Feds Seek Google Records in Porn Probe

AP Via Yahoo ^ | 2006-01-19

[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.

[Senator Bedfellow]

If nobody in Podunk wanted nude dancing, there would be no issue.

You mean businesses don't open up in places where absolutely nobody wants to patronize them? Surely not ;)

Reminds me of the obscenity prosecution out of Utah a few years ago:

Provo, Utah — The video-store chain that Larry W. Peterman owned in this valley of wide streets and ubiquitous churches carried the kind of rentals found anywhere in the country — from Disney classics to films about the sexual adventures of nurses. Mr. Peterman built a thriving business until he was charged last year with selling obscene material and faced the prospect of bankruptcy and jail.

Just before the trial, Mr. Peterman's lawyer, Randy Spencer, came up with an idea while looking out the window of the courtroom at the Provo Marriott. He sent an investigator to the hotel to record all the sex films that a guest could obtain through the hotel's pay-per-view channels. He then obtained records on how much erotic fare people here were buying from their cable and satellite television providers.

As it turned out, people in Utah County, a place that often boasts of being the most conservative area in the nation, were disproportionately large consumers of the very videos that prosecutors had labeled obscene and illegal. And far more Utah County residents were getting their adult movies from the sky or cable than they were from the stores owned by Larry Peterman.

"Wall Street Meets Pornography"

[steve-b]

let's be clear on who's doing the "imposing"

"You don't like the Goths?"
"No! Not with the persecution we have to put up with!"
"Persecution?" Padway raised his eyebrows.
"Religious persecution. We won't stand for it forever."
"I thought the Goths let everybody worship as they pleased."
"That's just it! We Orthodox are forced to stand around and watch Arians and Monophysites and Nestorians and Jews going about their business unmolested, as if they owned the country. If that isn't persecution, I'd like to know what is!"
--L. Sprague deCamp (Lest Darkness Fall)

[TigersEye]

Everyone (almost) likes power when it serves their own ends. Accepting the fact that the Constitution our founding fathers gave us is not perfect but just very very good is too much for some. It wasn't intended to satisfy the wishes of every man, woman and child to ever live in the U.S. because they knew it wasn't possible to create a government that could.

They probably also knew that a man whose every need and responsibility was taken care of would be a useless unhappy twit. Communists, socialists and other flavors of statists think they have the cure for the basic human condition in the form of central control through man's law. Arrogance like that is actually the source of 99% of the misery inherent in the human condition.

Life will never be perfect and when you try to make it so through force it gets a lot worse. If history is any indicator.

[fr_freak]

This tired old argument? The gun grabbers ("...in their time, there were no semiautomatic assault weapons...") want it back.

Wow. You're freakin' hilarious. Why don't you wait until you have an actual reply before posting.

And by the way, though my argument may seem like the same logic the gun-grabbers use, it actually points toward the opposite conclusion than they reach. The gun-grabbers say " the Founding Fathers didn't know about UZIs back then, otherwise they would have been more restrictive in their language". My argument, however, if applied to the 2nd amendment as well as the first, would conclude that because they were not at all restrictive in their language, knowing that there were some arms that would be used solely for warfare (cannon and the like) and knowing their purpose for the 2nd amendment (the ability of the people to resist an oppressive government), it is quite obvious that they would not have restricted even UZIs or tanks, for that matter.

Let me sum it up for you if you have trouble reading large paragraphs: Founding Fathers, with 1st amendment, could not allow to be restricted what they could not foresee existing. With 2nd amendment, Founding Fathers deliberately did not restrict what they could have restricted at that time.

But this all goes back to "intent" rather than literal interpretation, which is why I favor the literal interpretation philosophy (which we don't generally use in the US) so that interpretations are not subjective. Therefore, using literal interpretation of 1st and 2nd amendments, neither any kind of speech, nor any kind of weaponry should be restricted. However, current rulings are generally by "intent", so 1st amendment can be limited, while 2nd cannot.

[af_vet_rr]

All these contortions and agonizing when the simple solution has been ignored for years now: create and enforce the domain XXX.
I have no problem with adults viewing whatever they wish.

Why even give government more power or get them involved with deciding what does and does not belong and where it does and does not involved? The internet has run just fine for many years - porn on the internet has been around since the '80s, and it's just the equivalent to kids getting a friend's cousin's dad's Playboy thirty years ago.

A lot of these people wanting the government heavily involved, are basically trying to use the government to raise their kids, because they don't want the responsibility - they are too busy to get involved in their kids' lives and see what they are doing.

A $30 piece of content-blocking software and moving the computer to the family room and out of the kids' bedrooms would solve a lot of the porn problems real quick.

[fr_freak]

Obviously you've never read "The Lysistrata", Euripides "Bacchanae", Moliere's "Blunderer", or some of the racier stories of Chaucer.....something most educated men of the Colonial era would have been familiar with.

Actually, I have read some Moliere and Chaucer. While they involve sexual content, I do not see them as pornographic, in the modern sense of the word, and I certainly would not place them in the same category as "Bi****s Who S*** C***" No one with any common sense would. In either case, I am willing to bet that many of our Puritan forefathers did consider them pornographic, and, as much as they could, banned them. And if such a community did so, I am also willing to bet that Jefferson would not have considered that a violation of the 1st Amendment.

