you're crazy is a billion dollar industry.
I'm a little confused why Google should legally be required to give the government anything. The government wants to do a study. Great. They can ask (or perhaps even offer to pay) for information they need, but why should they be able to get whatever they want, for nothing? Has Google commited a crime? Are they searching for evidence for a specific crime? Will the data they get from Google be used in any ongoing investigations? If no to all of the above, why should they get some information? They want to do a study, so what? Why should that mean Google has to give them anything it doesn't want to?
heh!
Could you imagine the implications if they had to turn this data over? Every minor study in the country would be trolling Google for user information. It would all be to "protect the children", of course. Nice to see a judge with a brain stem for the first time in awhile. Of course, no doubt soccer moms and politicians angling for reelection'll be complaining about this for awhile. "Google hates kids and supports child pornography!"
I can't wait. Talk about your no-win scenarios.
Tluin natha Linux xxizzuss uriu olt bwael mon'tun.
The government doesn't do wiretaps.
It doesn't hold people without a trial.
It doesn't start a war without obvious cause.
It doesn't enrich the friends of the politicians.
Oooh.. Looky Looky! Look at that shiny thing over THERE.
How can George Bush get a subpoena in the first place. It's seems odd that a president can compel the private sector to divulge information in the pursuit of political policy.
Plus this is from the Executive branch which doesn't even make the law.
Let Congress pursue this if it wants. It has the responsibilty of making the laws, not the president.
The Constitution gives the president authority over the military and cabinet; the power to grant pardons and make appointments. And thats about it. Not sure where the Executive is coming from with this crap.
I was just reading of another frivolous suit against Google, by a site whining that it is not high enough in the search rankings. In a country where a greedy old lady can get rich by spilling coffee on herself and then successfully sueing the company that sold her the coffee, anything can happen.
Who cares whether the government has unrestricted access when a private company - Google - already has it and is using it?
From the horses mouth, "...ads are very targetable, because Google knows a lot about the person surfing, especially if they have used personal search or logged into a service such as Gmail"
Why does Google hate children? Its not just that, The DoJ is trying to protect everyone from pornography why would anyone want to stop them? People this is one of the most morally destabilizing sins since attacking Americans and we should be adopting the approaches used in the Middle East particularly: Monitoring of all internet access by faith-based guides, gouging of eyes, and strict dress codes that stop the urge in the first place. Google I hope you're happy for all the lives you've destroyed through facilitating this evil.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
What we do as individuals or as a whole, BOTH is none of the business of the feds. What's more: fuck them and their dumb internet laws. All they want this information for is see what they can take away from us next. Stop defending scum like that.
Here we go again with the anti-China stuff...
"Shiny! Shiny! Looky there! Shiny!"
Come on, people. Fix the US, THEN worry about fixing China.
If you want to complain about other countries, complain about N Korea, Iran, or 50 other places. China isn't acting belligerant or saying belligerant things. Why focus on it?
Do you NEED a new, big menace? No more USSR, so let's choose China? Is that the deal?
Is a lot of small menaces too hard to deal with? And, that's why you invent one big one?
...
Shit that explains everything. Rock on bitch!
Instead of emailing the URLs requested by the DOJ, they would hand-write them on paper and send them by mail. Preferably hand-written by 50,000 different people, of course.
There is no reason to make this easy for the government.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
You sir are looking more and more like a troll. Looking for intelligent conversation? Ok, here's a question for you: What sort of information was google asked for, that the DOJ couldn't get by actually routinely searching Google and examining the results?
Google doesn't make the information disappear entirely. It doesn't "lie" in this sense. The crucial and great aspect of google censoring links is presenting an annoying tag saying in effect 'this search has broken links due to censored content'. This type of notification upsets people since they're effectively treated like children by people in power but otherwise the same as them. Why should anybody see this information when others can't, even simply to censor it to begin with?
Censoring but tagging upsets people. Upset people cause change in the long run when they take action to correct it one way or another. Either the regional rules will change, or people dodge the rules in various ways (such as an encryption/tech vs. communication law/network isolation/spy law arms race until somebody wins). It's far more subtle, though perhaps less satisfying than a "no-censorship or the highway" style standoff, and it's effective.
not billigerent at all, tenderly rolling over students with tanks and gently imprisoning and beating religious leaders and destroying centuries old temples
People have no problem forking over all of their personal information to the private sector. Credit card companies know what you buy and where. Amazon has statistical models that identify (often correctly), books you might like when you buy another book. Even power companies have models that can generally predict your power usage patterns by demographic and weather forecasts. But, oh, no, if the "government" gets all this stuff, its the end of the world. Ironically, denying the government access to information already freely shared in the corporate world only stacks the deck towards giving corporations the upper hand over government.
This is my sig.
"China isn't acting belligerant or saying belligerant things"
It certainly is. It has been engaging in on ongoing brutal (rape, massacre, loot) occupation of Tibet. It is "saying" that it wants to cross an international boundary and destroy Taiwan. Both of these are belligerent actions against harmless sovereign nations. China is definitely imperalist. Whether or not the US wants a "big menace", the butchers of Beijing have made themselves into one. This is the same government that killed more than 40,000,000 people. They are sickos that actually still proudly display portraits of Mao everywhere.
Before you go saying "Look at what the US did to Iraq!!!", remember your ""Shiny! Shiny! Looky there! Shiny!" statement.
Is Google censoring it's search results in any of the country's you mentioned? If not, I don't see the relevancy to bringing them up on an article about Google. Bringing up Google's efforts in China to censor the Chinese people is definitely relevant in an article that paints them as saints for fighting to preserve the rights of Americans.
Hey Google: If you want to adhere to the principal of "do no evil", that means world wide, not just in your own country! You know, I'm glad to see that everyone has no problem lining up behind Google vs George Bush, but at the same time, give Google a total pass on forking over all of their information to the Chinese government, on demand.
