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.

[steve-b]

Socialists and their Libertarian comrades

LOL!! Suggestion: don't use big fancy words when you don't know what they mean.

[dinoparty]

I'm beginning to think you are a true dumbass. I said that IF pornography is not protected speech under the First Amendment, THEN then the First Amendment does not limit what a state government can do. Period. (I happen to not believe pornography is protected speech, but lets not complicate the point too much for you, lest you get lost.) IF it is not protected speech, THEN it is up to the legislatures (and the voters indirectly) of each state to decide what is, or is not, "reasonable". Simple point, and, I would think, unobjectionable even to libertarians. Are you that blind that you can't understand that? Jeesh.

[af_vet_rr]

That argument sounds very NAMBLA.

Interesting to correlate NAMBLA with the liberal beliefs that you shouldn't be responsible for what your children do. It kind of makes sense, because while I don't know that anybody has every done a study on the politicall makeup of NAMBLA, I wouldn't be surprised if most were liberal.
I'm not saying all liberals are child molestors, mind you, but I wouldn't be surprised if many child molestors are liberals

I think you are on to something there - they would probably love to remove responsibility for the actions of children away from their parents.

[af_vet_rr]

You send porn to and make sexual solicitations towards a minor in an AOL chat room. When he actually turns out to be an undercover FBI agent, who's parents are you going to blame in your arguments to the jury?

Let's just take this strawman and drive a steamroller over it

I didn't ask about whether adults are responsibile for their own actions. We know the answer to that, and we've known that for thousands of years.

I asked about your responsibility as an adult in regards to the actions of your children, If you don't want to answer three simple little yes/no questions that would reveal your thoughts on parental responsibility, then I think our discussion is over, because I cannot debate somebody who won't make their position clear.

[Greek]

Ok, I'll just shut up and leave it to the pros. My LD definately sucks...

[af_vet_rr]

What is Google afraid of?

I've explained it elsewhere (this post - and I maybe wrong, that is my understanding of how some of it works), but they are very afraid (and rightfully so) that certain data could reveal how their systems work - systems that they have spent God knows how many millions on. Basically, once the government got its hands on the data, some third party, perhaps a government contractor, would have access to that, and the next thing you know, their competition knows how they do what they do.

They also don't want to open the door to the government going farther and farther down a very steep hill, namely "this time it's a weeks worth of searches and one million random websites, next time it's a month's worth of searches, two million random websites, and the IPs of the people doing the searches".

The government would and could turn them into the proverbial massive database that tries to track a lot of things about a lot of people.

Right now, the information Google collects (information that any website can collect, really), helps them to load-balance their massive data centers, and it helps them to sell lots of advertising - https://adwords.google.com/ explains what I'm talking about - Google can tell advertisers how many people would be interested in their products based on various search terms, etc. - that's the simplified version. Let's just say that if you have a product to sell, you can easily find an audience at the least cost to you, through what Google has done, and if you want to run advertising on your site, Google also makes it incredibly easy to do that, and can help you to generate the most revenue - there are many sites on the internet (including quite a few big-name Conservative sites) that would not be able to afford staying online if it weren't for such programs.

Google has a very nice (and big) email and instant messenging service as well.

Google may think, and rightfullly so, that if the government is successful in this case, they may to try to expand their next request to include "one million emails" - crazy? Not at all, look at what TIA was going to originally be.

Google has much to fear on so many levels, it's not even funny. I'm not surprised about the others - Yahoo, especially, has no problem helping the government against thought crimes, I mean political dissent, I mean treason, or is that "we are just complying with certain law enforcement standards around the world".

[don asmussen]

Your bold 'try' failed, miserably. States cannot pass any laws that are repugnant to our supreme Law of the Land. This principle is made clear in Article VI, and in the 14th Amendment.

This are simple constitutional principles.

Indeed, - the Constitution is based on a presumption of liberty. -- Instead you want State voters, the 'majority will', "-- to decide what is reasonable --".
Sorry kid, but a democratic majority does not rule in the USA.

