Google Avoids Surrendering Search Info

Mercury News has details of a San Francisco judge's decision that Google should give the DoJ some details on its search engine, but is not required to turn over records to the government. From the article: "McElvain emphasized the study would be more meaningful if it included search requests processed by Google, which by some estimates fields nearly half of all online queries in the United States. Ware concurred with the Justice Department on that point, writing in his order that 'the government's study may be significantly hampered if it did not have access to some information from the most often used search engine.' But Ware said the government didn't clearly explain why it needed a list of search requests to conduct its study, prompting him to conclude the Web site addresses would be adequate." Reaction to the news is available on the Google Blog.

Can't Troll the E-Water

So the government isn't allowed to troll the personal information of every American without the slightest probability of cause? What happened to the "If you're not a terrorist, you have nothing to hide" doctrine?

Re:Can't Troll the E-Water

That also means that the judge is either human or must've had a bit of common sense. In other news, this unfortunate oversight on the part of the judicial system will no doubt soon be corrected.

Re:Can't Troll the E-Water

Common sense? That's actually exactly what I find to be severely lacking on the judge's part in this case. If he *really* had some common sense, he would've said, in essence, "there's no legal basis for requiring Google to hand out *any* data if there's not a criminal investigation going on, so go away, n00bs".

If the government demanded that you pay an extra 1000 USD in taxes even though there's no legal reason for them to ask for that, and if a judge then decided that 1000 is too much but that 500 is OK, would you also say that's reasonable? Of course not. There's no middle ground here - you either stick to the law or you don't. Sadly, in this case, neither the government nor the judge did; the former's not surprising, of course, but the latter is.

Re:Can't Troll the E-Water

Google didn't contest the information they were required to hand over. It was a random sampling of 50,000 webpages from their database of billions, not tied to any particular search term. That's the reason the judge had no problem in letting the government have it.

Plenty of legal basis

If he *really* had some common sense, he would've said, in essence, "there's no legal basis for requiring Google to hand out *any* data if there's not a criminal investigation going on, so go away, n00bs".

You forgot the obvious "but IANAL". There is l

Re:Can't Troll the E-Water

Conservative justices are generally thought to be strict constructionists. That would imply that they would assume the government did not have the power to request that unless it was spelled out in the Constitution.

From watching John Roberts a little, I would classify him as a strict constructionist, but not nearly like Scalia or Thomas. Alito, I just don't know.

The justices that are more likely to side against GOOG would be someone like Kennedy or Souter. But that's just my prediction.

The big secret is that Scalia and Thomas are the friends of liberals and conservatives alike. Of course they are an enemy to the Democrats, but a friend to anyone with libertarian leanings. Remember Kelo vs. New London where a local government tried to use Eminent Domain to take property from the individuals and transfer it to a private company? The justices that voted against it (minority) were: Rhenquist, Scalia, Thomas, and O'Connor. The justices that thought that a private company should be able to take away land from individuals for private benefit were: Souter, Breyer, Stevens, Ginsberg, and Kennedy.

What's the difference between Google and the Gov't

People have no problem forking over all of their personal information to the private sector. Credit card companies know what you buy and where. Amazon has statistical models that identify (often correctly), books you might like when you buy another book. Even power companies have models that can generally predict your power usage patterns by demographic and weather forecasts. But, oh, no, if the "government" gets all this stuff, its the end of the world. Ironically, denying the government access to information already freely shared in the corporate world only stacks the deck towards giving corporations the upper hand over government.

Re:What's the difference between Google and the Go

Ironically, denying the government access to information already freely shared in the corporate world only stacks the deck towards giving corporations the upper hand over government.

Maybe you weren't aware, but corps only have the power that the government lets them have. The government is vastly more powerful than any coporate entity and has essentially unlimited resources. If you make a list of organzations to be wary of the government is _always_ at the top of the list. The only thing that holds them back is accountability to the people (I won't debate how well that works ;-) )

Re:What's the difference between Google and the Go

That's not really true. The corporations pretty much control the govt. If a corporation wants something (say some oil wells in Iraq) it simply has the govt do it for them.

Since corporations can buy and sell senators at will they have all the power the govt

Re:What's the difference between Google and the Go

The private sector, at worst, sends you some junk mail and tries to sell you something. If they've processed their data correctly, then you probably are interested. The worst that can happen is that they don't process their data correctly and you get offers on stuff you're not interested in.

The government, on the other hand, can do a lot worse than send you some poorly-targeted advertisements. Being targeted as a potential terrorist can do tremendous damage to your life. You could lose your job, be incarcerated (without trial, incedentally), and possibly get your face blasted across the news.