The reality is, Google's "fight against the evil Bush empire" is really nothing more than a sales pitch designed to protect their intellectual property from domestic competition. Google is a business, not the "savior of the world from the clutches of Bill Gates and George Bush". Does anyone here remember when Microsoft was the "savior of the world from the clutches of IBM". Different graphics every day on the search site is no different than the Windows logo or the Nike Swoosh. Same sales pitch, different generation, and anyone that thinks otherwise is either too young to remember or a fool.
This is my sig.
Ironically, denying the government access to information already freely shared in the corporate world only stacks the deck towards giving corporations the upper hand over government.
;-) )
Maybe you weren't aware, but corps only have the power that the government lets them have. The government is vastly more powerful than any coporate entity and has essentially unlimited resources. If you make a list of organzations to be wary of the government is _always_ at the top of the list. The only thing that holds them back is accountability to the people (I won't debate how well that works
The private sector, at worst, sends you some junk mail and tries to sell you something. If they've processed their data correctly, then you probably are interested. The worst that can happen is that they don't process their data correctly and you get offers on stuff you're not interested in.
The government, on the other hand, can do a lot worse than send you some poorly-targeted advertisements. Being targeted as a potential terrorist can do tremendous damage to your life. You could lose your job, be incarcerated (without trial, incedentally), and possibly get your face blasted across the news.
That was not, you know, fighting for the Taliban? I'm all in favor of civil rights, but, if you take a gun and go on the side of the enemy in the middle of a war, you deserve to get shot. The act of siding with the enemy is a voluntary surrender of citizenship and the accompanying civil rights.
This is my sig.
What democracy? Is China a democracy now?
For that matter, the US is only a democratic (as in, not a real democracy, but plays one on TV) republic.
But Google isn't censoring a democracy. They are working inside a dictatorship.
Dammit, now I don't know which country I am describing again.
Oh come on! Mod that as funny not flamebait, it clearly is irony and there was no intention of any serious comment.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
If you want to determine if filters are protecting children from porn... 1. Go to google.com, search for "porn", etc. 2. Click on the first 1000 results to determine if each is evil. 3. Turn on your filtering software. 4. Go back to step 1, repeat for each filter you are interested in. Alternatively, waste tax payer money and look like an ass by paying lawyers to try to bully information out of private companies.
but it's clear that hearts are not necessary for that group. Hell, Cheney has been rejecting his own for years now and still keeps on vigorously sucking money out of taxpayers' wallets.
I suspect the breathing they do is just for show. Little known fact: George really did choke to death on that pretzel a few years ago, but since he didn't need to breathe, no harm done.
What I want to know is - Is there anyway that the government can use this and will get information (ie search requests) that is formed by people in countries other than the US.
i.e. not just getting info on its own citizens but on those from abroad simply because they may have used Google.com as opposed to Google.fr
It would clearly mess up the stats for the research wouldn't it.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
I can't believe some idiots actually thought that was serious.
Well, after the first couple of lines, of course, Before that, it sounded like a typical neo-con diatribe.
Google's last line in their blog is really frustrating to me:
When a party resists an overbroad subpoena, our legal process can be an effective check on such demands and be a protector of our users.
The checks and balances system has failed us completely. To resist an overbroad subpoena, one must have both incredible financial strength as well as incredible legal strength. Companies much smaller than Google don't have either -- and the courts seem to accept any growth in government strength as a new standard whenever a smaller company just gives in to government requests.
This country was founded on an idea that the Federal government was to be set up to promote the general welfare of the people -- not by making a police state nor a welfare state. The Federal government was here to protect the rights of the people by making sure that the individual states didn't trample on these rights. Beyond that, the Federal government was given a few BASIC powers over the people and the state -- very very basic powers.
National security was a power for the government in its ability to defend the borders and call up the militia to keep out intruders. National security was NOT about policing the citizens of the country, this was left to the individual states to decide what is criminal and what is acceptable.
I am very mad that the average citizen doesn't see what has happened. Instead of having a federal government with very limited powers -- which can't be controlled by any amount of money -- we have a federal government with unlimited powers controllable by the highest bidder. If the highest bidder has any reason to restrain government, they can do so with the right legal aid. Yet the common man (the minority of 1) -- the most important facet of a free system -- has no power to do anything but fall victim to the wants of the masses. If the masses are ignorant, the minority of 1 will find themselves without any rights because no one came to their aid.
This has nothing to do with money, mind you. This only has to do with a federal government that is no longer a servant but a master, and the belief of the citizens that they're still able to stop Leviathan through voting.
True, I tried and as long as you leave out certain keywords (like Tiananmen), there's no problem finding what you're looking for.
Try 'massacre square chinese' for example.
"This is plainly censorship for a comment that the mod didn't agree with."
You do not understand the meaning of the word "censorship". Only the government can do it. Adding/substracting moderation points is part of the moderators' free speech. Nothing more, nothing less. Free speech is not censorship.
I fully expect to be modded off-topic for this, but I won't cry the victim. That's just the moderator's free speech working.
From the GP, since you didn't bother to read the first time:
This facts are this: The feds are trying to defend their Internet child-protection law. They wanted to know how much porn is searched for on the major search engines. They asked for random search data that doesn't identify users in any way. All search engines complied except for google. Now the feds are going to court to get this information.
If you had RTFA, or followed this case with more than a 5 year old's intellect, you would have known that already.
Do I really need to provide links to the reality of wiretapping, or the non-speedy trials, or the lack of WMDs which were the original excuse for the Iraq fiasco, or the use of Halliurton as an "agency" of the US government?
No, and I don't fucking care because that has no relevance at all to this case. So who's the one trying to distract here?
