Court Date Set for Google Lawsuit

Jason Jardine wrote to mention a C|Net story giving the date and location for Google's court case with the government. From the article: "Google's attempt to fend off the government's request for millions of search terms will move to a federal court in San Jose, Calif., on Feb. 27. U.S. District Judge James Ware on Thursday set the date for the highly anticipated hearing, which is expected to determine whether the U.S. Justice Department will prevail in its fight to force Google to help it defend an anti-pornography law this fall."

Can you say Circus?

[WebHostingGuy]

I bet there will be a media and protester circus outside the courthouse on this one. Then again, maybe CourtTV will have the hearing live. This will be interesting and will definately shape the discussion on the Justice Department and internal US spying.

You kidding me?

[ranton]

Wait a minute, I read the article and didnt find what law Google is breaking here. I am not even close to being a privacy advocate, in fact I usually am on the side of the government in issues like these. But I do not see what law Google is breaking.

This must not have to do with the "War on Terror", because I thought that Google couldnt even notify the press if that was the case.

Does anyone know more about this than simply what this article is saying?

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Re:Interesting Point

[rindeee]

Indeed. Will Google's moral compass be so fixed when the Chinese government demands similar of them?

Re:Interesting Point

[MindStalker]

They arn't giving china information on its citizens (though I believe there are search engines that are??) simply complying with blocking requirements by the chinese government. Look at it the other way google currently attempts to block warez sites which the US government deems illigal, such blocking would be seen my many in china to be an parralel example.

Not defend a law...

[NewToNix]

to determine whether the U.S. Justice Department will prevail in its fight to force Google to help it defend an anti-pornography law

This is about trying to revisit (show the need for) a law that has already been struck down.

So it's not about a law at all, it's about the governments attempt to show the need for a law.

And trying to use Google records for that is as relevant as using a /. poll for the same (or any other) purpose.

Re:Interesting Point

[Anonymous Coward]

We all don't like China's way of running the government, but what the justice department asked for is illegal in the US. What they are doing in China is not illegal, and in fact, is the only way it can work. Other countries set there own laws, and you follow them in there or else. There are many laws in the US that aren't in other countries(drinking age being one of them). What would you think about guiness having a billboard targeted at teenagers in our country?

Re:Interesting Point

[ranton]

I hate how short sided people can be when they have their mind made up about something. Cooperating with the Chinese government was not as "evil" as the Slashdot crowd would like you to believe.

Google had two options:

1) Refuse China's request, therefore reducing the average Chinese citizen's access to information on the internet greatly.

2) Comply with China's request, therefore helping the average Chinese citizen access information while only restricting their access slightly. In addition, they can have a message that notifies them that sites are being blocked for political reasons.

In my opinion, it would have been "evil" of Google to not comply with China's request. It would be the same as refusing to give food to North Korea because you do not like their government. I do not think letting millions of people starve would be the best approach to overthrowing the North Korean government. I also do not think the best way to liberate China from their oppressive regime is to isolate them even further.

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Past records

[Tourney3p0]

Even if the government loses this one, they have the power to make laws which will make it legal. Basically they can potentially do anything they want to win this one in the future. It's not like this administration has a history of fighting for our rights. The question then becomes whether or not they'd be able to seize past records. If Google wins this, that means that as of right now my search records are off limits. Hypothetically speaking, I have this reasonable expectation in mind when doing my searches and might change my search patterns appropriately otherwise.

Re:Interesting Point

[treehouse]

The Chinese government hasn't made similar demands. Why do you think they might? If you're looking for a "slippery slope" argument, what will Google say when the US government asks for a list of all people who make queries critical of Bush?

Re:You kidding me?

[glasseyetiger]

If the Feds aren't allowed to get the naked ladies off the internet, THEN WE'RE LETTING THE TERRORISTS WIN.

Not Spying

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, usually I don't step in to these crazy Slashdot arguments, but I have to voice the truth here.

