http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/13657303.htm
MercuryNews wrote:
Posted on Thu, Jan. 19, 2006
[sixe=5]Feds after Google data
By Howard Mintz
Mercury News
The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order Google to turn over a broad range of material from its closely guarded databases.
The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law was meant to punish online pornography sites that make their content accessible to minors. The government contends it needs the Google data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches.
In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Justice Department lawyers revealed that Google has refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year for the records, which include a request for 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.
The Mountain View-based search and advertising giant opposes releasing the information on a variety of grounds, saying it would violate the privacy rights of its users and reveal company trade secrets, according to court documents.
Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel for Google, said the company will fight the government's effort ``vigorously.''
``Google is not a party to this lawsuit, and the demand for the information is overreaching,'' Wong said.
The case worries privacy advocates, given the vast amount of information Google and other search engines know about their users.
``This is exactly the kind of case that privacy advocates have long feared,'' said Ray Everett-Church, a South Bay privacy consultant. ``The idea that these massive databases are being thrown open to anyone with a court document is the worst-case scenario. If they lose this fight, consumers will think twice about letting Google deep into their lives.''
Everett-Church, who has consulted with Internet companies facing subpoenas, said Google could argue that releasing the information causes undue harm to its users' privacy.
``The government can't even claim that it's for national security,'' Everett-Church said. ``They're just using it to get the search engines to do their research for them in a way that compromises the civil liberties of other people.''
The government argues that it needs the information as it prepares to once again defend the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act in a federal court in Pennsylvania. The law was struck down in 2004 because it was too broad and could prevent adults from accessing legal porn sites.
However, the Supreme Court invited the government to either come up with a less drastic version of the law or go to trial to prove that the statute does not violate the First Amendment and is the only viable way to combat child porn.
As a result, government lawyers said in court papers they are developing a defense of the 1998 law based on the argument that it is far more effective than software filters in protecting children from porn. To back that claim, the government has subpoenaed search engines to develop a factual record of how often Web users encounter online porn and how Web searches turn up material they say is ``harmful to minors.''
The government indicated that other, unspecified search engines have agreed to release the information, but not Google.
``The production of those materials would be of significant assistance to the government's preparation of its defense of the constitutionality of this important statute,'' government lawyers wrote, noting that Google is the largest search engine.
Google has the largest share of U.S. Web searches with 46 percent, according to November 2005 figures from Nielsen//NetRatings. Yahoo is second with 23 percent, and MSN third with 11 percent.
Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.
No...I wouldn't
What the hell business is it the goverments if I wanna look at porn without the mess of spyware.
I think Google has balls to not give in. Kudos to them.
This will probably add another $100 to their stock price.
I am webmaster for a teen cosmetics company, so I'm familiar with laws regarding children and the internet. I'm not a lawyer, but I have spoken at length to the company lawyers.
With that said, Google is right to not turn over their databases. The mere existance of child porn on a computer is illegal, but the government can't subpeona files without probable cause. They have stated they're not interested in prosecuting Google, nor are they asking for evidence regarding a specific case. This is a fishing expedition.
The government is requesting this information for stats, but they didn't ask for stats, they asked for the databases. It's only a short hop to connect IP addresses to searches, and then pandoras box is open. The government would know who has searched for what and it's not a stretch to think that they would abuse that knowledge.
Big brother is knocking...
John Wilken
2002 Cavalier
2.2 Vin code 4
Auto
Adam Asmus wrote:
This will probably add another $100 to their stock price.
Actually I would predict their stock price lowering from people not being sure of the outcome. If Google loses and has to surrender the databases, people will be apprehensive about using Google and their value would decrease. If they win and the government stays out then yes, the price would go up.
It's a toss-up right now. The constitution has been ignored lately with the patriot act and other such "9-11" policies.
John Wilken
2002 Cavalier
2.2 Vin code 4
Auto
Notice, they went to Google instead of a smaller webcrawler first?
I'd have thought they'd have illicited the co-operation of Microsoft first Search.MSN.Com is SOOOO much better... </sarcasm>.
Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.
I would not comply. I agree that it is a phishing exhibition. They do not want it for a specific case. I just hope google doesn't cave in.
PRND321 Till I DIE
Old Motor: 160whp & 152ft/lbs, 1/4 Mile 15.4 @88.2
M45 + LD9 + 4T40-E, GO GO GO
Nope and I think its great they don't. Why? Well some of these "kiddy porn" sites can
be misleading as to its name. NO I do not go looking for the crap but more then once a pop up has come up or a link and you look at the girl in the pic and there is NOOOO way
she's 18. Of corse its clicked off as soon as it comes up but sh-t like that could ruin your life and your not even trying ti find it but you stumble onto it. Its wrong just wrong.
Semper Fi SAINT. May you rest in peace.
<SIGH>
No excuses, we re-elected the idiot. But no, I would not be in compliance.