And calling someone a troll is really the last refuge for the desperate and weak-minded. This troll just obliterated you.
That's true, but Amazon isn't going to send me to gitmo if they don't like the books I'm reading.
-CGP
http://www.google.com/privacy.html
"We may also share information with third parties in limited circumstances, including when complying with legal process, preventing fraud or imminent harm, and ensuring the security of our network and services."
How many non-Americans have been incarcerated without trial? Who knows, it's classified! The U.S. government reaches far beyond our borders, as does Google.com.
Making you think you're crazy is a billion dollar industry.
The private sector does not have the ability to interrogate/arrest me for owning a copy of _________ (insert any controversial book here), or the ability to interrogate/arrest me by querying a search engine for something like "join jihad" (if I were insterested in how militant muslims would go about doing so).
Your version of mal-intent by coroporations is one thing - they want to brainwash me into buying their products so their wallets become fatter. That doesn't even hold a candle to the mal-intent a government could achieve by possessing the same info.
The difference is that companies are generally interested in selling you stuff while the government is often intent on legislating your rights away, such as in this case. The negative results of one may be some spam in my inbox. The consequences of the other may be heavy handed censorship of the internet.
Now you get it?
Where to begin with how totally wrong you are?
How about this. What power do corporations have over your privacy that is much higher than the government's? I didn't know that a corporation (aside from landlords) could legally enter your home against your wishes, could monitor your communications, could imprison you and even execute you. Thanks for informing us that apparently the corporations have one-upped the government on these powers.
If you're as paranoid about statistical models of your buying habits as you are about government surveillance, then I have one question for you. Are you a terrorist, drug dealer or child pornographer? No, I'm not using that "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" clap trap, but rather it makes no sense to me why as an ordinary person you'd see an equivalence there unless you are buying stuff that is so damning that you're worried that a corporation might feel threatened enough to go after you in a court. Corporations don't care about innocuous buying habits and conversations, government agents with too much time, however, do.
What are you buying from Amazon.com that you have so much fear of others noticing a pattern of that would make you equate that knowledge of you to the government's ability to spy on you?
As much as I dislike the amount of information that many companies collect on me, at least I can sleep comfortably at night knowing that companies are quite predictable in how they act and what they do - they generally act to maximize profits and accrued value to shareholders. So companies will probably abuse my information in predictable ways, trying to spam me and sell me crap. Additionally, companies are still restricted to some degree by laws set by the government, and by excessively bad PR, which prevent them from some of the most egregious abuses of my privacy imagineable.
The government, on the other hand, is not terrible resource-constrained, lacks the profit motive and instead generally is run by bureaucrats and their institutional imperative to maximize their own power and importance in the world, and politicians seeking to score populist brownie points. This means it can be reactionary, illogical and unprofitable, while seeking to maximize control and power for itself, and suppress those it sees as a threat.
As somebody pointed out, the only thing that constrains this beast is accountability through the electoral process for politicians, and the fear of losing their jobs for bureaucrats.
In short, I think I am right to be far more distrustful of the government having oodles of personal data to mine as it pleases than any corporation.
Last sentence of parent...
Did he just admit to being a troll?
Isn't that against the troll rules or something?
Um, isn't it a little early to be hitting the crack?
they're not citizens!"
yeah, so you lose your civil rights. You get captured IN A WAR, you get the rights assigned to PRISONERS OF WAR. er, except you don't because the US army likes to arrest enemy combatants during a war on an entirely arbitrary (and illegal) basis claiming that they aren't prisoners of war because the US Army says so. They're also supposed to be released after the war is over, which was May 2003, if I remember rightly.
And then, to try and make it look all legal and above board, the US Army declares that it will be holding military tribunals. Where US Army officers will 'try' people who they have no authority to try for things which weren't illegal at the time and the place where they were done, and even if they were it wouldn't be up to the US army to do the trying.
Which ends up showing the US Army to be making an even bigger mockery of the rule of law than it did just by illegally imprisoning people.
In addition, Google doesn't provide certain services in China because it would force them to breach privacy. Personally I consider the censorship in a nation with a millenia-long tradition of strong rulers which only had democracy for about 30-40 years a bit less pressingly important than the DMCA censorship that is being performed in a nation founded on the ideals of freedom and democracy.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Remind me to close those br tags...
Anyway, my point was that citizens aren't the only ones that have civil rights. Otherwise you could shoot tourists as they come out of the airport terminal and say "Not to worry, officer, they're not citizens!"
Yeah, when my ISP has my e-mails cached that's fine, but when the government wants them it's ""wrong! What a double standard.</sarcasm>
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
The government, however, is all about secrets and spying. They have no vested interest in selling you stuff, they just take your money and give you nothing back (from the mind of the consumer). Why do they want to know about me? Just to spy! That's perverse!
See the difference? So long as the consumer understands why they are being spied on and sees a potential benefit to it they are cool with it. It's when someone is spying on your for what seems to be the sake of spying on you. Or if they are just curious about "how you work".
Also note that the spying the private sector does never includes the things people consider private enough not to reveal (relationships, phone conversations, e-mails, etc.) I can hear someone screaming "GMAIL" in the background, but remember the public was very concerned about gmail at first and had to be repeatedly assured that no human would ever view their emails.
Basically, in the eye of the consumer, privacy is good, and so long as they can do what they want, they'll accept whatever spying comes their way if they can understand it and see a potential benefit from it.
People have no problem forking over all of their personal information to the private sector. [...] But, oh, no, if the "government" gets all this stuff, its the end of the world.
When Google gets the power to arbitrairily lock people up, or 'disappear' them, or execute them. We'll talk.
You can't take the sky from me...
When Desert Storm hit, Americans rallied and made Saddam toilet paper.
:)
:) Coming soon to thinkgeek?
