Feds after Google data
RECORDS SOUGHT IN U.S. QUEST TO REVIVE PORN LAW
By Howard Mintz
Mercury News
The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal
judge to order Google to turn over a broad range of
material from its closely guarded databases.
The move is part of a government effort to revive an
Internet child protection law struck down two years
ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law was meant to
punish online pornography sites that make their
content accessible to minors. The government contends
it needs the Google data to determine how often
pornography shows up in online searches.
In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in San
Jose, Justice Department lawyers revealed that Google
has refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year
for the records, which include a request for 1 million
random Web addresses and records of all Google
searches from any one-week period.
The Mountain View-based search and advertising giant
opposes releasing the information on a variety of
grounds, saying it would violate the privacy rights of
its users and reveal company trade secrets, according
to court documents.
Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel for Google,
said the company will fight the government’s effort
“vigorously.”
“Google is not a party to this lawsuit, and the
demand for the information is overreaching,” Wong
said.
The case worries privacy advocates, given the vast
amount of information Google and other search engines
know about their users.
“This is exactly the kind of case that privacy
advocates have long feared,” said Ray Everett-Church,
a South Bay privacy consultant. “The idea that these
massive databases are being thrown open to anyone with
a court document is the worst-case scenario. If they
lose this fight, consumers will think twice about
letting Google deep into their lives.”
Everett-Church, who has consulted with Internet
companies facing subpoenas, said Google could argue
that releasing the information causes undue harm to
its users’ privacy.
“The government can’t even claim that it’s for
national security,” Everett-Church said. “They’re
just using it to get the search engines to do their
research for them in a way that compromises the civil
liberties of other people.”
The government argues that it needs the information
as it prepares to once again defend the
constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act
in a federal court in Pennsylvania. The law was struck
down in 2004 because it was too broad and could
prevent adults from accessing legal porn sites.
However, the Supreme Court invited the government to
either come up with a less drastic version of the law
or go to trial to prove that the statute does not
violate the First Amendment and is the only viable way
to combat child porn.
As a result, government lawyers said in court papers
they are developing a defense of the 1998 law based on
the argument that it is far more effective than
software filters in protecting children from porn. To
back that claim, the government has subpoenaed search
engines to develop a factual record of how often Web
users encounter online porn and how Web searches turn
up material they say is “harmful to minors.”
The government indicated that other, unspecified
search engines have agreed to release the information,
but not Google.
“The production of those materials would be of
significant assistance to the government’s preparation
of its defense of the constitutionality of this
important statute,” government lawyers wrote, noting
that Google is the largest search engine.
Google has the largest share of U.S. Web searches
with 46 percent, according to November 2005 figures
from Nielsen//NetRatings. Yahoo is second with 23
percent, and MSN third with 11 percent.
——————————————————————————–
Mercury News Staff Writer Michael Bazeley contributed
to this report. Contact Howard Mintz at
hmintz@mercurynews.com or (408) 286-0236.
BT Writes:
Mike:
I’ve never been a big Devon fan, but I was watching a trailer for the Digital Playground flick with her first anal scene and thinking about the exchange of e-mails between the two of you a few months back (is that hit man after you still lurking around Atlanta?)
If he is he has decided it might be bad for his health to make contact or maybe Kurt Lackwood is her hit man….
There’s an archive on Luke’s site where she rants on about Steve Hirsch of Vivid offering to pay some medical bills if she would do her first anal for Vivid. Somehow or another, she found it morally-reprehensible and an example of a lack of ethics that a guy in the pornography business would offer to pay a premium to one of his contract gals to perform anal. I think her response was something like she doesn’t look down on other performers who do anal, but she’d never do it, even in her personal life, and how dare he ask her.
And now, she’s done it. And if I understand from one of your posts, she’s no longer a DP contract girl, which suggests they’re cleaning off their shelves while they can.
You can bet DP has plrnty of Devon footage sitting on the shelves that will be trickled out for the next 3 or more years.
Where, then, does that leave Devon (I’m assuming her hit man isn’t going to whack Samantha or Joone)?
Devon has teamed up with Tawney Roberts to start her own production company, hey stop laughing I’m serious…LOL
By the way, I’m not a big fan of those music-only videos either, but from the trailer, the scene looks pretty hot.
Let’s hope Janine’s first anal isn’t a music video filmed by Celeste.