The government is NOT ATTEMPTING TO SPY ON ITS CITIZENS.

It is asking for general information, i.e. nothing connected with names or individual identities in any way. As far as the information is concerned, it would be the same as the government asking Gallup to do a survey about how easy it is to find porn on the internet when you aren't specifically looking for it.

If asking for statistics is spying, then hundreds of survey companies have been doing it for years. And *GASP* they've been SHOWING THE RESULTS TO THE PUBLIC!!!!!11

While I don't know about the legality of the subpoena, the information itself is completely legal and is in no way spying on citizens.

Here is a good article about the privacy issue:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/01 /21/google_subpoena_roils_the_web/ [boston.com]

Here is an FAQ from CNet:
http://news.com.com/FAQ+What+does+the+Google+subpo ena+mean/2100-1029_3-6029042.html?tag=st.num [com.com]

From the second article:

"Google even displays a list of live search terms on a screen that visitors can view in its Silicon Valley headquarters. That's probably one reason why the company's lawyers have been careful not to raise privacy arguments."

I don't see how what the government is doing is any worse than that.

Re:You kidding me?

[quantum bit]

Of course it is the war on terror. Think of the children and then think of terror that the word boobies could potential put in them. If the life of one child is saved from the terror word boobies then it is all worth it.

They've got it all wrong. Terrorists don't have boobies, that's why they're so pissed off at the world. If their culture had a little more nudity in it they'd probably be more relaxed.

Re:You kidding me?

[Analogy Man]

In other words the government is too lazy to come up with a means of mining this information on their own so they are compelling a public company to supply the logs for them to perform their analysis.

I think with a little creativity the government could instrument a government institution...say HUD, DoD, DoE and trap any outgoing searches to major search engines. This might be even more useful as you could then toss these searches against ALL of the major search engines and see what results come back. You could determine if MSN is more likely to return porn links than Yahoo.

If there wasn't a buzz about government over-reach, people would be more likely to see this for what it is.

Re:What bothers me

[Tacvek]

IMHO, their response should not have been "No, we will not give you that information." it should have been, "No, we do not record that information."

I'm not sure that that would be right either. Let us assume that Google is not evil at all. It would still make sense to keep track of every set of search terms every searched for, and the number of times in a certain tyime period (say a week) that that term was searched for. They would use this information to keep track of the current most popular searches. They could look at the results these searches returned and see if there are many irrelevent results. If there are, then they would look at their current algorithm and see if some tweaks could be made to increase the relevence of the top search results.

Perhaps you are confusing retaining information that could potentially be identifying with being evil. But if that is the case, you would be evil if ou archived old email as that may contain personally identifying information.

Or do you think Mozilla Firefox is evil? It is published by Mozilla Foundation's wholely owned commerical subsidiary: Mozilla Corportation.

Being inside gives Google power for change

[daBass]

In one way I agree with you. But information - even if some of it is filtered - is power. Selling arms to the chinese goverment is obviously bad. Giving it's citizens at least some access is better than depriving them completely because you don't like the goverment. If the people can't see beyond the curtain at least a little bit, they don't know what they are missing and what they should be protesting about. (see North Korea)

Besides, Google being Google, it would not surprise me at all that now that they are in and paying lucrative taxes to the Chinese goverment they will try to keep pushing the boundries. If the stayed outside and managed to avoid the filtering, the Chinese goverment could easily block them completely. Now they are on the inside, the goverment has something to lose.

Re:What bothers me

[WhiteWolf666]

The government is going to win this case. It's a business, not a real person, all the arguments Google can make against the government holding the information the government could make against Google themselves holding it. Google will break a deal and keep recording what people search for. If they would have been smart and just never recorded searches in the first place (which they do on the Google Search Appliance) then this wouldn't have been a big deal.

There's a HUGE difference, and I think the government most likely won't win this case. DoJ is probably incredibly surprised the Google is fighting this, and given the recent PR regarding China, this is an excellent way for Google to demonstrate their "Do No Evil" policy, at least in the U.S.