Goodbye Callisto & Skađi, Hello Ishara:
2022 Kia Stinger GT2 AWD
The only thing every single person from every single walk of life on earth can truly say
they have in common is that their country is run by a bunch of fargin iceholes.
[quote=Keeper of the Light™]No excuses, we re-elected the idiot. But no, I would not be in compliance.
i didnt re- elect this southern bumpkin. the rest of America did. How about the government just log onto the child porn site themselves. im sure they could find out how to do that without any info from Google. Also they have to check for the names that are closely related to things kids would search for. on the news yesterday there was something if you typed "Disney" as "Disnye" you would go to a porn site. theres no need for Google's info to be used. they could just search themselves and crack down on this stuff
Only 26% of America re-elected him... there's a difference.
And they're not looking for the sites, they're looking for the people accessing them. It's called a dragnet.
Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.
Quote:
Well some of these "kiddy porn" sites can be misleading as to its name. NO I do not go looking for the crap but more then once a pop up has come up or a link and you look at the girl in the pic and there is NOOOO way she's 18. Of corse its clicked off as soon as it comes up but sh-t like that could ruin your life and your not even trying ti find it but you stumble onto it. Its wrong just wrong.
You ain't kiddin there Jackalope, one of those sick bastards bought the rights to a Sportscar GT website name that used to have a bunch of mods for the game, now when you click on that link from a legit SCGT mod website you get kiddie porn and some other freaky @!#$. No I would not comply either, Big Brother should do their own phishing instead of forcing others to do it for them.
This law the government is doing research on is NOT a "kiddie porn" law. It's a law protecting kids FROM porn. not kids IN porn.
---
BTW I don't blame anyone for thinking it's a kiddie porn law. The media has been misrepresenting this since day one. Reason #1000000000000000000000 the media can't be relied upon.
---
ShiftyCav wrote:[quote=Keeper of the Light™]No excuses, we re-elected the idiot. But no, I would not be in compliance.
i didnt re- elect this southern bumpkin. the rest of America did. How about the government just log onto the child porn site themselves. im sure they could find out how to do that without any info from Google. Also they have to check for the names that are closely related to things kids would search for. on the news yesterday there was something if you typed "Disney" as "Disnye" you would go to a porn site. theres no need for Google's info to be used. they could just search themselves and crack down on this stuff
When keeper says "WE" he's reffering to america as a whole, not himself, or other individuals.
I agree that they shouldn't have to release anything. The government sat on it's ass and now it wants search engines to do their work for them instead of going after the illegal companies themselves. Companies like netnanny keep a database of these sites, that's all they need.
-Chris
GAM (The Kilted One) wrote:And they're not looking for the sites, they're looking for the people accessing them. It's called a dragnet.
I need you to clairify "dragnet". I thought a dragnet was when police set up a situation (like a fake hooker or drug dealer) to arrest people in the act of a crime. If I'm wrong please let me know.
If the government is looking through databases for whatever, that's no different that doing a house by house search for any illegal activity. Didn't the Nazi's do that?
And what will be the end to their witch hunt? Will the government harass or arrest people who have searched for "ways to impeach a president" or "how to overthrow a government"? The potential for abuse is clear and obvious.
This could even have political implications if government officials have their searches "accidently leaked" to the press.
John Wilken
2002 Cavalier
2.2 Vin code 4
Auto
No, dragnet is common use is when you get all parties involved in the commission of a crime.
In this case you'd get:
- The proprietors of the website.
- The Host of said website.
- The intentional and unintentional visitors of said website.
- All search engines that crawled the website and presented it's findings to an actively or unintentionally searching audience.
This kind of egregious legal action is symptomatic of the Substitution of privacy for security and in the end, forfeiting both.
Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.
More on the topic:
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6034666.html?tag=nl.e539
I'm also going to link relevant passages with wikipedia entries and links to individual sites quoted.
This is an important read, I think, because it spells out just how public your information is, and how easily your information can be filched and used against you. This article will probably tie in a lot of information that was discussed in threads about P2P sharing, and several other threads relating to it as well.
You're ultimately the guardian of your own privacy.
Quote:
FAQ: When Google is not your friend
By Declan McCullagh
Google's recent legal spat with the U.S. Department of Justice highlights not only what information search engines record about us but also the shortcomings in a federal law that's supposed to protect online privacy.
It's only a matter of time before other attorneys realize that a person's entire search history is available for the asking, and the subpoenas begin to fly. This could happen in civil lawsuits or criminal prosecutions.
That type of fishing expedition is not legally permitted for Web mail providers. But because search engines are not fully shielded by the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act--concocted back in the era of CompuServe and bulletin board systems--their users don't enjoy the same level of privacy.
We ask AOL, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo what info they could provide in response to a court order. Read their responses.