Re:What American has been incarcerated without tri

Perhaps you could spend a few seconds learning about a subject before you spout the party line of ignorance.

People who engage in warfare against the US (or other signatory countries) and are not in the uniform of a nation that has subscribed to the Genev

Re:What American has been incarcerated without tri

"Deprived of comfort", is that the new military euphemism for "tortured"? I'm finding it hard to keep up, but then I've been lost ever since "collateral damage".

Re:What American has been incarcerated without tri

You are wrong, the Geneva convention protects everybody, it was specifically amendended to include every soldier and civilian in every kind of armed conflict, except mercenaries. In a conflict, you are either soldier or civilian, there is no such thing as an "unlawful combattant". A terrorist is a civilian committing crimes if he does not wear a uniform and hides his weapons. However, if you wear a uniform and carry your gun over the shoulder, you are a soldier and may not be punished for killing enemies. And if you happen to live in some place that is invaded by foreign soldiers, you do not even need a uniform to be granted soldier statuts: if you form a spontanous militia and fight the invaders, you are also protected by the convention as a soldier, even without a uniform.

I also don't know where you got your impression that a military tribunal is better than a civil court. Why not then substitute all courts in the U.S. by military tribunals? What would you prefer: A court where you can choose your own defender, where you can appeal in case some mistake is made by the court, where the judges are independent from the government, and where the trial is public vs. an "enemy" officer as defendent, very limited and obscure ways to appeal if any, enemy officers as judges whose comrades you might have killed, and a secret trial in some military camp where nobody you know is allowed to attend? Do you really want to rely for justice on some TV-like bold gentlemen officers with balls of steel who have to act against the will of your warmongering commander-in-chief and compromise the former decisions of your comrades to displace and detain you for years? Good Luck.

I agree that the treatment by the U.S. military in general is not as bad how the terrorits treat U.S. soldiers or civilians, but that can not be used as an excuse to lower own standards. If you do lower the standards, you are not better than the terrorists.

You probably are not aware how Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have discredited the U.S. in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. You are no longer seen as The Good Guys (TM). For many Muslims you are now the bad guys, but for your friends you are now the Guys Who Don't Stick To Own Rules and give a fscking shit about the rules of the rest of the world.

You had the compassion and support of the world after 9/11, but you screwed up big time. Now the world looks at the U.S. troops in Iraq with a mixture of uneasiness and malicous joy, and even your best friends are investigating crimes the CIA committed in their countries or against some their citizen.

What a stupid waste of money and lifetime. The U.S. has the most talented people in politcial and social sciences, the greatest spin doctors, economical talent, the largest secret agencies, the greatest movie makers and military power that matches the power of the combined power of military in the rest of the world, but all this seems to be worthless and even counterproductive with an administration like the current one: The reputation in world ruined, terrorism in the world flourishing, the national deficit spiralling out of control, boosting national debt to historic dimensions, and an economy based on plundering and wasting irreplaceable natural resources of the world.

I hope the U.S. will manage to turn around 180 as soon as possible, but the whole world already will have to cope for decades with all the political, economical, environmental and social damage the U.S. have caused since the end of the cold war. The tragedy is that much of the damage done will turn out to be unrecoverable, but the sooner it starts, the better. Close Guantanamo today, and send the people there home. You will not be able to try them anyway, because all the evidence gained there will not be accepted in any court that respects the human rights.

Re:What's the difference between Google and the Go

The private sector does not have the ability to interrogate/arrest me for owning a copy of _________ (insert any controversial book here), or the ability to interrogate/arrest me by querying a search engine for something like "join jihad" (if I were insterested in how militant muslims would go about doing so).

Your version of mal-intent by coroporations is one thing - they want to brainwash me into buying their products so their wallets become fatter. That doesn't even hold a candle to the mal-intent a government could achieve by possessing the same info.

Re:What's the difference between Google and the Go

As much as I dislike the amount of information that many companies collect on me, at least I can sleep comfortably at night knowing that companies are quite predictable in how they act and what they do - they generally act to maximize profits and accrued value to shareholders. So companies will probably abuse my information in predictable ways, trying to spam me and sell me crap. Additionally, companies are still restricted to some degree by laws set by the government, and by excessively bad PR, which prevent them from some of the most egregious abuses of my privacy imagineable.

The government, on the other hand, is not terrible resource-constrained, lacks the profit motive and instead generally is run by bureaucrats and their institutional imperative to maximize their own power and importance in the world, and politicians seeking to score populist brownie points. This means it can be reactionary, illogical and unprofitable, while seeking to maximize control and power for itself, and suppress those it sees as a threat.

