Google rejects Justice Dept. bid for search info

[cal04]

Google Inc. on Friday formally rejected the U.S. Justice Department's subpoena of data from the Web search leader, arguing the demand violated the privacy of users' Web searches and its own trade secrets. Responding to a motion by U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Google also said in a filing in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California the government demand to disclose Web search data was impractical.

The Bush administration is seeking to compel Google to hand over Web search data as part of a bid by the Justice Department to appeal a 2004 Supreme Court injunction of a law to penalize Web site operators who allow children to view pornography. Google is going it alone in opposing the U.S. government request. Rivals Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. are among the companies that have complied with the Justice Department demand for data to be used to make its case.

Google's lawyers said the company shares the government's concern with materials harmful to minors but argued that the request for its data was irrelevant. They offered a series of technical arguments why this data was not
useful. The Mountain View, California-based company said that complying with the U.S. government's request for "untold millions of search queries" would put an undue burden on the company, including a "week of engineer time to complete."

"Algorithms regularly change. The identical search query submitted today may yield a different result than the identical search conducted yesterday," attorneys from Perkins Coie LLP, the company's external legal counsel, argue in the filing. Complying with the Justice Department request would also force Google to reveal how its Web search technology works -- something it jealously guards as a trade secret, the company argued. It refuses to disclose even the total number of searches conducted each day.

http://reuters.myway.com/article/20060218/2006-02-18T012645Z_01_N17192366_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-GOOGLE-PRIVACY-DC.html

[Kingshakabobo]

1. Maybe the feds should put some of their effort in to filling out....

all those burdensome FISA requests.

[acmejack]

2. This could get real interesting.

google has staked out it position, no way is it going to turn over anything that might give a clue to it's search algorithms. If the Government can force them to do so, it's time to seriously reexamine what we have going on here. I will also be time to set aside passivity & make reclaiming this Country job one.

[applegrove]

3. Don't know why feds cannot tell them the parameters they want to

search re: child pornography. I don't understand why the government cannot do that.

That smells!

Cause anyone would hand over their shit if they believed it was about that.

[applegrove]

4. I'm guessing Google thinks the justice department is trying to set

"new precedents". That it doesn't seem to be about endangerment of children. That there is more to that there warrant than helping kids and putting monsters in jail.

[pinniped]

5. If these nuts want to know search info they can start their own search....

engine.

[applegrove]

6. I think it is more like Google detects a pattern change. They deal

with likely 192 countries in the world and the UN and other bodies like Interpol. And that they detect a difference in this request.

That they detect it is like a "push poll". Where, to my understanding (new concept for me), the question being asked in the poll isn't about the answers it is about sending a message through the questions.

That google - who deals with exploitation and stalking and child crimes on the internet every day - sees this as different.

That they see it as precedent setting and not really about what the warrant claims to be about (or not entirely about child exploitation).

That's just a guess.

:shrug: Don't know really...