Google defies US over search data

[Sean]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4630694.stm

The internet search engine Google is resisting efforts by the US Department of Justice to force it to hand over data about what people are looking for. Google was asked for information on the types of query submitted over a week, and the websites included in its index. The department wants the data to try to show in court it has the right approach in enforcing an online pornography law. It says the order will not violate personal privacy, but Google says it is too broad and threatens trade secrets. Privacy groups say any sample could reveal the identities of Google users indirectly. And they say the demand is a worrying precedent, because the government also wants to make more use of internet data for fighting crime and terrorism. However, the Department of Justice has said that several of Google's main competitors have already complied.

[brien]

Quote by: Sean http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4630694.stm

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Ahhh, snooping again without probable cause or warrants. This government likes to play the adolecent game of trust me. OK, just trample the 4th amendment.

I say Google stand your ground, no matter which others cave in to this pressure. Will it ever stop. :rolleyes:

[gr8fuldaniel]

Quote by: brien It says the order will not violate personal privacy, but Google says it is too broad and threatens trade secrets.

The news was reporting it different last night. Saying they would use the info in a war on porn. I guess, having failed the "WAR on Terror" they had to find a war they could actually win. Now that the Constitution is "Just a goddamn piece of paper" ="w"

Quote by: Article Privacy groups say any sample could reveal the identities of Google users indirectly.

I believe as a bonus the pirates in our White House could find any copies of bush and abramoff together. That could be what this is all about anyway. Why Else would it happen in this window of time?

Bush trying to round up all photos of President with Abramoff RAW STORY Aides to President George W. Bush are trying to identify all the photos that may exist of the President and lobbyist Jack Abramoff together, TIME’s White House Correspondents Mike Allen and Matt Cooper report in Monday editions, RAW STORY has learned. From TIME: # Bracing for the worst, Administration officials obtained from the Secret Service a list of all the times Abramoff entered the White House complex, and they scrambled to determine the reason for each visit, TIME reports. Abramoff attended Hanukkah and holiday events at the White House, according to an aide who has seen the list. Press secretary Scott McClellan said Abramoff might have attended large gatherings with Bush but added, “The President does not know him, nor does the President recall ever meeting him.”

A connection to Abramoff would be a death knell for these murderous bozos.
Here is the page that come up in a search for "white house pictures of abramoff" in Google Images: Click on this pic:

You get this page
This is a photo album the bush crime syndicate would rather you didnt see.

Were you aware

Grover Norquist Founder, Islamic Institute, Washington

I didnt know that! Interesting.

[brien]

Quote by: gr8fuldaniel The news was reporting it different last night. Saying they would use the info in a war on porn. I guess, having failed the "WAR on Terror" they had to find a war they could actually win. Now that the Constitution is "Just a goddamn piece of paper" ="w" I believe as a bonus the pirates in our White House could find any copies of bush and abramoff together. That could be what this is all about anyway. Why Else would it happen in this window of time? A connection to Abramoff would be a death knell for these murderous bozos. Here is the page that come up in a search for "white house pictures of abramoff" in Google Images: Click on this pic: You get this page This is a photo album the bush crime syndicate would rather you didnt see. Were you aware I didnt know that! Interesting.

Dan. You actually atributred to me a quote by Sean. My comments lie below the star line. Sorry for the confusion.

[gr8fuldaniel]

Quote by: brien Dan. You actually atributred to me a quote by Sean.

You understand the mistake though? You didnt include the article quote within the tags([QUOTE ]here[/QUOTE ]), right? You could prolly still edit your post to include it.

On topic;
If GOOGLE already caved in to China on this same issue, how long before they buckle to OUR big brother?

[underbear1]

I think they should publish all the folks looking at porn online, then they will know it is so prevelent in Red States and Blue States, in Republican districts and Democrat districts in gay households and straight households, that they will just get off their holier than thou pulpit, and maybe deal with something significant, if not, they can always re-study atheletes on steroids

[bishop]

Quote by: dan I believe as a bonus the pirates in our White House could find any copies of bush and abramoff together. That could be what this is all about anyway. Why Else would it happen in this window of time?

i'm not staking out a position, but i looked at this link and it smells like bullshit. the photo linked there is undeniably doctored.