As somebody pointed out, the only thing that constrains this beast is accountability through the electoral process for politicians, and the fear of losing their jobs for bureaucrats.

In short, I think I am right to be far more distrustful of the government having oodles of personal data to mine as it pleases than any corporation.

Re:What's the difference between Google and the Go

And that has been Google's point all along. There are research companies out there that specialize in trolling the search engines for results. There's something fishy going on here, or the DOJ doesn't understand how Google really works.

The first case

Re:What's the difference between Google and the Go

Credit card companies know what you buy and where.

No they don't. Look at your statements: the individual *items* purchased are not listed. Only the merchant name (and perhaps address) is, along with the transaction price, of course.

CC companies do not, i

Google bravely refuses the Bush Administration's

request that it turn over anonymous search data for some lame research project.

But they roll over when the ChiCom dictatorship orders them to censor democracy.

Color me not impressed.

Re:Google bravely refuses the Bush Administration'

Well, the DoJ isn't likely to send in armed police rather than take the matter to court...

Re:Google bravely refuses the Bush Administration'

Well, yes. Google denied giving over information that would be considered a breach of privacy for citizens all around the world to a government that is considered bad all over the world. And I'm not talking about China here. And it is censoring searches in

Re:Google bravely refuses the Bush Administration'

First of all, lame research project is a rather mild way to describe allowing the government to legally data mine America's online usage. If you think anonymous data is "useless" or "lame" you may want to take a look at google's business model and an even

Re:Google bravely refuses the Bush Administration'

Google doesn't make the information disappear entirely. It doesn't "lie" in this sense. The crucial and great aspect of google censoring links is presenting an annoying tag saying in effect 'this search has broken links due to censored content'. This typ

Re:Google bravely refuses the Bush Administration'

Is Google censoring it's search results in any of the country's you mentioned? If not, I don't see the relevancy to bringing them up on an article about Google. Bringing up Google's efforts in China to censor the Chinese people is definitely relevant in an

good or bad it is none of their business

Now we just have to fight "if you're not doing anything bad, you've nothing to hide" -- in a country such as ours, that is heresy against our constitution and the people who live under it. Our general need of having privacy and not being exposed to the world is a natural one and must be protected at all costs. Those who seek to undermine this principal are very treacherous indeed.

Re:good or bad it is none of their business

The easy and obvious counterargument to the 'you have nothing to hide' line is to point out that it should not be required of a citizen to explain their daily actions on the basis that they look suspicious, as we each do a dozen things every day that could seem out of context to be nefarious or at least odd. The trick is to convince those who actually write this legislative crap.

Somebody ought to surveille every member of Congress for a week or so, and then e-mail them pointed questions about the footage (even if there is nothing untoward, innocuous actions can look suspicious, and of course that's the whole point), and then cc the footage and the questions to a local news outlet...that'd dampen the legislative hankering for citizen surveillance tout suite.

Re:good or bad it is none of their business

Now we just have to fight "if you're not doing anything bad, you've nothing to hide" -- in a country such as ours, that is heresy against our constitution and the people who live under it.

How can this be against the constitution if no ones rights are bei

Study without having a reason?

But Ware said the government didn't clearly explain why it needed a list of search requests

Tell me what you search for and I tell you who you are. Kind of obvious what they need this for. I wonder why they do not even come up with a fake reason to hide their true intentions. Are people already considered THAT dumb?

Why should they get anything

I'm a little confused why Google should legally be required to give the government anything. The government wants to do a study. Great. They can ask (or perhaps even offer to pay) for information they need, but why should they be able to get whatever they want, for nothing? Has Google commited a crime? Are they searching for evidence for a specific crime? Will the data they get from Google be used in any ongoing investigations? If no to all of the above, why should they get some information? They want to do a study, so what? Why should that mean Google has to give them anything it doesn't want to?

Re:Why should they get anything

Tell me about it. I want to do a study on how currency is made, so the US treasury should allow me private access to official printing plates, inks and paper used in the process of printing money. My tax dollars helped to purchase the printing facilities and equipment and I'm certain to own some of the money printed in such facilities in the near future, so why shouldn't they aid my research by allowing me access to the materials I need?

Not exactly a "study"

The government is defending the Child Online Protection Act against constitutional challenges. If you're in a court case you can compel people to come and testify, or simply force them to produce documents with relevant evidence, which is what the governme

DoJ Note to self.

"In future if you need a list of website, it will be easier to code a webspider than going around suing search engines".

heh!

Re:DoJ Note to self.

"In future if you need a list of website, it will be easier to code a webspider than going around suing search engines".

