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.

[flashbunny]

yes, you still can't read, and it's obvious you don't know what COPA was intended to do.

It has absolutely ZERO to do with child porn.

[Mojave]

In Anarcho-World witnesses and third parties don't have to give evidence lessen they feels like it!!

[Mojave]

I have a strong suspicion that you are an AOL user.

Only for coasters.

I like Google. Hope they'll come to their senses.

[Mojave]

That's basically what the government is asking for.

The details haven't been revealed.

[Mojave]

you are a statist.

You are a parrot.

[Mojave]

"kiddie porn" is not involved

All porn is involved.

[Mojave]

LEGAL porn

Any porn, legal or otherwise.

[Mojave]

We are talking an act that, in theory, prevents children from accessing legal adult content

Or illegal content. And prevents access to personal information about kids online.

Read the Act.

[Mojave]

Libertarians are the ones who understand the Constitution.

The check's in the mail.

[Mojave]

they are looking for kiddie consumers of porn

And...

(4) DISCLOSURE.—The term "disclosure" means, with respect to personal information—

(A) the release of personal information collected from a child in identifiable form by an operator for any purpose, except where such information is provided to a person other than the operator who provides support for the internal operations of the website and does not disclose or use that information for any other purpose; and

(B) making personal information collected from a child by a website or online service directed to children or with actual knowledge that such information was collected from a child, publicly available in identifiable form, by any means including by a public posting, through the Internet, or through—

(i) a home page of a website;

(ii) a pen pal service;

(iii) an electronic mail service;

(iv) a message board; or

(v) a chat room.

[lesser_satan]

Let us assume for a moment that the constitutional aspects of this debate have been settled in favor of allowing federal regulation.

The question of whether the feds should regulate it is a seperate matter. Mojave, I would like to know:

A) Why is it a good idea? Why is it better to handle this matter on a national rather than a local level?

B) I hate to dredge up Klintonian sophistry, but who would be the controlling legal authority? Would we create a cabinet level porn czar? Would we set up some agency? Would the DOJ handle it through civil actions? Would we have a congressional committee decide for us what constitutes indecency?

C) How would you determine what is porn and what isn't? Surely the central panel of Garden of Earthly Delights by Heironymous Bosch would qualify as indecent, as would the works of the Marquis de Sade and the Roman poet Martial. If educational pictures of gynecological exams were posted on a fetish site would they qualify as porn? Would you just regulate graphical content, or literary as well? If it's only graphical content you want to place limits on, where will you draw the line? Bestiality? Sodomy? Mere penetration? Nude pictures? Victoria's Secret catalogs?

D) Due to the international nature of internet communications, how do plan to enforce your regulations with regard to foreign operators? Would one run afoul of the law by opening a spam email containing illicit material? Will we invade foreign countries to shut down pornographers?

E) What will the penalties be? Are you going to send people to prison? If so, which ones? The pornographers themselves, or anybody who stumbles across an obscene web page? How about 3rd party hosting?

F) To what lengths will you go from an executive standpoint? Will RICO be used to enforce these laws? How about the Patriot Act?

[dcwusmc]

"A film of two guys sodomozing each other is not speech."

If you're turned off by stuff like that, do as I do... DON'T WATCH IT. I find such trash disgusting. So i don't go around it or watch it. But then, I am an adult and I can make such decisions. Other adults can make different choices. Parents need to make choices for their dependent children, and NOT have FedGov do THEIR job.

[Mojave]

Let us assume for a moment that the constitutional aspects of this debate

What Constitutional aspects?

[af_vet_rr]

The details haven't been revealed.

Huh? They wanted one million random web address and aggregate data of all Google searches for any one week period without user information.

I gave you a list of five terms that could have been searched for by anybody, because that's what the government would get - they would a ton of search terms that mean nothing, because they have no idea who searched for them, and how old the people doing the searching are, and they don't even know if they were actual people or if they were other websites/scripts/etc. scanning for certain keywords.

Or illegal content.

The government could sit somebody down at a computer, type in www.google.com, and figure out how easily accessed illegal content is. It doesn't take a rocket scientest or a subpoena to type in a few words and hit enter.

Go back and read this article and you'll understand what we mean when we say the information the government wants is available without subpoena.

If the government wants to know whether kids can access porn online, they can easily find that out by typing www.google.com into their browser, as I mentioned above.

personal information about kids online.

