Posted on 01/19/2006 10:36:33 AM PST by flashbunny
The Bush administration, seeking to revive an online pornography law struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, has subpoenaed Google Inc. for details on what its users have been looking for through its popular search engine.
Google has refused to comply with the subpoena, issued last year, for a broad range of material from its databases, including a request for 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period, lawyers for the U.S. Justice Department said in papers filed Wednesday in federal court in San Jose.
Privacy advocates have been increasingly scrutinizing Google's practices as the company expands its offerings to include e-mail, driving directions, photo-sharing, instant messaging and Web journals.
Although Google pledges to protect personal information, the company's privacy policy says it complies with legal and government requests. Google also has no stated guidelines on how long it keeps data, leading critics to warn that retention is potentially forever given cheap storage costs.
The government contends it needs the data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches as part of an effort to revive an Internet child protection law that was struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court on free-speech grounds.
The 1998 Child Online Protection Act would have required adults to use access codes or other ways of registering before they could see objectionable material online, and it would have punished violators with fines up to $50,000 or jail time. The high court ruled that technology such as filtering software may better protect children.
The matter is now before a federal court in Pennsylvania, and the government wants the Google data to help argue that the law is more effective than software in protecting children from porn.
The Mountain View-based company told The San Jose Mercury News that it opposes releasing the information because it would violate the privacy rights of its users and would reveal company trade secrets.
Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel for Google, said the company will fight the government's efforts "vigorously."
"Google is not a party to this lawsuit, and the demand for the information is overreaching," Wong said.
Now that is scary..
And they fail to think beyond their noses at this possibility. Complete control by her?
They best watch what they wish for, they might get it and be SORRY.
"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss".
If only that were true. The next step would be to subpoena Google's records of inbound IP addresses. After that, they would go after records from the various ISPs. And from there, they have phone numbers, then names, then addresses... And then "probable cause".
He would complain bitterly about them impugning the character of his relatives.
Then you've become a responsible parent havent you? You've installed the proper functions to prevent them from access and that is your right.
Government starts at home and not in Washington DC.
That's funny, I don't see the word "political" anywhere in the following:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Hint: if you have to make stuff up to prove your point, you are probably wrong.
You need to accompany that statement with the finger-waggle. You might want to watch a few tapes of Clinton denying that he had sex with "that woman" to refresh your memory of the exact technique.
LOL -- you've just cited yet another example of the failure and incompetence of government in these matters.
Uh, yes. They have privacy agreements with their users, and this would violate such.
In my opinion, pornography is a societal cancer needs to be aggressively taxed and regulated and/or banned on every level of government--and I'm normally a small government guy.
Yeah, but that power just tempts you, doesn't it? I mean, the Dems may have created all that power under the Commerce Clause to spawn the New Deal, but you'd be using it for a greater good, wouldn't you?
Scalia feels the same way, from what I can see in his dissent in Gonzalez:
The Court’s decision today is perhaps driven by a feeling that the subject of assisted suicide is none of the Federal Government’s business. It is easy to sympathize with that position. The prohibition or deterrence of assisted suicide is certainly not among the enumerated powers conferred on the United States by the Constitution, and it is withinthe realm of public morality (bonos mores) traditionallyaddressed by the so-called police power of the States. But then, neither is prohibiting the recreational use of drugs or discouraging drug addiction among the enumerated powers. From an early time in our national history, the Federal Government has used its enumerated powers, such as its power to regulate interstate commerce, for the purpose of protecting public morality—for example, by banning the interstate shipment of lottery tickets, or the interstate transport of women for immoral purposes. See Hoke v. United States, 227 U. S. 308, 321–323 (1913); Lottery Case, 188 U. S. 321, 356 (1903). Unless we are to repudiate a long and well-established principle of our jurisprudence, using the federal commerce power to prevent assisted suicide is unquestionably permissible. The question before us is not whether Congress can do this, or even whether Congress should do this; but simply whetherCongress has done this in the CSA. I think there is no doubt that it has. If the term “legitimate medical purpose” has any meaning, it surely excludes the prescription of drugs to produce death.
So rather than say that the Commerce Clause abuses should be ended, Scalia instead decides we should harness them for our own uses.
Of course, the libs feel that all their abuses under the Commerce Clause are for a moral cause as well.
Geez -- it's right there in the emanation from the penumbra! Are you blind? (And just how did you GET that way, hmmmm...?)
ABSTAINER, n., A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
I hope he thought it was all worth it. You know the saying..
The Constitution says it's not the governments job. The Supreme Court already told them that once.
Of what use would that information be to today's lawyers and judges?
"But I have so little of any of these things! You are wise and powerful. Will you not take the Ring?"
"No!" cried Gandalf, springing to his feet. "With that power I should have power too great and terrible. And over me the Ring would gain a power still greater and more deadly." His eyes flashed and his face was lit as by a fire within. "Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good. Do not tempt me!"
There you go. Problem solved. That was easy.
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