"Back then, providers were very different animals than they are now," says Paul Ohm, a former Justice Department attorney who teaches computer crime law at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Two solutions are simple to describe, but not likely to happen. First, search engines could voluntarily--or be required by law to--delete search histories after a few months unless the customer objects. Second, federal law could be amended to make it clear that search engines, which serve as a window to the Internet, are fully protected.
CNET News.com has surveyed Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL to find out their privacy practices, and assembled these answers to frequently asked questions.
Q: Does Google collect and record people's search terms whether they're logged in or not?
Yes. Google confirmed this week that it keeps and collates these results, which means the company can be forced to divulge them under court order. Whether Google does anything else with them is another issue.
Given the Department of Justice's recent subpoena to Google, it's likely the police or even lawyers in civil cases--divorce attorneys, employers in severance disputes--eventually will demand that Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and other search engines cough up users' search histories.
Q: Has this happened before?
Almost. A North Carolina man was found guilty of murder in November in part because he Googled the words "neck," "snap," "break" and "hold" before his wife was killed. But those search terms were found on Robert Petrick's computer, not obtained from Google directly.
Also, attorneys have already begun introducing searches conducted on Google, Yahoo and AltaVista as evidence.
Q: When I use search engines, I type in a lot of search terms I consider private. What does this mean?
We go into all the details below. But the short answer is that when private companies collect reams of data all the time on nearly every American, and the government and curious attorneys can get to that with few obstacles, this becomes a problem. Search engines provide a look into people's personal lives, and privacy awareness has not kept pace.
Q: Aren't there any privacy laws that protect us?
Not really. There is a federal law called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. But it was enacted in 1986, long before politicians knew about the Internet, and the wording doesn't prevent police and attorneys from targeting search engines.
Politicians wrote that law in a way that is technology-specific--one key part revolves around the meaning of the pre-Internet term "processing services"--instead of adopting a more flexible approach that would grow with technology. Some states may have laws that are more applicable.
Q: Why does Google store that information about me, anyway?
No law requires Google to delete it, and there are some business justifications for keeping it.
For instance, keeping detailed records can help in identifying click fraud (faking clicks on Web ads to drive up a rival's cost), and in optimizing search results for different geographic areas. Compiling a user profile can aid in tailoring search results in products like Google Personalized Search. Also, disk storage is cheap, and engineers tend to prefer to keep data rather than delete it.But it's hardly clear that a compelling reason exists for keeping older records--beyond a few months--unless a customer voluntarily chooses options like personalization.
Q: Does that mean Google has the technical ability to link a person's searches together and divulge them when legally required?
Yes. Google says in its FAQ that it records Internet address, date, time, browser type, operating system and a cookie ID.
Author and entrepreneur John Battelle received word from Google this week that the company can perform two important types of matches. (We confirmed this with Google and followed up with additional questions.)
First, given a number of search terms, Google can produce a list of people (identified by Internet address or cookie) who searched for a given term. Second, given a collection of Internet addresses, Google can produce a list of the terms searched by the user of a given address. That effectively creates an electronic dossier of an individual.
Q: What about other search engines?
We surveyed AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo as well. Microsoft and Yahoo gave us the same response as Google did.
AOL's was a little different. Spokesman Andrew Weinstein said AOL could provide a list of search terms typed in by a user. But AOL does not have a system in place to perform the opposite mapping, which would find out what users typed in which search terms. Weinstein also said that AOL deletes personally identifiable search data after 30 days, which makes it unique among the quartet we surveyed.
Q: What about links people click on from search engine results? Can that information be turned over too?
Yes. Through a process known as redirection, Yahoo and AOL record what links people click. Unless the companies discard these records, they would be fair game for a subpoena.
Q: Let's say the Bush administration wanted to obtain a list of the names or Internet addresses of anyone who typed "how to grow marijuana" or "how to cheat on income taxes" into Google. Could that be done?
Probably. If the Electronic Communications Privacy Act does not apply, all that's required is a subpoena from a prosecutor, and no prior approval from a judge is necessary. One Harvard law professor calls the subpoena power "akin to a blank check."
"The threshold rule is relevance," says Paul Ohm, the University of Colorado law professor. "Relevance has been quite broadly construed. As long as you can show that something's relevant to a case or criminal investigation, I think the litigant would have a pretty good argument."
Using the examples of finding out who did searches like "how to make meth" or "how to kill the president," Ohm says prosecutors "would have a very good argument that it's relevant to an investigation."
Q: How can I protect my privacy from search engines?
First, to protect your privacy if your computer is stolen, you can clear your browser's history (sometimes called "private data"). In Firefox, select that option from the Tools menu and delete your browsing history and saved form information. Apple Computer's Safari has a similar option under the History menu. Encrypting your hard drive through OS X's FileVault or PGP's Whole Disk Encryption may be a good idea.