I hate to break it to you, but if you go out to the various photo sharing sites like flickr, PBase, SmugMug, etc., you will find a lot of dumb-ass parents plastering their kids' birthday pictures all over the web. That's not counting all the family blogs and homepages that people setup on their own.

That's also not counting all of the newspapers that put their stories online with pictures of kids (such as a Jr. High Volleyball team or perhaps a local Girl Scout troop).

Hell, I was asked by a friend to handle her country club's swimteam website, and she showed me some of the stuff they wanted to put on there - we are talking pics of kids from 5 years old and on up, from swimmeets, parties, etc., with full names, what schools they went to, and so on. I pointed out the problem and said I wouldn't do it, and they still went ahead and found somebody that did.

That cat was out of the bag the first time somebody posted a pic of their grandkid on their website 10 years ago, and the government can't fix that problem.

Ironically enough, with you bringing up the personal information, and me pointing out parents plastering their kids information and pictures all over the web, we are back to parents having to take some responsibility.

Imagine that.

[af_vet_rr]

I misunderstood you when you mentioned personal information, but it still stands - only parents can take full responsibility for what their kids do on the internet, and that's one of those things that goes along with the responsibility of being a parent, is making sure you know what your kids are doing.

[Mojave]

I misunderstood you when you mentioned personal information, but it still stands - only parents can take full responsibility for what their kids do on the internet

Chat rooms and webmasters who put children at risk are legally responsible for their acts.

[af_vet_rr]

Chat rooms and webmasters who put children at risk are legally responsible for their acts.

That sounds very liberal, making other people responsible for what your children do online - oh wait, all of this came about under a liberal administration (I'm not talking about Bush, I'm talking about somebody with the initials of "Bill" and "Clinton").

Now I see what Hillary meant with her blockbuster book "It takes a village to raise a child", and its sequel "It takes a government to raise a child".

In a Conservative world, a parent is legally responsible for their children. A good parent is involved with their child's life, and doesn't let them go online without being supervised, and doesn't need the government peeking over their shoulder.

[af_vet_rr]

I'd like you to answer these two scenarios/questions:

1)You leave your firearm laying around in the house, and its loaded or ammo is available. Your kid picks it up and shoots a playmate, or a playmate shoots your kid.

Are you responsible, or is Colt, or Remington, or Ruger at fault?

2)You have HBO and Showtime in your Cable TV package. You also have the parental locks setup. One day you forget to set the locks, and you leave your child alone in the room. Your child flips it over to HBO or Showtime and sees 'Rome' or 'Deadwood' or 'Sopranos' or whatever.

Are you responsible, or is HBO or Showtime or your Cable company responsible?

Bonus Question

You don't secure your computer from your child both physically and with passwords - kid flips a switch, it goes right into the desktop with no password challenge or anything. You have your password in your dialer/connection software saved so that you don't have to remember it.

Your kid easily accesses the internet with no filters, nothing.

Are you responsible for not securing your computer, or is your ISP responsible, or is Google or Yahoo or Free Republic or whatever website(s) they accessed responsible?

[lesser_satan]

What Constitutional aspects?

The first sentence of my last post was:

Let us assume for a moment that the constitutional aspects of this debate have been settled in favor of allowing federal regulation.

For the purposes of further debate I asked them to be ignored, in no uncertain terms. So what difference does it make?

[cva66snipe]

I hate to break it to you, but if you go out to the various photo sharing sites like flickr, PBase, SmugMug, etc., you will find a lot of dumb-ass parents plastering their kids' birthday pictures all over the web. That's not counting all the family blogs and homepages that people setup on their own.

Or more revealing innocent pictures of their kids that virtually every family has in their private family photo albums. Very dumb move in these times. It's very scary about who decides what constitutes porn. Is sending a picture of a three year old doing the streak to grandma porn? Hey some sicko's get off on it while grandma would laugh at her grand son.

I don't want my e-mail read by a censor or net nanny and have to remember who sent what when I can't remember what I had for lunch. This is the exact same argument I have about red light cameras. Can any of us remember that much about what we do to explain or defend ourselves from the eye of Big Brother these days?

A typical user not thinking about filtering even in some political dicussion groups can end up with porn links we did not ask for. I won't name sites but I think most persons have seen it.

Then theirs the rest of my life guvurmunt has not business policing either. We're quickly approaching a society with a government that can make anyone a lawbreaker. I break enough of them every day just going to get a loaf of bread because Uncle is so concerned about my health. It has to be stopped somewhere.