as for this story about google.. it's interesting what the media outlets are saying about this - namely that it unearths the fact that everything we do online is being saved by someone.. google saves it, then sells it to advertisers, as do all other search engines. there is no such thing as privacy rights apparently - i recall last week's story about cell phone records being for sale.

i definitely support google in resisting these gestapo sob's.. the feds are going to use this information for things other than combatting child porn and terrorism.

the feds' demand for all queries entered in january is definitely overreaching - and unconstitutional. i think case law supports the unconstitutionality of the feds' demands since it has previously ruled that COPA violated the first amendment. maybe the feds could actually earn their pay rather than acting like the useless fascists that they are.. how about they take 100 of these useless wastes of taxpayer money, sit them in front of 100 pc's and have them think up and enter as many google searches for child porn as they can think up? seems to be a better solution to the problem imo.

[RickSp]

The implications of governement monitoring of millions of web sites and internet users in addition to warrantless wiretaps and Patriot Act secret searches is chilling.

Enough is never enough, not when the government believes that it can invade your privacy without repercussions. The Justice Department wants a federal judge to force Google to turn over millions of private Internet searches. Google is rightly fighting the demand, but the government says America Online, Yahoo and MSN, Microsoft's online service, have already complied with similar requests. This is not about national security. The Justice Department is making this baldfaced grab to try to prop up an online pornography law that has been blocked once by the Supreme Court. And it's not the first time we've seen this sort of behavior. The government has zealously protected the Patriot Act's power to examine library records. It sought the private medical histories of a selected group of women, saying it needed the information to defend the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in the federal courts. The furor is still raging over President Bush's decision to permit spying on Americans without warrants. And the government now wants what could be billions of search terms entered into Google's Web pages and possibly a million Web-site addresses to go along with them.

Fishing in Cyberspace

[Osborn F Enready]

I support google in their efforts to resist tyranny.

[carriew]

Quote by: Osborn F Enready I support google in their efforts to resist tyranny.

I agree they should not have to hand over anything.

[gr8fuldaniel]

Quote by: Osborn F Enready I support google in their efforts to resist tyranny.

Yup. This I agree with this opinion:

Common Dreams Are You Ready to Be Bugged and Tortured By George W. Bush? by Harvey Wasserman It's not really terrorists George W. Bush wants to bug and torture. It's YOU. It's not really terrorism he wants to fight. It's opposition from people he can't control. It's not really US security he wants to protect. It's the power of his regime. The Constitutional debate about whether these executive privileges are allowable in war is a smoke screen. This isn't about war: It's about dictatorship. It’s about making power permanent by using private information against you, and by terrifying you with torture. Team Bush believes it rules by Divine right. It has already re-defined "terrorist" to mean anyone who questions its power. It will use "anti-terrorist" wiretapping as a tool against anyone who dares oppose it. All serious indicators show that "information" extracted by torture is virtually worthless in fighting terrorism. So is the information taken from wiretapping huge numbers of people, which Bush has been doing since before 9/11. So ask yourself: if granted the power to torture, do you trust the Bush Administration---or any regime- - to refrain from torturing its political opponents? If granted the power to record private phone conversations, do you trust Karl Rove to not use this material against his political opponents? Who will Bush go after first? Al Queda or the Quakers? Bin Laden or Cindy Sheehan? If Bush gets away with this, then it's simple: if you are too outspoken in opposing this regime's destruction of social security, or the natural environment, or the economy, you will sooner or later be subject to torture. If Bush's phone buggers pick up information or statements taken out of context that can incriminate or make you look bad, Rove will not hesitate to leak them to FOX and use them for partisan purposes. The Constitution of the United States is absolutely clear about banning these abuses. The patriotic Americans who demanded the Bill of Rights knew these powers must be outlawed to retain any hope of preserving our freedom and democracy. That's why they did so, clearly and explicitly. Those who support giving Bush these powers are undoubtedly ready and willing to be tortured and bugged themselves. As for the rest of us, there can be no compromise with tyranny.

"As for the rest of us, there can be no compromise with tyranny"

[Scribbler1]

I use Google as a rule and now I have more of a reason to. It would seem Yahoo, MSN and AOL immediately caved in to the government's request.

Now, to be fair, they aren't giving info on WHO is searching for whatever, but the concern is that sometime in the near future the government will want something like the personal info WITHOUT the search results. On the surface it would be another harmless request (say, to count how many people use search engines) but if the government has finally learned just how to actually "connect the dots" all they need do is match them up some way.