I'm beginning to think you are a true dumbass

I'm beginning to think you aren't capable of making coherent arguments on the points at issue.

I said that IF pornography is not protected speech under the First Amendment, THEN then the First Amendment does not limit what a state government can do. Period. (I happen to not believe pornography is protected speech, but lets not complicate the point too much for you, lest you get lost.) IF it is not protected speech, THEN it is up to the legislatures (and the voters indirectly) of each state to decide what is, or is not, "reasonable". Simple point, and, I would think, unobjectionable even to libertarians.

I commented on that point above.. You can't respond? Fine with me.

[dinoparty]

No, your previous point simply illustrates your misunderstanding. Its clear you don't understand this simple concept: To say that something is not "protected speech" is to say that the first amendment does not have any relevance to it. "Protected Speech" is the name that we give speech that is protected by the firsat amendment free speech clause. This is what the term was created to mean. When a state legislature passes a law regulating something, a court may deem it to be in violation of the first amendment free speech clause only if the thing being regulated is "protected speech". If it is not "protected speech", then the court and the first amendment have no say as to its reasonability. How is it possible that you don't understand this? This is not a controversial point at all.

[Don Joe]

"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.

Slight problem with that logic -- the stuff is forcing itself into our faces, into our homes, into our lives, at an increasingly pervasive rate.

To take your position, one must for consistency's sake also assert that burglary and home invasion be decriminalized, under "freedom of travel" auspices. Anyone who doesn't want to have his home invaded, his belongings stolen, his family attacked, need merely buy better locks, hire an alarm company, and set armed guards to protect his abode 24/7.

That, of course, is absurd, as is the "free speech" defense of objectionable garbage that prospers by shoving itself into the faces of all, in the knowledge that some will take the bait.

This is "settled law", if you will:

"Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any unwanted communication, whatever its merit. The ancient concept that 'a man's home is his castle' into which 'not even the king may enter' has lost none of its vitality. We therefore categorically reject the argument that a vendor has a right under the Constitution or otherwise to send unwanted material into the home of another. If this prohibition operates to impede the flow of even valid ideas, the answer is that no one has a right to press even 'good' ideas on an unwilling recipient. That we are often 'captives' outside the sanctuary of the home and subject to objectionable speech and other sound does not mean we must be captives everywhere. The asserted right of a mailer, we repeat, stops at the outer boundary of every person's domain."

Chief Justice Burger, U.S. Supreme Court
ROWAN v. U. S. POST OFFICE DEPT.,
397 U.S. 728 May 4, 1970.

But none of this -- "this" being the present search engine fishing expedition -- has anything to do with pornography, or even, "the children."

It's a blatant grab for profiling data on virtually every Internetting American. Probably 90% of the "connected" population has queried Google several times during the target period -- enough times to establish enough of a "profile" to provide a handy dandy "NSA Profile" for each of us.

And don't fall into the delusion of thinking that "they don't get the IP data so there's no breach of privacy."

The only reason they "don't get the IP data" now is because they haven't demanded it. Yet.

Far easier to get this first bolus down the sheep's throat without that bit o' stuff on it. And equally easy to get it through later on, once the "good first step" has been taken.

Where does it end? Read your Orwell.

Warning: Spoiler information follows.

Expect that once this awkward moment has passed, and the "propriety" of coercing search engines to hand over the goods has been "established" to the satisfaction of the courts, it will be ratcheted up. First, it'll be "every so often", then, "to make it more convenenient" for the providers, it will be "regularly delivered" -- with full IP, cookie, etc, data included.

Finally, it will simply be echoed to the government in real time, as it happens. Bandwidth is cheaper than storage, and much more quickly delivered. And besides, "if it only saves one life" (no matter how many it destroys in the process...)

I never thought I'd live to see this horror in my lifetime.

I guess if nothing else we can thank the pornographers for providing such a convenient pretext for the ultimate statist utopia.

[don asmussen]

dinoparty wrote:

To say that something is not "protected speech" is to say that the first amendment does not have any relevance to it.

Are you claiming I said that? Where?

