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.

Comments

Re:Google bravely refuses the Bush Administration'

[iggymanz]

not billigerent at all, tenderly rolling over students with tanks and gently imprisoning and beating religious leaders and destroying centuries old temples

Meanwhile, Google blocks searches for "freedom"

[tjstork]

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.

Calm down trigger happy moderators.

[Don_dumb]

Oh come on! Mod that as funny not flamebait, it clearly is irony and there was no intention of any serious comment.

Re:What's the difference between Google and the Go

[killjoe]

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.

Re:Before you Sensationalists Get Riled Up

[houghi]

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.

Re:Can't Troll the E-Water

[jtcm]

I don't know much about the Congressional laws surrounding Gitmo-like camps, but it doesn't seem to be unconstitutional. ... Does Congress have authority to control prison camps operating outside our borders? If so, what part of the Constitution says so?

IANACS (constitutional scholar), but I think the section you're looking for is the 14th Amendment (Section 1, emphasis mine):

... nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws

Does this apply to the likes of Gitmo and others? I would argue it does apply.

The base is a US military outpost in which the troops are subject to the Code of Military Justice, a US law. As US law applies on the base, it reasonably follows that the US Constitution, the supreme law of the US, also applies on the base. At the very least, the US certainly has "jurisdiction".

I suppose there's some room for alternate interpretations* of the amendment, but that's my take.

*e.g. maybe it only applies to US citizens...but i think the authors of the amendment would have said "citizens" if they meant citizens; instead they said "any person".