When 9/11 hit, we made Usama Bin Laden toilet paper.
Someone ought to make this document into toilet paper, since its now officially useless otherwise
It's the American thing to do
The government should just send someone to sit in the lobby of Google where they show everyone's search requests on a giant ticker.
It's strange how the right-wing "conservatives" have now become the "Kowtow Big Brother" party.
does not mean that I should surrender my rights to the gov.
You have paid attention to the illegal wiretaps, no? Just of curiosity, how far does this go? Do you know? If they have more knowledge than is being let on, then they could tie certain things together. If the feds really wanted to do a porn study, then great. Simply limit the data to being about PORN. But for some odd reason, they do not. i.e. they are sifting through a seemingly black box, but we have no idea of what it really holds. BTW, before you declare this tinhatism, consider that back in the 50's, we sold copiers to the USSR that had special copy info. Likewise, some of the software that we sold to USSR was used to blow gas pipes in the early 80s. What this should show you, is that the feds do have access to a number of capabilities that most would assume they would not. Now, direct this against your populace.
WW II, Korean War, Vietnam, Watergate, IranContra gate, and now even Iraq Invasion, PlameGate, and of course, the current spying taught a number of lessons. Too bad, you did not learn from it. Do not give those in power that which they crave; more power.
I wrote a story about this late January. Let me quote myself to remind ya'all of some important insights into this story:
"While Google is reacting to the government request by refusing and resisting, other "leading search engines" seem less eager to protect their users right to privacy.
It should be pointed out that:
* Yahoo,
* Microsoft and
* America Online
have all turned records over to The Bush administration."
Be very aware of this. Google is the only search engine who put up a fight on this issue! The other "leading" search engines willingly, without question, handed over all information asked for. Google in their glory avoided giving out information, the rest didn't even put up a fight. Your Google searches may be protected - for now - but the rest of your searches are now "safe" in the hands of the US Justice Department.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Attack the disease.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
This is what is missed by many. The feds ask for unqualified data over a period of time. But they could have done their own accesses and been further ahead of where they are at this time. In fact, all they had to do was send in the search criteria that MS and Yahoo so nicely provides into google to see what it returns. Yet, they did not do so.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That the government can arrest you, and is stupid enough to make several cases of mistaken identity.
EpiAdv - if you like Pokey the Penguin, try this comic!
I like herring.... even Doj Red Herring.
the case of sibel edmunds. That is a case of Bush putting a presidential gag order on somebody in which case it was shown that she did NOT meet the criteria of a security risk.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Well, I wonder how MS and Yahoo are feeling right about now for rolling over and handing over the information without a fight?
People who engage in warfare against the US (or other signatory countries) and are not in the uniform of a nation that has subscribed to the Geneva Convention are not entitled to any of the protections agreed under that convention. If found under arms with terrorists then they too are considered terrorists until such time as the Government determines what they wish to do with them. They are to be treated humanely in US prisons - and yes, I know some were not treated so in Abu Ghareb - those who mistreated them are being held responsible. Humane treatment does not mean they may not be deprived of comfort in an effort to coerce them into divulging information of intelligence value.
Military tribunals are authorized by the US Constitution. Military officers are college educated with multiple graduate level educational opportunities after commissioning - they are knowledgeable of the environments and situations that detainees were captured under. If a jury is involved, military juries have the ability to question witnesses themselves (through the judge) and do not have to rely blindly strictly on which attorney has the greater gift of gab. Many people on learning how the military justice system works have come to believe that if one is innocent it's better to be tried by a military jury - and conversely if one professes to spend the rest of his life looking for the "real killer", then you'd probably want to be tried by a civilian jury.
Yes but at the moment, because this country has elected leaders on the basis that they "know business," they don't really lack the profit motive.
(W aside, he's a (bad) figurehead, (think zaphod (in the sense of distracting attention(the bigger an ass he makes of himself, the more we should look at everyone else in the government))) [yes, I like lisp]
This is at both the state and national level.
It never fails to amaze me, that people who know that the most successful business people are not judged by how well they run a business, but by how much money they can wring out of one, will still think its a good idea to elect one to run the country. An entity that at worst (best?) should be run as a break-even concern, but should be run at a loss.
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
The usual solution to this is redacted data: the party gets just what it needs, but no more. In this case, the judge could order Google to randomize source IP addresses (or at least the low order 8 bits) and instruct the US govt that it may not use the data for any individual prosecutions (fruit of the poisoned vine). Under such orders, the govt might withdraw it's request.
The same way you or I do, by having one served on us.
President Bush doesn't obtain subpoenas. The "Justice" department issues subpoenas, not the President.
It's seems odd that a president can compel the private sector to divulge information in the pursuit of political policy.
It should appear odd. But remember it is not the President who does this but the "Justice Department". Then it won't seem so odd.
Plus this is from the Executive branch which doesn't even make the law.
The executive branch executes the laws. The DoJ is part of the executive branch. The DoJ therefore issues subpoenas. Follow?
The Constitution gives the president authority over the military and cabinet; the power to grant pardons and make appointments. And thats about it.
You forgot several things
If you don't fixate on the POTUS, you'll figure out how the federal goverment can issue subpoenas.
And fixating on the POTUS is the source of the problem as to why abuses continue. It isn't Bush, it isn't Clinton, it isn't the next person. When you perpetuate the myth that the President does these things, you find yourself suprised all over again when the next one does it. The DoJ largely remains the same and remains unaffected when you blame the POTUS. It is like blaming Brown when it was Chertoff who needed to be canned for his actions. You leave the problem in place and employ a scapegoat.
It is also like the Democratic reaction to the DoJ's abuse of the so-called Patriot Act. They didn't object to it and it's abusive powers, they objected to who had control of said powers. As long as you blame the current figurehead, the problem will only get worse.