[dinoparty]

Saying what?
My point a few posts back was that IF something is not protected speech, then the courts have no say as to reasonableness under the 1st amendment. This is a truism. Your response was that the courts do have a say because the majority does not always rule. In response to your response, I said that you must not understand my simple point, which is that the courts can find a law to be in violation of the first amendment only if it infringes upon protected speech, regardless of whether the courts think the law is reasonable. I know that we disagree as to whether depictions of libertarian on libertarian sodomy is protected speech, but that hasn't the point for awhile between us. Rather, I have simply been trying to get you to admit that IF something is not protected speech, THEN it is only the state legislature that gets to decide on the reasonableness of the law. The key word is "IF".

[Senator Bedfellow]

If that's the case, and this is merely a pretext, then they undoubtedly would have found some excuse no matter what - if not this, then something else anyway.

In any case, let's not give up hope yet ;)

[lesser_satan]

Thank you, Greek, for responding to my post with something substantial, as others I've been debating here seem unable or unwilling to do so.

Because the local level has left a huge void in regulating, and because jurisdictionally, you have a porn producer in one state sending the smut into another. Any time that there is a need for uniform coordination, I believe the feds have a proper role.

If the local level has left a huge void in regulating, that's their problem, not everybody else's. People in some jurisdictions want a lot of regulation, in others they want little or none. If a dispute arises between two localities with different policies regarding porn and they can't come to an agreement on their own, I would say the feds have a role, but not otherwise.
With the exception of spam email, nobody is "sending" anything. If a user in state X, where porn is illegal, downloads porn from a server in state Y, where it is legal, he is the one who has broken the law, not the entity hosting the site. Most sites containing adult material have a warning page stating that only adults in jurisdictions where the material is legal may enter. If somebody in state Y enters the site, they have knowingly broken the law. Furthermore, most non-electronic porn is shipped across state lines-- by none other than the federal government itself. Why, you ask? simple answer: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Easy to know when it is seen, but any non-medical use of these pictures is porn.

The old dredged up argument "it's impossible to determine" is not a reason that it should not be regulated. I would say Victoria Secret is OK, if a fetish site uses pictures to arouse, that would fit, literary works can cross the line etc...I am just talking about access here: why not make it necessary to provide proof that you are an adult, like you do to buy alcohol?

Under your theory, 99% of all laws should be thrown out because the courts have to work to interpret the same.

I beg to differ. You would say Victoria's Secret is okay, but others may not. Who is right? Regarding fetish sites, educational sites, etc: No matter what content you put up, there is somebody who will find it arousing and commit unspeakable acts of onanism while looking at it. Take my previous example of educational photos posted on a fetish site. Even if it's posted in an educational context, it can and will be viewed in a pornographic context. With regard to literary works, it's even more subjective.
Concerning your comparison to the sale of alcohol: Thanks for helping me make my point. When is the last time the feds made an arrest or brought a case against somebody for selling alcohol to a minor? It is handled by the states, as it should be.
By the way, I don't think 99% of the laws should be overturned or repealed. I think the number is probably more along the lines of 60-70 percent.

This same issue arises in other contexts, once it crosses our borders, we can stop it, like a dope smuggler...

Not like a dope smuggler. A dope smuggler must physically bring something across the border, and the contraband is definable in clear and unambiguous terms.

To whatever lengths it takes, it is as damaging to a society as drugs are, so probably the same effort....

Are you serious? Look at the hysteria over the Patriot Act- implemented by congress (not administrative fiat) for national security, which is by far the most important task of the Federal gov't. Look at the inability of the feds to control the border, a close second in importance. Look at the lengths we go to in the drug war, and we still can't keep them out.

As far as damage to society, I guess I don't know how your point can be proven or disproven. Booze is damaging to society, but prohibition was more damaging. I would reply that gambling is exponentially more destructive than porn. I can give concrete examples. My own grandmother for instance, who carps about her social security check not being enough, and then blows a couple grand at the casino. But I don't want the feds regulating that either. And they won't, because of the revenue it generates. I personally hate MTV, one of the great edifices of degeneracy in today's society. I would never let a minor view it in my home. But I don't need the government telling me whether I can or can't watch it.