It would be great if that was anywhere even remotely close to true. As pointed out in another post and in an article I wrote in January, Yahoo, Microsoft and America Online all turned over the records asked for without question. Google was the only one who actually put up a fight... Think about it. Only one of all the corporations asked for records refused. The rest "bent over" immediately.

Thank god for small favors.

Could you imagine the implications if they had to turn this data over? Every minor study in the country would be trolling Google for user information. It would all be to "protect the children", of course. Nice to see a judge with a brain stem for the first time in awhile. Of course, no doubt soccer moms and politicians angling for reelection'll be complaining about this for awhile. "Google hates kids and supports child pornography!"

I can't wait. Talk about your no-win scenarios.

Re:Thank god ... (P2P search engines)

Could you imagine the implications if they had to turn this data over? Every minor study in the country would be trolling Google for user information.


And developers would probably write their own P2P web search engines. Napster did the keyword search for

What I don't understand is

How can George Bush get a subpoena in the first place. It's seems odd that a president can compel the private sector to divulge information in the pursuit of political policy.

Plus this is from the Executive branch which doesn't even make the law.

Let Congress pursue this if it wants. It has the responsibilty of making the laws, not the president.

The Constitution gives the president authority over the military and cabinet; the power to grant pardons and make appointments. And thats about it. Not sure where the Executive is coming from with this crap.

Awful just awful..

Why does Google hate children? Its not just that, The DoJ is trying to protect everyone from pornography why would anyone want to stop them? People this is one of the most morally destabilizing sins since attacking Americans and we should be adopting the approaches used in the Middle East particularly: Monitoring of all internet access by faith-based guides, gouging of eyes, and strict dress codes that stop the urge in the first place. Google I hope you're happy for all the lives you've destroyed through facilitating this evil.

Re:Awful just awful..

Because you don't have the right to tell others what they can an can not do. As long as they are not hurting someone else, everyone should be able to go about their business. Its peoples right to privacy in how they find porn, via using google or MS search is what is at steak here, not the children. The conservitive right, I think, is what is pushing this DoJ to do this in hoping to get what you want, porn off the internet. But let me tell you this, if it wasn't for porn, there would be a lot of technology that might not have taken off. DVD, internet streaming of video, probably all would have died and be forgotten. Now if this is a funny rant, you got me, but I really think you mean what you say.

Re:Awful just awful..

>> The DoJ is trying to protect everyone from pornography

That's not why we (the people) created the DOJ.

>> People this is one of the most morally destabilizing sins since attacking Americans

Child pornography has been around loooooooooong before that happened.

>> we should be adopting the approaches used in the Middle East particularly: Monitoring of all internet access by faith-based guides

Church and State separation prohibits that. In that other (ironically) faith based doctrine we call the Constitution. However that one is where we, the people put our faith in our government.

>> gouging of eyes, and strict dress codes

Jeb, is that you?

>> Google I hope you're happy for all the lives you've destroyed through facilitating this evil.

You have a (semi) valid point. Google does not facilitate it, humans do. Humans work at Google, and more of them (ought) to be seeing exactly what is in their index and what they make easy to find. So should every other SE on the Internet.

Our legal system permits the DOJ to subpoena *any* individual's records if they can show probable cause for use in any trial aiming to convict a sex offender, and Google has complied with such in the past. What the DOJ is doing is called "fishing" , and its illegal, unconstitutional and unethical.

>> Why does Google hate children?

Awww Jeb! It IS you!

If google was smart...

Instead of emailing the URLs requested by the DOJ, they would hand-write them on paper and send them by mail. Preferably hand-written by 50,000 different people, of course.

There is no reason to make this easy for the government.

Note to DoJ

If you want to determine if filters are protecting children from porn... 1. Go to google.com, search for "porn", etc. 2. Click on the first 1000 results to determine if each is evil. 3. Turn on your filtering software. 4. Go back to step 1, repeat for each filter you are interested in. Alternatively, waste tax payer money and look like an ass by paying lawyers to try to bully information out of private companies.

International concern?

What I want to know is - Is there anyway that the government can use this and will get information (ie search requests) that is formed by people in countries other than the US.
i.e. not just getting info on its own citizens but on those from abroad simply because they may have used Google.com as opposed to Google.fr

It would clearly mess up the stats for the research wouldn't it.

The Frustration of the New American Way

Google's last line in their blog is really frustrating to me:

When a party resists an overbroad subpoena, our legal process can be an effective check on such demands and be a protector of our users.

The checks and balances system has failed us completely. To resist an overbroad subpoena, one must have both incredible financial strength as well as incredible legal strength. Companies much smaller than Google don't have either -- and the courts seem to accept any growth in government strength as a new standard whenever a smaller company just gives in to government requests.