Shipping it off to Congress is no solution either. Where in the Constitution does it say Congress is an investigative body? It doesn't. And it merely clouds the underlying issue. The DoJ was/is trying to defend an unconstitutional law not by arguing that it really is constitutional, but that it works and as such should essentially be exempt from constitutionality requirements.
And that is the greatest danger in this whole mess. It isn't about privacy, or who is President, or forcing a "private" company (IMO you are no longer private when you apply for special protections and priviliges from the government, and they grant them) to hand over what may be trade secrets, and it isn't about who should be fighting for a law's existence or issuing subpooenas (it is the executive's job to defend laws).
It is about the DoJ arguing that a law that for some level does what it was designed to do should be allowed even if unconstitutional. The danger of that precedent is one of the most grave threats to the rule of constitutional law there is.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
The government is defending the Child Online Protection Act against constitutional challenges. If you're in a court case you can compel people to come and testify, or simply force them to produce documents with relevant evidence, which is what the government claimed to be doing. If you overreach the judge can slap you down, which is what happened here.
Shooting them on the battlefield, holding them as prisoners of war, or trying them for treason (which they didn't even do for Lindh!) would all be acceptable courses of action. Arbitrarily detaining people abroad and at home suspected of terrorism is not. Aside from Padilla, hundreds of resident non-citizens were held for indefinite periods of time without charges, though I believe most of them have been released or deported by now.
English is easier said than done.
>The Federal government was here to protect the rights of the people by making sure that the individual states didn't trample on these rights.
The idea of the federal government protecting people from the states is a post-Civil War innovation. Reading the Federalist Papers is an eye opener. The Founders actually envisioned the exact opposite, that the central government couldn't trample the people's rights because the power of sovereign state governments would prevent them.
"Deprived of comfort", is that the new military euphemism for "tortured"? I'm finding it hard to keep up, but then I've been lost ever since "collateral damage".
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
Instead of about google, the story should now turn to the other search engines: They apparently turned over "personal data" to government people who didn't have just cause!!
I'd be seriously upset if my search engine would give my personal data to just anybody who doesn't have the right to such data.
Doesn't the gummint already have the ability to sniff all internet communications? Why can't they just take a look-see at all incoming queries to google (or anyone else). Assuming they have a few thousand half-talented geeks in their staffs at Ft. Meade and elsewhere, they can do the normal cookie and header decodes, analyze the form contents, and --- if they are really motivated --- look at the google.com responses. Mebbe I can put a real promiscuous sniffer on the class-Z range (0.0.0.0 - 255.255.255.255) and build an interesting DB. Now, where is that access point...
If you are concerned about Google's records of your searches, use Scroogle (http://www.scroogle.org/scraper.html) instead.
The DoJ is a presidential cabinet department. It is the Executive.
The question remains:
From where does the Executive branch derive its power of subpoena when no law has been broken?
"What's the difference between Google and the Gov't? People have no problem forking over all of their personal information to the private sector."
Google has to deliver a good service or product to get funding for its operations, so it can't waste this on unprofitable ventures. The government forces people to fund its operations, so it cares not a bit what you want.
No, don't be silly... they just took away their high thread-count sheets and artisan olive oils, and forced them to drink -- shudder! -- domestic beer.
That's all... it certainly wasn't the case that people at the top of the US Government knew exactly what was going on at prisons such as Abu Ghraib, and in fact ordered it, no matter what you may have heard from dozens of soldiers who were actually there.
"Given the broad definition of relevance in Rule 26, and the current narrow scope of the subpeona, despite the vagueness with which the Government has disclosed its study, the Court gives the Government the benefit of the doubt."
W.t.f.
The Court recognizes that the government is incompetent and yet still allows for the Government to assert its power over an uninterested third party.
Wow.
When my accountant wants my financial info that's fine, but when my garbageman wants them, it's wrong. Remember, the accountant is commercial, and the garbageman is (often) government (albeit city). so the analogy isn't too far off base. We're employing people with two different educational backgrounds to do two different jobs.
Better, this time both people work for the federal government: When my Post Office has my mail held for me, that's fine, but when the FBI, CIA, NSA, police, et. al. want them it's wrong! Also if the Post Office or ISP were to read them, people wouldn't like it.
Many people are saying bad things about Google due to this court case. What are the odds that Google was the only search engine asked for the data? It is likely that Yahoo and MS gladly turned over all the data requested. Give big G some credit for at least trying to fight an unreasonable request.
The government now has the right to invade your privacy at the ISP level to help them draft laws, conduct surveys, and probably any other sort of surveillance. Why not let Wal-Mart wiretap you around Christmas to find out what you're planning on buying your friends/family? That's where this is headed.
Today we're illegally asking businesses for information that is freely available. Want to know what queries come up in a google search? Google it! But that's not what they want. They want any and every bit of private info they can get to help them promote their biased law to "protect kids" and deny us normal citizens our freedom.
This is about control. Your government wants to control the way you think. They want you to think pornography is bad for kids. But I have seen no evidence to prove this. I have seen no evidence violent content is bad for kids. If this content is bad for kids, perhaps contact with adults is also bad for kids. Maybe kids should be taken off to a "camp" somewhere so they can get the proper safe environment our government thinks they must be raised in.
If everyone just googled "How to make a nuclear bomb."
;D
There'd be a lot of doors getting knocked on
Last April, two 16-year-old New York City Muslim girls were detained, with the FBI claiming that they were "an imminent threat to the security of the United States based on evidence that they plan to be suicide bombers." I believe one of the girls (and her family) was eventually deported. No actual evidence was ever cited. The two girls had never even met before, and the FBI claimed that they were conspiring to be suicide bombers together? It was ridiculous, but they couldn't really do anything.