[don asmussen]

dinoparty wrote:

To say that something is not "protected speech" is to say that the first amendment does not have any relevance to it.

Where, [in what post] do you claim I wrote in effect, "that something is not "protected speech"?

Where, [in what post] do you claim I wrote in effect, "that the first amendment does not have any relevance to it?"

No such posts exist. -- I've never written anything to that effect.

You seem to think you can post a narrative stream of things you imagine I've written, - and then rebut those same imagined points.

Either quote what I've actually written - then offer your rebuttal and or comments, -- or get lost.

[The_Media_never_lie]

This on-line pornography (naked pictures) is a lot worse than terrorists infiltrating through our pourous borders, right???

[dinoparty]

I never claimed that you said any of those things. I was simply trying to get your agreement on a simple "IF...THEN" truism: "IF something is not protected speech, THEN A court cannot overrule, on first amendment grounds, a law that restricts it, REGARDLESS OF THE COURT'S VIEW OF THE REASONABLENESS OF THE LAW." Do you agree with this statement or not??? (Hint: I'm NOT asking you whether you think porn is protected speech! I'm asking you to assume it for the sake of argument!!!!!!!!)

I NEVER SAID THAT YOU AGREED THAT PORN IS NOT PROTECTED SPEECH. My point has been that "reasonableness" is not a consideration if there is no protected speech involved. Go back and read the posts again. What is your problem?

Jesus, this is getting old. All insults aside, I'm beginning to question your sanity, in all seriousness.

[don asmussen]

Where, [in what post] do you claim I wrote in effect, "that the first amendment does not have any relevance to it?"

No such posts exist. -- I've never written anything to that effect.

You seem to think you can post a narrative stream of things you imagine I've written, - and then rebut those same imagined points.

Either quote what I've actually written - then offer your rebuttal and or comments, -- or get lost.

I never claimed that you said any of those things.

You were asking me to agree with your supposition. -- I did not, and explained why.

I was simply trying to get your agreement on a simple "IF...THEN" truism:

I don't play word games using your generalities.

"IF something is not protected speech, THEN A court cannot overrule, on first amendment grounds, a law that restricts it, REGARDLESS OF THE COURT'S VIEW OF THE REASONABLENESS OF THE LAW."

Weird, silly game.

Paraphrasing you:
IF something is protected speech, can THEN A court overrule, on first amendment grounds, a law that conflicts with it, REGARDLESS OF THE COURT'S VIEW OF THE UNREASONABLE ASPECTS OF THE LAW ?

Do you agree with this statement or not??? (Hint: I'm NOT asking you whether you think porn is protected speech! I'm asking you to assume it for the sake of argument!!!!!!!!)

Why on earth do you think anyone would agree?

Paraphrasing again:
Can you agree with my statement or not??? (Hint: I'm NOT asking you whether you think porn is unprotected speech! I'm asking you to assume it is not for the sake of argument!!!!!!!!)

I NEVER SAID THAT YOU AGREED THAT PORN IS NOT PROTECTED SPEECH. My point has been that "reasonableness" is not a consideration if there is no protected speech involved.

My counterpoint:
The 1st protects our freedom of speech from fed, state & local infringements. -- However, reasonable regulations [not prohibitions] can be legislated, in particular at the state & local level.

Go back and read the posts again. What is your problem?

What's yours? How many times must I post the Constitutional counterpoints on this issue?

Jesus, this is getting old. All insults aside, I'm beginning to question your sanity, in all seriousness.

Old indeed.. I initially questioned your view of our Constitution, and insults aside, have had nothing in return but word games about truisms.

--- Get some new lines.

[Mojave]

We're from the govm't, and we're here to help. Great news.

Bad news for the pornographers and perverts.

[Mojave]

Means of what?

Of protecting kids from pornographers and perverts.

[Mojave]

why, after SCOTUS made their decision based partly on that premise, did the government still fail to introduce evidence of the ineffectiveness of filters on remand?

Who says they didn't?