For those that don’t already know, the Dept of Justice is gathering data on all searches conducted online. This information comes out as a result of a battle between Google and the DOJ.
There are serious privacy issues here, and the government is only trying to cloud the request with excuses of porn monitoring, which is not the issue. It is important to note 2 things here
The orginal request was for ALL searches during june 1st and july 31st, apparently later changed to all searchs in a one week period.
Yahoo, MSN, and Time Warner (AOL) have already provided requested data according to the Wall Street Journal
To me the questions are
So why should the government be entitled to all search information, WITHOUT having obtained any type of search warrent? This is obviously a fishing expedition if there ever was one and quite scary to me about the potental here. What are their real goals for data of every search conducted online? Where do you think it will head next?
Without a warrent and a specific case to pursue, I feel that the government has no right to any online data, especially regarding “Internet companies’ handling of the mounting volume of personal data that consumers entrust to them online – including emails, lists of friends and phone numbers, and their Web-surfing histories” described by the Wall Street Journel.
Beats me. Given that there is simply no way of determining which searches were conducted by minors and which by adults, there is just no way of using the data for its supposed purpose (measuring the effectiveness of a law specifically directed at preventing the former, but not the latter, from accessing porn).
Sad to say, I’d feel a lot better if it turns out to be merely garden-variety petty corruption (some apparatchik stealing Google’s trade secrets under color of law to grease his path to a lucrative job with one of their competitors).
That is an interesting point, as Google did charge that providing the requested information would force them to provide to much information that may give away trade secrets regarding their search technology. I must say, however, due to the fact that data has been requested from not just google, but yahoo, msn, and aol (all who already gave into demands) it seems unlikely that it is anything of that nature.
It amazes me that the government really has the gall to try to force this information from all the search engines, under the cover of child porn, when they are requesting all search data. It just sounds to me like an abuse of power, just for the pure sake of data collection and the fact that they think they can get away with it. Which makes it all the more scary, in that there really isn’t any real necessity on the part of the government to even have this information at this point. Power, purely for powers sake.