It's true that they were not citizens; that does not make this right. They were never given any proof that they were suicide bombers, because the FBI can't release that information as it would be putting national security at risk if two 16 year old girls knew why they were being detained...
Need help - license plate reverse lookup. NY plate CSE-2960. Guy almost hit me, blamed me, pissed me off.
Top Google Searches every hour or so.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
And another part of freedom is chipped away because of ... ooh look terrorists!
(Have you ever seen a terrorist that your gov't wasn't supporting?)
The whole point of having a trial is to determine whether a person is guilty or not. Locking people up without due process of law is unconstitutional and illegal. Period.
The act of siding with the enemy is a voluntary surrender of citizenship and the accompanying civil rights.
Can you point to the portion of the Constitution that spells that out? Or are you just making up rules that you wish were so?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Jose Padilla?
Could you imagine the implications if they had to turn this data over? Every minor study in the country would be trolling Google for user information.
And developers would probably write their own P2P web search engines. Napster did the keyword search for mp3 files. It would be trivial to modify this for web page searches - each filename would be replaced by a keyword string, while spider searches would be implemented through distributed processing.
If the Feds really want to find a list of IP addresses looking for a particular keyword string, all they have to do is set up a webpage with these keywords in it. For registered advertisers, google provides webpage owners to retrieve list of IP addresses and the matching keywords that made a hit to that site.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
The feds are trying to defend their Internet child-protection law. They wanted to know how much porn is searched for on the major search engines. They asked for random search data that doesn't identify users in any way.
So because the information is anonymous, they have a right to mine corporate owned information to attempt to resurrect a series of laws that have been repeatedly found unconsitutional? You describe porn as if it were something illegal, a problem that they are reasonably working to eliminate. And the government shares your position I'm sure. But somehow the "they're just attacking pornography" argument doesn't sway me much. Pornography involves peoples' right to explore their sexuality as they see fit, including selling video or photographs of said sexuality for the means of making money and helping other people enjoy their sexuality. The government disagrees with this protected practice (shielded by case law), and is looking for a way to implement their standard wedge method to make it impractical since they can't make it illegal. They are doing so under the guise of protecting children. This demand for "random search data" whether it is anonymous or not, is entirely inappropriate and private corporations which have rights of their own, should not be at the disposal of the government to provide them with commercial information in order to further their attempts to override peoples' rights through misrepresented over-restrictive impracticality.
That would be like the government demanding that the credit card agencies turn over all of the charge records of a random sampling of 50,000 Americans so the government could better understand peoples' spending habits. What you've done by condoning such government abuses of power is essentially hand the government the right to "explore" all private information for the purpose of "research" so they can advance their legal agenda of chipping away at peoples' rights using the wedge method and by over-regulating businesses they don't like.
And as we all know non U.S. citizens are un-persons who should have no rights whatsoever.
What's that you say, the U.S. signed the Geneva conventions preventing torture of prisoners of war and bombing of civilian areas and that treaty has the force of U.S. law according the constitution.
War crimes trials for Bush AND Clinton, who'd have thunk it (certainly not the MSM that avoids this very real legal issue like the plague).
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
That's not really true. The corporations pretty much control the govt. If a corporation wants something (say some oil wells in Iraq) it simply has the govt do it for them.
Since corporations can buy and sell senators at will they have all the power the govt has and more.
evil is as evil does
Hey if the DoJ wanted to obtain information about google, why didn't they just google for it? This really should have been the response to the initial request.
You should probably learn lisp better, asshat.
If he *really* had some common sense, he would've said, in essence, "there's no legal basis for requiring Google to hand out *any* data if there's not a criminal investigation going on, so go away, n00bs".
You forgot the obvious "but IANAL". There is lots of legal basis for requiring Google to hand out data when there's no criminal investigation going on. In fact, there's an entire section of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that deals with obtaining information during a civil suit from someone who isn't a party to the suit. It happens all the time, and it's supposed to be possible.
You can argue until the cows come home whether or not the DoJ needed the specific information they asked for, but the fact is that there is a legal basis for the decision, and under the FRCP, Judge Ware seems to have made a reasonable decision.
Maybe you weren't aware, but corps only have the power that the government lets them have. The government is vastly more powerful than any coporate entity and has essentially unlimited resources. If you make a list of organzations to be wary of the government is _always_ at the top of the list.
You're kidding, right? A corporation generally has the same rights as a person (hence the term "corporation" - "embodiment"). And people (and corporations) have all the rights and powers except those explicitly denied to them by law. Sure, the US Federal government is huge and should not be trusted, but that doesn't change the foregoing.
It goes both ways. There are significant restrictions on activities of the US Federal government that don't apply to private entities, so there's a long history of "outsourcing" such actions to the private sector.
Yeah, only corporations don't send men with guns to throw you in prison, harass you, or KILL YOU if they don't like what you're looking at. Gimme a bad ol' corporation any day of the week over Alberto Gonzales and his Fedgov slime.
Its peoples right to privacy in how they find porn, via using google or MS search is what is at steak here, not the children.
As a vegetarian, and supporter of pornography, I say it's not worth it. Does the right to privacy outweigh the right to eat cows? I think not.
But I support children. Just not child pornography. The steaks are just too high.
This will be a historic day for Google. One of Google's biggest problems is that people are scared of how much information they have on them and what it is used for. What happened today was what many people have been fearing for years. But Google pulled through and showed they really *do* care about privacy, unlike some other search engines. People will begin to feel a lot more confortable trusting Google with their data and how it is used, I certainly do. Well done Google!
>What's that you say, the U.S. signed the Geneva conventions preventing torture of prisoners of war
Only to other signatories of the Geneva Convention. None of our present military opponents actually signed it.
This is my sig.