Having lived through Hoover's FBI years I worry about scenarios like if someone here mentions the Communist Manifesto and I get curious enough to download it I will be on some "commie sympathizer" list.

Or just how DID Timothy McVeigh make that bomb? I'll never MAKE one but if I search for how it is done I may end up on a suspected terrorist list.

Then it won't require a warrant to spy on ME, will it?


What is more of a concern was part of an LA Times article in my local rag (Thursday) about this. (No link, just from the article):

"Under a section of the Patriot Act expanding the use of so-called National Security Letters, companies like Google can be asked to turn over potentially useful data-even about people who aren't suspected of wrongdoing, while being barred from disclosing those requests."

Makes you feel all kinds of secure, don't it?

[oranged]

If the government mistreats google enough, they could just leave America all together. Come to Europe as political refugies.

[Scribbler1]

Quote by: oranged If the government mistreats google enough, they could just leave America all together. Come to Europe as political refugies.

It's the Internet, they can go ANYWHERE! Still, kudos to them for standing up to a fishing expedition by the gang that couldn't shoot straight.

Think about the request. The government wanted 1 million RANDOM search results to supposedly check to see how many porn sites were visited. It seems to me if you and I could find these sites the government can too and they can subpoena the ISPs of each site for a number of hits on each. They don't NEED "random" search results so why would they want to do it this way? Once again we have a government action that raises one big-ass cloud of stink.

[Scribbler1]

I don't know if this can be an indicator of how much the sheep love their government but I just heard on CNN Headline News that Google posted its biggest stock loss in the company's history. It appears the stock took a nosedive on Friday, a day after the news that it defied the government broke.

I don't know if there's a connection or not but I thought it would be of interest to the posters on this thread.

[bishop]

eh.. google's stock is ridiculously overvalued right now and the market's all in an uproar that companies aren't going to meet their absurd earnings expectations.. the market's reacting to any bad news (even bad news overshadowed by good news) sending the spot price lower. google should recover from this, until they release their Q4 report..

[RickSp]

Quote by: Scribbler1 I don't know if this can be an indicator of how much the sheep love their government but I just heard on CNN Headline News that Google posted its biggest stock loss in the company's history. It appears the stock took a nosedive on Friday, a day after the news that it defied the government broke. I don't know if there's a connection or not but I thought it would be of interest to the posters on this thread.

Investors, particularly institutional investors, react to news. They don't support or oppose Google or the government, they just see increased potential for volatility which they crank into their pricing models.

[bishop]

that's true for all stocks.. i don't think it really answers the reason why google's spot price dropped so drastically..

usually when a stock's price drops so quickly, it's because there are loads of stop-loss orders being activated.. they tend to have a cascading effect that only ends once the price hits the support level.

this january's been particularly volatile, so i think people are keeping their stop-loss orders very close to the spot price.

[gr8fuldaniel]

We will see if bush calls off the dogs. The photos of bush and Abramoff, 5 of them HAVE BEEN FOUND! The Washingtonian:

If the White House can’t find the photos, prosecutors already know where to look. The Washingtonian has seen five photos of the President with Abramoff or his family. One photo shows the President and Abramoff shaking hands at a meeting in the Old Executive Office Building, where a bearded-Abramoff introduced Bush to several of the lobbyist’s native-American clients. <SNIP> Sources say the photographs are being kept safe. Abramoff would tell prosecutors, if asked, that not only did he know the President, but the President knew the names of Abramoff’s children and asked about them during their meetings. At one such photo session, Bush discussed the fact that both he and Abramoff were fathers of twins.

This puts bush only 1 degree of separation from al Qaida.
bushs political carreer should be drawing to a close. Too bad, so sad.

Funny how bushs own words seem to condemn him every time he flaps his lips. W never met abramoff. MmHmm ok.

Damn shame they havent posted those pics.

Your president is the worst LIAR ever!
May God strike him down!

I can hear dinner tables across America:
"I dont care if the president IS a lying sack of crap, that doesnt make it ok for you, junior"

[bishop]

you keep pushing this photo line, even though the first photo from your previous post was clearly doctored. i'd like to see these pictures myself (and see them shown in a reputable source). heh, this has nothing to do with google of course.