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Judge to Order Google to Turn Over User Data

By Jeralyn, Section Civil Liberties
Posted on Tue Mar 14, 2006 at 06:13:16 PM EST
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The Judge presiding over the case in which the Justice Department is seeking search user data from Google said today he intends to grant some of the relief requested by the Government.

U.S. District Judge James Ware told the Justice Department it can expect to get at least some of the information sought from Google as part of the Bush administration's effort to revive a law meant to shield children from online pornography.

Initially, DOJ wanted billions of search requests and Web site addresses" as part of a study it is conducting attempting to show that kids can access explicit material on the web despite the use of filtering software. Google balked at the subpoena (although Yahoo, MSN and AOL partially complied) contending that providing the information would compromise user privacy and the company's trade secrets. Today, DOJ told the court it would reduce its request to "a random sampling of 50,000 Web site addresses indexed by Google and the text of 5,000 random search requests."

As of now, DOJ has not asked for personal information on users. But, according to Google's attorney:

Although the government doesn't want Google to turn over anything that would identify a person making a search request, Gidari said the content of certain queries often contains sensitive information about finances, Social Security numbers and sexual preferences.

More details on the Google - DOJ suit are available at this google blog page.

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    Judge to Order Google to Turn Over User Data | 8 comments (8 topical)
    Re: Judge to Order Google to Turn Over User Data (none / 0) (#1)
    by Sailor on Tue Mar 14, 2006 at 07:02:45 PM EST
    1) How do they know kids accessed it if they don't have user data? 2) Isn't it the parents who haven't bothered to learn the Vchip or monitor their kids surfing habits the real problem? How oxymoronic that the party of 'states rights' and 'smaller government' is always going for more federal intervention in parents' lives.

    Re: Judge to Order Google to Turn Over User Data (none / 0) (#2)
    by Sailor on Tue Mar 14, 2006 at 07:05:11 PM EST
    Ooops, I forgot the rethugs platform of 'personal responsibility.'

    Re: Judge to Order Google to Turn Over User Data (none / 0) (#3)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Tue Mar 14, 2006 at 07:37:34 PM EST
    Yeah, you'd almost think they were hypocrites or somethin'.

    Re: Judge to Order Google to Turn Over User Data (none / 0) (#4)
    by Johnny on Tue Mar 14, 2006 at 11:34:49 PM EST
    Under pre-text of protecting children from sex and sexual predators (no-one would dream of protesting that!), the government has violated the first amendment! How about this... Some little bureocrat or three, typing away on their little PC's, in some forgotten room of the NSA, enters "website" into the search bar... Up pops 7,710,000,000 pages on googles search... They can find what google is cacheing and indexing using google itself. The only reason to request the information directly from google is to acquire surfing habits of people.

    Re: Judge to Order Google to Turn Over User Data (none / 0) (#5)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Wed Mar 15, 2006 at 02:04:29 AM EST
    I agree, why does the party of "personal responsibility" want or need the government to help raise their kids? My grandmother thought TV was evil so she didn't own one. She took the responsibility to raise my mother and aunt without government intervention.

    Re: Judge to Order Google to Turn Over User Data (none / 0) (#6)
    by Che's Lounge on Wed Mar 15, 2006 at 06:22:24 PM EST
    They heard that someone who used Google also had sex.

    Re: Judge to Order Google to Turn Over User Data (none / 0) (#7)
    by jimcee on Wed Mar 15, 2006 at 08:00:54 PM EST
    Although in all the fashionable circles it is prudent to blame all AG trespasses on the Bush/Republican administration. That leaves AG Reno an innocent for her orders for the attack on the Davidian compound and it's resultant deaths of men, women and children and her own agents for the purpose of..what exactly? Afterall it must have been her president's will to kill those American citizens for the most dubious of reasons. As much as I believe that Google should not give the Feds what they demand I also find it ironic that Google has no problem censoring the internet to gain a market share with the Communist/Facist Chinese Gov't. Funny how a Republican administration theoretically wants privacy but demands the opposite. Just as funny is that Google who pretends to be a stalwart of privacy in this market begs the censorship of the Red Chinese for a market share. Hypocracy all around.

    Re: Judge to Order Google to Turn Over User Data (none / 0) (#8)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Thu Mar 16, 2006 at 02:08:53 AM EST
    Found this way out in right field. Looks like google is just the beginning.

    Judge to Order Google to Turn Over User Data | 8 comments (8 topical)