[Dumb_Ox]

Who would be investigating? Eastern Europe's police have enough problems, even when they aren't corrupt, and the tens of thousands of porn sites--especially those charging money or installing adware or pop-ups--render problematic any search for a given vanished woman or girl.

Amsterdam's legal red-light districts are infested with such slaves, even though legalization was supposed to stop the problem. Heck, your average American pimp is a similar slavedriver, buying women for a few thousand or so.

And, I repeat, any crackdown would precipitate the cries of wankers everywhere.

[af_vet_rr]

Only fools or the ignorant trust those controls. Kids can get around them, they don't filter what they should, and they filter what they shouldn't.

When I start allowing my kids on the 'net, it will be through a proxy server I set up. It will cache everything. The kids will know their allowed boundaries and be expected to not exceed them. Violation results in a ban.

There is some pretty good blocking software out there - it's far from perfect, but most parents don't have the technical know-how to implement what you are talking about. I'm going to assume you would also keep the computer(s) in a central area where you or a spouse can see what they are doing on the computer.

I still cannnot get over the fact that some people around here want the government to "protect" their children, when a few simple measures that they themselves could implement, would do more than the government could ever do.

[af_vet_rr]

What the hell? Dont parents want to raise their kids anymore? Do they want big brother to do it for them?

As a matter of fact, yes, there are a lot of parents that don't want to be real parents - they want to be their kids' friends. They don't want to say "no".

The problem is, their kids probably have plenty of friends and don't need anymore, but they do need parents.

These parents who don't want to raise their kids, God only knows what their kids will be like as parents.

[TigersEye]

Founding Fathers, with 1st amendment, could not allow to be restricted what they could not foresee existing.

What, exactly, could they not forsee?

17th-century porn auctioned for thousands December 16, 2004 (It's a news article.)

"It is one of the most notorious publications in literature and makes most pornography written 300 years later seem tame," said Peter Beal, Sotheby's book specialist

[Melas]

As much as I respect the president and his administration. This is not a good a thing and needs to be stopped. I thought the obession with naughty bits ended when Ashcroft resigned and the drapes came off Lady Justice.

[af_vet_rr]

As much as I respect the president and his administration. This is not a good a thing and needs to be stopped. I thought the obession with naughty bits ended when Ashcroft resigned and the drapes came off Lady Justice.

If this were simply about naughty bits, then the administration would have asked for searches related to certain terms. Instead, they, well, I'll let you read it:

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,

Doesn't sound like just naughty bits.

[crz]

Immorality is the failure of the parents to instill in their children the respect of themselves and of others, resulting in the breakdown of the family and eventually society.

Do we want government teaching and enforcing morality? Especially now days with the bribes and kickback scandals in ALL levels of government. It'd be like letting the fox loose in the hen house. The most immoral people on earth are todays politicians. They lie, cheat, steal..all for the love of power. And these people want them to control?

[TigersEye]

Echelon and on and on ...

It seems the desire here is to compile and collate all possible sources of data on as many citizens as possible. Not with this particular subpoena of course but the precedent needs to be set first.

[steve-b]

records of all Google searches from any one-week period

Sounds like some kind of massive data-mining op.

[lesser_satan]

Sounds like some kind of massive data-mining op.

Methinks you lads may be onto something here.

[af_vet_rr]

Immorality is the failure of the parents to instill in their children the respect of themselves and of others, resulting in the breakdown of the family and eventually society.

Do we want government teaching and enforcing morality? Especially now days with the bribes and kickback scandals in ALL levels of government. It'd be like letting the fox loose in the hen house. The most immoral people on earth are todays politicians. They lie, cheat, steal..all for the love of power. And these people want them to control?

Exactly - it saddens me to think that there are FReepers who support these kinds thing, and that they buy into the liberal belief that it "takes a village to raise a child".

Everytime something like this comes up with this administration, I ask myself - "would FReepers be okay with it, if this were being done under Clinton". Most wouldn't be, but because the politicians have an (R) after their name, that automatically gives them a free ticket.

[razorback-bert]

What is this 337 posts and no porn?

[af_vet_rr]

Methinks you lads may be onto something here.

It's like TigersEye said - precedents have to be set, and what better case than one being pushed to "protect the children" - who's going to argue.

At this level of legal maneuvering, they are very careful with the words they use when making such requests, and the fact that they wanted "all" searches really smells funny.

Places like Chicago and San Francisco that love to regulate people's behavior (say people expressing an interest in firearms), must be drooling over this.

The fact that AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft bent over for the DOJ really bothers me, but it's to be expected - they all have recent experience in doing what other governments want them to do, at the expense of their citizens (or would "subjects" be a better word).

[dinoparty]

Just checking back in after work...I see that Antoninus is kicking rear against the libertarian masses assailing him. Its like space invaders, where one good guy keeps shooting all of the descending bad guys. Case in point: I see that nobody has responded to his point where he cites the Chaplinsky and Roth cases, and proves that you are all flower children. Peace, brothers, I'll be back later.