DOJ Vs. Google: How Google Fights On Behalf of Its Users

Lauren Weinstein writes: While some companies have long had a "nod and wink" relationship with law enforcement and other parts of government -- willingly turning over user data at mere requests without even attempting to require warrants or subpoenas, it's widely known that Google has long pushed back -- sometimes though multiple layers of courts and legal processes -- against data requests from government that are not accompanied by valid court orders or that Google views as being overly broad, intrusive, or otherwise inappropriate. Over the last few days the public has gained an unusually detailed insight into how hard Google will fight to protect its users against government overreaching, even when this involves only a single user's data. One case reaches back to the beginning of 2011, when the U.S. Department of Justice tried to force Google to turn over more than a year's worth of metadata for a user affiliated with WikiLeaks. While these demands did not include the content of emails, they did include records of this party's email correspondents, and IP addresses he had used to login to his Gmail account. Notably, DOJ didn't even seek a search warrant. They wanted Google to turn over the data based on the lesser "reasonable grounds" standard rather than the "probable cause" standard of a search warrant itself. And most ominously, DOJ wanted a gag order to prevent Google from informing this party that any of this was going on, which would make it impossible for him to muster any kind of legal defense.

Comments

Less suspect than the others

[SpaghettiPattern]

IMHO Google remains less suspect than other corporations, when it comes to defending privacy. I would never trust MS or Apple with my data. Not that they would gladly hand over data. But the corners they cut in order to achieve their own goals and the negligible contributions to OSS show that they're only in it for the money. I know, purely subjective but we as commoners will only be able to judge through indirect perception. Much like you can judge by lack of code quality that software is unlikely to be well developed.

Re:Less suspect than the others

[moronoxyd]

Apple does not only sell hardware but also digital goods and ads. And to target said goods and ads they need what? A good profile of the user.

Apple does pretty much the same Google does. But Tim Cook dares to go on stage and pretend they don't. That makes him a liar in my book.

Over the years there were enough cases where we could see that apple does in fact collect data from their users without telling them (and without protecting said data properly).
Apple is neither better or worse than Google in that respect.

And neither of them is very interested in giving the information about their users to third parties. Their advantage in the ad/targeting business is that THEY have the profile of their users and the third parties do not.

Where's the read me

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's the read me button? Not liking the changes

Re:Let's not pat them on the back

[N1AK]

When other firms have decided that protecting their bottom line is best done by giving the government everything and anything they ask for I'm willing to cut them a little slack and give them the credit for fighting to protect user data even if, heaven forbid, that might be in their best interests.

Re: Let's not pat them on the back

[Anonymous Coward]

Because having to spend tens of millions of dollars fighting the government, instead of just giving them the info, is really effective to the bottom line... You stupid motherfucker.

It's not your data, folks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Leaving things laying around on the network is dumb. Keep repeating till the light bulb goes on.