This country was founded on an idea that the Federal government was to be set up to promote the general welfare of the people -- not by making a police state nor a welfare state. The Federal government was here to protect the rights of the people by making sure that the individual states didn't trample on these rights. Beyond that, the Federal government was given a few BASIC powers over the people and the state -- very very basic powers.

National security was a power for the government in its ability to defend the borders and call up the militia to keep out intruders. National security was NOT about policing the citizens of the country, this was left to the individual states to decide what is criminal and what is acceptable.

I am very mad that the average citizen doesn't see what has happened. Instead of having a federal government with very limited powers -- which can't be controlled by any amount of money -- we have a federal government with unlimited powers controllable by the highest bidder. If the highest bidder has any reason to restrain government, they can do so with the right legal aid. Yet the common man (the minority of 1) -- the most important facet of a free system -- has no power to do anything but fall victim to the wants of the masses. If the masses are ignorant, the minority of 1 will find themselves without any rights because no one came to their aid.

This has nothing to do with money, mind you. This only has to do with a federal government that is no longer a servant but a master, and the belief of the citizens that they're still able to stop Leviathan through voting.

Re:The Frustration of the New American Way

I like your diatribe, however, ironically, you are part of the problem, like in a larger sense, all of us are.

You have a gmail address. You use the services of these big companies. The consolidation of corporate America into a small OPEC-like coalition o

Quibble on a side issue

>The Federal government was here to protect the rights of the people by making sure that the individual states didn't trample on these rights.

The idea of the federal government protecting people from the states is a post-Civil War innovation. Reading th

Anyone own a printing company?

When Desert Storm hit, Americans rallied and made Saddam toilet paper.

When 9/11 hit, we made Usama Bin Laden toilet paper.

Someone ought to make this document [google.com] into toilet paper, since its now officially useless otherwise :)

It's the American thing to do :) Coming soon to thinkgeek?

Here's an idea.

The government should just send someone to sit in the lobby of Google where they show everyone's search requests on a giant ticker.

Just a REMINDER! ..WAKE UP!!

I wrote a story about this late January. Let me quote myself to remind ya'all of some important insights into this story:

"While Google is reacting to the government request by refusing and resisting, other "leading search engines" seem less eager to protect their users right to privacy.

It should be pointed out that:

* Yahoo,
* Microsoft and
* America Online

have all turned records over to The Bush administration."

Be very aware of this. Google is the only search engine who put up a fight on this issue! The other "leading" search engines willingly, without question, handed over all information asked for. Google in their glory avoided giving out information, the rest didn't even put up a fight. Your Google searches may be protected - for now - but the rest of your searches are now "safe" in the hands of the US Justice Department.

Who is going to sue the other search engines?

Instead of about google, the story should now turn to the other search engines: They apparently turned over "personal data" to government people who didn't have just cause!!

I'd be seriously upset if my search engine would give my personal data to just anybody who doesn't have the right to such data.

Re:Before you Sensationalists Get Riled Up

The government doesn't do wiretaps.

It doesn't hold people without a trial.

It doesn't start a war without obvious cause.

It doesn't enrich the friends of the politicians.

Oooh.. Looky Looky! Look at that shiny thing over THERE.

Re:Before you Sensationalists Get Riled Up

The feds are trying to defend their Internet child-protection law. They wanted to know how much porn is searched for on the major search engines. They asked for random search data that doesn't identify users in any way.

So because the information is anonymous, they have a right to mine corporate owned information to attempt to resurrect a series of laws that have been repeatedly found unconsitutional? You describe porn as if it were something illegal, a problem that they are reasonably working to eliminate. And the government shares your position I'm sure. But somehow the "they're just attacking pornography" argument doesn't sway me much. Pornography involves peoples' right to explore their sexuality as they see fit, including selling video or photographs of said sexuality for the means of making money and helping other people enjoy their sexuality. The government disagrees with this protected practice (shielded by case law), and is looking for a way to implement their standard wedge method to make it impractical since they can't make it illegal. They are doing so under the guise of protecting children. This demand for "random search data" whether it is anonymous or not, is entirely inappropriate and private corporations which have rights of their own, should not be at the disposal of the government to provide them with commercial information in order to further their attempts to override peoples' rights through misrepresented over-restrictive impracticality.

That would be like the government demanding that the credit card agencies turn over all of the charge records of a random sampling of 50,000 Americans so the government could better understand peoples' spending habits. What you've done by condoning such government abuses of power is essentially hand the government the right to "explore" all private information for the purpose of "research" so they can advance their legal agenda of chipping away at peoples' rights using the wedge method and by over-regulating businesses they don't like.