Second, you can clear the cookies that are set by search engines. In Firefox, go to Preferences and select Privacy. You have the option to delete cookies and even prevent certain sites from ever setting them again. Be warned, though, that adding Google.com to the list may prevent using options like personalization or Gmail.
Third, if you're really worried, go to Anonymizer.com and sign up for one of its anonymous browsing options (they're primarily for Windows users). Tor is another option.
Danny Sullivan has posted a more extensive list of recommendations at SearchEngineWatch.com.
Q: Is Congress going to do anything?
Rep. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, has pledged to introduce legislation to prevent storing search terms "beyond a reasonable period of time."
There are some political and practical problems with this approach. First, Markey is a liberal Democrat in a town controlled by Republicans, so his proposal isn't going anywhere. Second, any such law could be wildly disruptive--it could mean class-action lawyers would get rich suing tech companies on charges that their data-retention duration is not "reasonable."
Finally, it's hardly clear that the Bush administration will embrace such a proposal--search terms could prove useful in criminal prosecutions, and the Justice Department seems to like the ability to demand them from search engines.
Q: How are Internet addresses handed out? Do people always have the same one?
It depends. Many DSL and cable modem providers allocate Internet addresses only when they're in use (the methods are called DHCP and PPPoe). Those IP addresses can change frequently.
Other IP addresses tend to be fixed. Faculty and staff members at universities, and employees of corporations, are more likely to have fixed Internet addresses.
Q: If Google knows I'm connecting from a dynamically assigned Internet address of 192.1.1.1 one day, and 192.2.2.2 the next day and 192.3.3.3 the third, how can it link my queries together to create that dossier?
This is where "cookies" come in. A cookie is simply a device for a Web site to recognize people the next time they return. Google, Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft all set cookies by default. (Microsoft's expire in 2016; Yahoo's in 2010; Google's in 2038. AOL sets a third-party cookie that expires in 2011.)
In the above example, Google.com would set a cookie for whoever's connecting from Internet address 192.1.1.1 the first day, and then figure out that the same Web browser is connecting from 192.2.2.2 and 192.3.3.3 the next two days. If people are logged in to their Google account, this makes the process even easier, of course.
Q: Even if a search engine company knows my Internet address is 192.1.1.1, and links my previous searches together, how can they--or the government--get my name, home address or other information?
If you have a Google account for products like Gmail, Google Groups, Personalized Search or Google Alerts, Google knows your e-mail address and other personal information, which it can be forced to disclose. If a Web publisher signs up for Google AdSense for advertising revenue, Google will have the publisher's real name, mailing address and Social Security Number.
If a person doesn't use any other Google services, all the company can divulge in response to a subpoena is that person's Internet address. Then whoever's asking about the person will send a second subpoena to the person's Internet service provider to find out billing information. This is a relatively straightforward procedure used by the [http://www.riaa.com]Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in thousands of file-swapping lawsuits.
Q: Has anyone ever sent search engines a subpoena or other kind of legal request for someone's search terms?
We don't know. Google and Yahoo refused to answer the question, though there is no law prohibiting them from doing so.
AOL said only that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act would apply. Microsoft was by far the most forthcoming. With the exception of the Justice Department subpoena for search terms (without user identities) last year, Microsoft said it has "not received either criminal or civil requests related to MSN Search data."
Microsoft also said it "has never received either criminal or civil requests" to produce the lists of people who typed in a search term. Oddly, the other companies were not nearly as open.
Q: How long do companies keep records of my search terms?
Microsoft, Google and Yahoo all said they keep data as long as it's necessary, which could mean forever. Microsoft did add that the company is "looking at ways" to provide users with the option to delete their search histories, and Yahoo made a similar statement.
AOL, on the other hand, says it deletes personally identifiable data after 30 days.
CNET News.com's Elinor Mills contributed to this report.
Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.
screw the gov't!!
they thik that they can do whatever they want and ignore the constitution, they think that since 9-11 is free game to do anything they think/feel is necessary, adn the problem is most americans are too stupid to realize that the gov't is over-stepping their boundaries
at least google is smart enuff to realize that they dont have to give out that kind of information
someone need to show the gov't that lil thing called the bill of rights again and inform them that they are not a dictatorship where they make all the rules and can change them at their will, there is already a set of rules in place THAT APPLY TO THEM ALSO!!!!!!!!
GAM (The Kilted One) wrote:This kind of egregious legal action is symptomatic of the Substitution of privacy for security and in the end, forfeiting both.
Ding ding ding, we have a winner! We are headed down a slippery slope. It's funny that an administration that is suppose to believe in "small government" is pushing some of the most intrusive laws I have ever seen. Innocent until PROVEN guilty no longer applies. I don't care what party the administration belongs to, people who pass laws like this need to be removed from office.
Let us invade your privacy or the "axis of evil" will prevail!