Google acknowledges that they collect data, however, for consumers to be comfortable with that, consumers need to know that data will not be abused. Most people would consider federal government data mining about pornography "mis-use". You say that Google shouldn't be collecting data. Well, guess what: Data collection IS Google's PRIMARY business, both in terms of indexing websites, caching websites (and images, and video, and sound, and news), and in terms of search records, for advertising. Without data collection, there IS no Google; your under a serious delusion if you think they could function without search records. The key is not that they collect data, the key is they keep that data sacred. No one, not you, not me, not the government, not Google employees, is allowed to peruse that data. That data is soley used for targeted advertising and search optimization, and only by software algorhthm. Google stakes its reputation on this ironclad privacy guarantee.

People don't want the federal government playing around with their porn search records. It's as simple as that. If (and when) Google wins this case, it makes AOL, MSN, and Altavista look really bad for just rolling over and playing dead. You want your data private, even though a search engine will collect it? You want to have trust in a company that will fight for your right to privacy?

Trust Google. That we see Google fighting things like this out, versus AOL or MSN, is a BIG deal.

It's a business, not a real person, all the arguments Google can make against the government holding the information the government could make against Google themselves holding it.

It's totally different. Google doesn't have a monopoly on physical force, nor can Google arrest you, nor can Google play any of the other dirty tricks a government regularly would. Google uses information for one purpose: advertising. If Google can convince you your information won't be used for any other purpose, they'll have a monopoly on high quality data for high quality advertising.

It's well recognized that the government will misuse personal data collection; this is why we (both democrats and republicans) disapprove of national federal data collection. Indeed, most capitalists see no problem with data collection by private organizations, because they can't force you to comply. This is totally different that the federal government, and real capitalists acknowledge that the government should be under much stricter scrutiny because of its unique position.

Your also oversimplyfing the legal case, as well. I quote:

Google vowed last week to fight a renewed request from the agency, calling the subpoena overbroad. Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL all conceded that they have turned over some records, noting that they did so in a limited fashion involving only aggregated data and no personally identifiable information.

Leahy said in his letter that his concerns came "against the backdrop of strong public concern over the government's monitoring of Internet communications and warrantless eavesdropping on the telephone conversations of American citizens."

Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller said the department planned to respond accordingly, though h

Re:What bothers me

[zrenneh]

The feds aren't asking for any identifiable information. They're asking for a random sample of 1 million URLs and 1 million searches from Google's database, with the user-identifying information removed. Google is making a big fuss over this lawsuit in order to gain some great PR and appear to be on the side of the users. Whether they are or not is open to debate (see below).

Re:Interesting Point

[KutuluWare]

You are missing one key element here, in that what the US government is demanding from Google to do is not something they (yet) have any legal authority to demand. What the Chinese government demanded fell squarely in line with Chinese law. It's one thing for a collective of individuals to fight against unjust laws by simply ignoring them; corporations don't usually last too long when they try the same thing.

Yes! and Yes!

[wsanders]

>>>> So it's not about a law at all, it's about the governments attempt to show the need for a law.

This post is one of the few to point this out. This is just a fishing expedition to provide data for - something. God knows what. Maybe the next step - lets go to one random residential neighborhood in Anytown USA and sieze all the computers. Who knows what we'll find! We promise not to arrest anyone - this time!

Aside from the privacy concerns, what business wants to be obliged to respond to random government requests for information, outside of that is already required by law and good business practices?

BTW Almost certainly the info Google might be forced to provide contains no identifiable information, so you can take your tinfoil hats off. Yahoo and AOL already complied, and aggregated the data and removed individually identifying information. Microsoft, good little quislings they are, had no comment.

But when it comes down to it...

[AdamThirteenth]

I thought it was my responsibility as a parent to keep my kid from looking at porn, not the governments. I think that's a task I'd like to handle myself.