Which one of you Commies modded this flamebait?!!! Can't you posers take a joke? When the revolution comes the moderators join the illegals against the wall! And the ricers, I really hate those guys, especially when they put a HUGE wing on the back of a fwd car. WTF!!!So the mods, illegals and ricers go first. And that Urkel guy really annoys me too. So, the mods, illegals, ricers and Urkel. And Scientolgists. What a bunch of pretentious self important losers.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!!!!
This issue isn't about searching for porn, folks. Those who want to search for porn can continue to do so, of course, as long as they aren't searching for illegal porn (as defined by the laws of their respective country).
It should already be clear by now that the issue is about how frequently adult content (i.e., porn) is presented by the search engines for fairly obvious non-adult related searches. That's what the laws were intended to enforce--not returning potentially harmful content to minors--but were considered too overbroad at the time they were presented. And, that's clearly why the government wanted the search terms and URL's, to see what search results were returned for what search criteria, and to determine if any of those URL's contained content harmful to minors.
Additionally, if the search engines as a whole continue to avoid strict filtering of adult content sites by default, then of course, the laws are a must to force the search engines to do what they should already be doing (or deal with the appropriate sanctions for violating the laws).
By extension, those users who absolutely must have adult content returned in the search results can always exercise the option to disable any adult content filters the search engine may implement.
"I know it's heresy to say that these days but that ought to tell you something"
It shows how well it has worked and how terrible the alternatives are.
"It encourages the worst traits of mankind."
It encourages the best traits of mankind.
"Those who are especially greedy, lustful, mean, and cruel do very well under capitalism."
The greedy don't do well under capitalism. What you say is really true of socialism, which does encourage laziness and greed. Greed just doesn't work under capitalism: if you covet, you have to work for it or pay for it. The worst "mean, and cruel" people have been socialists. Capitalism, on the other hand, works for almost everyone (more people than for any other system imaginable).
"How did Jesse Jackson put it? "capitalism without capital is just another ism".
How incredibly profound. Did he in the next line say that capitalism without italism is just another cap? Or capitalism without lis is just another capitam? Just goes to show you that Jesse Jackson never really thinks about what he says or what he does.
I also don't know where you got your impression that a military tribunal is better than a civil court. Why not then substitute all courts in the U.S. by military tribunals? What would you prefer: A court where you can choose your own defender, where you can appeal in case some mistake is made by the court, where the judges are independent from the government, and where the trial is public vs. an "enemy" officer as defendent, very limited and obscure ways to appeal if any, enemy officers as judges whose comrades you might have killed, and a secret trial in some military camp where nobody you know is allowed to attend? Do you really want to rely for justice on some TV-like bold gentlemen officers with balls of steel who have to act against the will of your warmongering commander-in-chief and compromise the former decisions of your comrades to displace and detain you for years? Good Luck.
I agree that the treatment by the U.S. military in general is not as bad how the terrorits treat U.S. soldiers or civilians, but that can not be used as an excuse to lower own standards. If you do lower the standards, you are not better than the terrorists.
You probably are not aware how Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have discredited the U.S. in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. You are no longer seen as The Good Guys (TM). For many Muslims you are now the bad guys, but for your friends you are now the Guys Who Don't Stick To Own Rules and give a fscking shit about the rules of the rest of the world.
You had the compassion and support of the world after 9/11, but you screwed up big time. Now the world looks at the U.S. troops in Iraq with a mixture of uneasiness and malicous joy, and even your best friends are investigating crimes the CIA committed in their countries or against some their citizen.
What a stupid waste of money and lifetime. The U.S. has the most talented people in politcial and social sciences, the greatest spin doctors, economical talent, the largest secret agencies, the greatest movie makers and military power that matches the power of the combined power of military in the rest of the world, but all this seems to be worthless and even counterproductive with an administration like the current one: The reputation in world ruined, terrorism in the world flourishing, the national deficit spiralling out of control, boosting national debt to historic dimensions, and an economy based on plundering and wasting irreplaceable natural resources of the world.
I hope the U.S. will manage to turn around 180 as soon as possible, but the whole world already will have to cope for decades with all the political, economical, environmental and social damage the U.S. have caused since the end of the cold war. The tragedy is that much of the damage done will turn out to be unrecoverable, but the sooner it starts, the better. Close Guantanamo today, and send the people there home. You will not be able to try them anyway, because all the evidence gained there will not be accepted in any court that respects the human rights.
Without order, nothing can exist. Without chaos, nothing can be created.
In other words, whether you trust corporations or the govt you are fucked either way. If the govt wants to bend you over but can't they hire a corporation to do it. If the corporation wants to fuck but can't they hire the govt.
evil is as evil does
You can fool some of the people all of the time and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time.
You just need to fool enough people some of the time during an election year.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Sexuality? If we were all eunichs, there probably wouldn't be child pornography.
Aging? If we were all pre-pubescent children, we probably wouldn't care about child pornography.
Youth? If we were all old, there'd be no children left to make child pornography.
I'm trying to imagine what could cause people of one age to find people of another age sexually desireable. As long as we have people of varying ages, with libidos, it's going to exist. Which do you propose to eliminate: the difference in age, or everybody's sexual desires?
Or are you suggesting that there's a bacteria that causes child pornography?
The first case is that the DOJ is just too used to supeonaing records that they don't understand they don't have to supeona google, just plug in a PC and go to town. It could be typical Govt. power-mongering. Unless...
