CNN Headlines quote:
Federal judge says he will require Google to turn over some data to Department of Justice.

Will post full article when avail.

Partial article at Reuters:
Reuters Article
hmmm. couldn't edit again...

CNN article here

It'll be interesting to see exactly what they are required to give.
Google hasn't been forced to do anything yet, as the Judge hasn't even decided what to require from them.

It's on the NYTimes, too.

U.S. District Judge James Ware did not immediately say whether the data will include search requests that users entered into the internet's leading search engine.

If this can be kicked up to a higher court for appeal, it wouldn't surprise me if Google would choose to do so, in which case this game is far from over.
Yeah - I couldn't edit the title after the post. Sorry about that. CNN had a headline that made it sound like a ruling had been made.
Here is a development:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/03/14/google.hearing.ap/index.html?section=cnn_topstories

My personal opinion is that Google is very happy that they get to grandstand with this lawsuit. Quote from the CNN article:

Google seized on the case to underscore its commitment to privacy rights and differentiate itself from the Internet's other major search engines -- Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and Time Warner Inc.'s America Online.

The statement by Sergey is laughable:

Cooperating with the government is a slippery slope and it's a path we shouldn't go down, Google co-founder Sergey Brin told industry analysts earlier this month.

in light of:

Even as it defied the Bush administration, Google recently bowed to the demands of China's Communist government by agreeing to censor its search results in that country so it would have better access to the world's fastest growing Internet market. Google's China capitulation has been harshly criticized by some of the same people cheering the company's resistance to the Justice Department subpoena.

Shame on you Google. At least other companies don't get their employees to go around whispering Do no evil while they fulfill their corporate interests.
Sergey is right, cooperating with the government on THIS issue is a slippery slope for many reasonable moral and business reasons.
They only seem to apply moral reasons when it serves their business reasons and I see plenty of evil in that. Better not to have any morals then.
just out in the UK:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4804182.stm

now they have reduced their request to 50,000 sites and 5000 search terms.

thats not so bad anymore is it?

briggidere
Seems that news is everywhere.

Google will have to hand over details of users' internet searches to the United States government after a judge said the company must comply with a federal investigation.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/15/wgoog15.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/03/15/ixworld.html
now they have reduced their request to 50,000 sites and 5000 search terms.

thats not so bad anymore is it?

Why should they have to hand over any info at all? This is not a criminal investigation. The government is trying to build a case to bring back a law that was already found unconstitutional. Google should not have to provide any information at all, unless it can be proven that a crime has been committed.

The erosion of privacy rights do not happen all at once with one decision, but slowly with many small decisions. What info will the government ask for next? What will the result of all this be 20 years from now when we've travelled a bit down that slippery slope?
People need to get over the China thing.

Google is a business and if they want to do business in China, they have to play by China's rules.

The US on the other hand is supposed to a free society where your information is kept private from the government.

The US Government is worse than China in some respects. At least China tells you right up front what their doing. The US on the other hand likes to make up stories and keep things secret from the very people it is supposed to be serving.

1984 was never so true more than in this era.

Google did the right thing.

Long live Google!
The US Government is worse than China in some respects. At least China tells you right up front what their doing. The US on the other hand likes to make up stories and keep things secret from the very people it is supposed to be serving.

Couldn't agree more and I don't even live in the US. :-)
GOOD!

now that we know that Feds can get the info even to test things, i.e., not a criminal investigation, let's focus on thing thing: Why do Google and other search engines keep detailed info for that long?
Google should not have to provide any information at all, unless it can be proven that a crime has been committed.

Then you will need to lobby to have the law changed.

Nobody has to prove that a crime has been committed to compel the release of information. One need only allege that a crime has been committed or an agreement breached, and file a civil case. Then, an attorney can request any relevent data from any party through the discovery process. The party required to give-up the data need to be accused of any crime - but could simply be a third party in possesion of information useful to either the prosecution or defense.

Anyway, my understanding is that in this case, the government is requesting this data as part of a legal appeal. I don't think Google has much hope of preventing it.

I think the last comment is spot-on. Why do they even keep this data around so long? Given the way our legal system IS structured, Google had to know that their customer data is vulnerable to this sort of fishing expedition.
Why do Google and other search engines keep detailed info for that long?

As a publicly traded company, they are subject to audits.

I should also point out that the contents of the web server logs can shed light on whether click fraud has occurred.
now they have reduced their request to 50,000 sites and 5000 search terms.

With so little data, I doubt the USG will be able to prove their claims about adult content filtering software.
This has anything to do with filtering adult content. The it's for the children propoganda is old. Its all news speak for the masses. What we see is all a cover story, fake.

What we are seeing here is the camels nose under the tent. It's all about contolling the news information you recieve and keeping the major medias propoganda machine intact. I'll bet many in the gov hate the fact that they cant control the political information you are recieving. Remember wiki just had to block the senates ip's becuase they were going in and changing the politicians profiles. Ever talk to someone that only gets thier news source from the government controlled major media? they dont have a clue what's going on.

Want proof?
Look up operation Cyber Storm were the US gov states that it was a test to close down rogue bloggers who might give deliberate misinformation campaigns and Internet bloggers who give political rantings and musings about current events.

This is why they want to know what your searching for, control of your mind and manipulation of your perception.

I want my old America back!
pull an enron--hirer a couple late night workers to do the shredding, smashing of hard-drives etc., then deny all knowledge of such files.
I want my old America back!

I assume you don't mean as old as the one from the early fifties? Otherwise your wish might be granted pretty soon. Just

sed s/commun/terror/g *
I just hope Google wins the next round. It all smacks of witch hunts and a return to McCarthyism. J. Edgar Hoover would be loving this!

As much as I hate porn ... this is just wrong.

Aside: Did anyone happen to catch Boston Legal last night? James Spader (as Alan Shore) made one of the best speeches I have ever heard in his closing remarks while defending a client who refused to pay her taxes.

Perhaps Google should hire whomever wrote that speech to work for their legal team! ;)
I tried to edit my last post but it was too old. If you didn't catch the show ... you can see the closing remarks here http://www.boston-legal.org/

Just click on Freshest Boston Legal Video. It really was an excellent speech!
Someone at Google could simply write out a list of 5000 search tems in just a few afternoons. Could be interesting.
Someone at Google could simply write out a list of 5000 search tems in just a few afternoons. Could be interesting.

Or just randomly pick words and phrases out of a dictionary. It would take just a few minutes of a programmer's time. IMO, it's ludicrous to think that anything useful will be learned with such a small sample.

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