Unless they are after something specifically to use at a later date in a criminal matter. One of the purposes of the orginal law was outlawing "allowing" minors to access porongrphic material. That's a huge scope for something like Google. That's the only reason for the manner they are using to get this info. The DOJ must have in their list of searches/IPs/Websites some idea which ones were entered by schoolchildren or pedophillies and want to cast the net and see just how far it goes. Are they after some kids seach that 245,786 items down has a porn site? That's the only reason I can see. Maybe they are trying to show all these search engines were "flagrantly" breaking the law. If they had search terms say lots of school children enter, they they could just enter the terms themselves and look for people trying to "trick" google into access to Kids. They had some idea of sites they'd shut down for illegal activity, they could still search Google's cache without a supeona. Unless they're after the IPs of Who searched for the illegal web sites. The whole thing stinks, and it looks like they want to use Google as "big brother" to do their law enforcement for them.
Google follows the law in the countries they operate in. Surprise, surprise. If you don't like that China isn't a democracy, don't take that up with Google -- talk to the Chinese people themselves.
As Neo-facists gain control of top level government facilities,
American citizens' rights vanish in the all encompassing grasp.
If the government want's to find out what is on the internet,
it should pay $$$ a contractor to do it's web crawling for them,
at market rates, not attempt to steal corporate information off of google, Yahoo, MSN and America Online.
Want to protect children from bad language, violence, and nudity on cable tv?
Don't subscribe to cable tv, give them a bicycle.
Want to protect children from violent video games?
Don't buy them an Xbox or PS2 - give them a football.
Want to protect children from the internet?
Don't give them a computer, buy them a book.
(Or even an encyclopedia )
Want to protect you children from drugs, gansta hip hop violence, and peer pressure? Home school the little guys - forget public education.
Want to protect children from lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
Be a responsible parent.
The government can't solve the problem,
because avoiding personal parental responsibility and expecting the government to take the place of parents - that IS the problem.
Oh, and it helps if mommy and daddy are actually married to each other and love one another. Families - an old fashioned value, but it has worked so well for thousands of years of human civilization. Why are so many people giving up on the idea of families now?
based on what the research project was, the DOJ just had a huge child porn ring bust. At least some companies cooperated with it.
No they don't. Look at your statements: the individual *items* purchased are not listed. Only the merchant name (and perhaps address) is, along with the transaction price, of course.
CC companies do not, in fact, know what specific items you are purchasing (at least not yet). Guesses can be made based on the merchant (e.g. "Big Al's Sex Toy Shop - Atlanta, GA" might tell the CC company a bit about your sex habits), but they won't know that you purchased a black, 24" triple-ended model from RubberCo...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
oooooooooh. He got schooled! Feel salty don't ya?
To me, it looks like the DoJ is looking to Google for some consulting to provide information for their report. Google said "not for sale." So, can the DoJ really drag Google into court and ask the judge to order Google to provide said consulting for free and have the judge overlook the obvious: that it's tantamount to indentured servitude?
If the judge didn't have the testicular fortitude to tell the DoJ to go away and to stop harassing Google, then at the very least the judge should have ordered Google to come up with a price for providing the service and then ordered the DoJ to pay it!
You probably are not aware how Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have discredited the U.S. in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. You are no longer seen as The Good Guys (TM). For many Muslims you are now the bad guys
I don't mean to be a dick, but, when were Muslims ever the "The Good Guys (TM)". After 1500 years of constant Islamic invasions, bullying, and threats, since that excuse for a religion was even founded, one has to ask, when has ANY Islamic country ever been, "The Good Guys (TM)". Even the Crusades, such a horrific affront to the Islamic world, were initially just a military response to an invasion by Islamic countries.
More recently, for the last 30 years, at least, American Foreign Policy in the middle east has been one to avoid enraging the Muslims. Indeed, Bill Clinton bent over backwards, arguably even siding with the wrong side in the Balkans in order to make Muslims happy. But what did any of it get the United States? I will tell you: The World Trade Centers were destroyed, 3000 people were killed, and Muslims around the world danced in the streets and burned American flags in celebration.
Europeans fall over by themselves in appeasement to Islamic fury. Spain bails on Iraq, the France caves on Islamic issues left and right, all in an effort to try and court Islamic people, and what do they get? A Dutch writer stabbed to death, death threats against cartoonists, and riots and France.
At some point, one has to ask, will there ever be anything that will make any Islamic country see any non-islamic country as anything less than a target? Judging by what the Koran says, I think the answer is no.
Despite all of this obvious facts, Bush at least kept to a rhetoric of trying to bring democracy to the middle east. And, in the USA, the Democrats of all people are basically calling Bush onto the carpet by arguing that it is impossible to teach an Islamic person Democracy, it is impossible for them to learn freedom and respect, and, we sure as hell don't want them watching over our ports.
Why aren't they right? You tell me.
This is my sig.
I see these as different things, Google justification... maybe.
One is handing over data you have collected, the other is adding a filter to keep a country happy. Now is it up to google to decide what China does is right or wrong - I don't see how they could. It might be easy for you to do it, but that is in reality quite a big issue.
The court ruled that the search terms and list of random web sites in Google's index were the same information. Since there is no need to turn over two pieces of the same information, the court only needs to compel one set of information. The list of random websites was less harmful to Google than a list of search queries, so that is the information the court ordered Google to turn over.
The Judge did indeed state that reason the DoJ sought the information for was lacking detail, but then went on to postulate what the court imagined the information would be used for in the context of the DoJ explanation.
The court completely dodged any and all privacy issues with its ruling.
Some information is better than none at all. Don't we all know that??
1.) Huh? I thought it was the exact opposite, one rotten apple can spoil the whole bunch, 5% untruth can make 95% truth unusable, a building is useless without the foundation. If carefully framing and spinning stories wasn't so astonishingly effective, why is so much money and effort spent on it?
2.) Sometimes, nothing *is* better than something, if that gaping nothing makes people wake up and take initiative. Not sure if that applies here, but in general it often does. Being allowed to consume a lot of things but not a certain type of things that would set one free kills. Not only in China, not only in the US or Europe, not even only in industrialized nations.