Senator demands info on search engine subpoena

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The point is COPA, which doesn't depend on identities: Do you really think the government cares who's searching for porn? WHY would they care? To protect the children? Why didn't they care, I don't know, for over the past ten years what people were searching for?

They don't care what people are searching for. What they care about is what people are finding in search results. Personal identification is besides the point because they're not interested in what people are searching for. The point of the subpoena is to show that "innocent" searches frequently turn up "bad" sites. This whole exercise is in support of COPA, a law (misguided, in my opinion) which would require people to enter in their credit card information beore they entered into any pornographic sites (which is in contrast to how it is now, where vast amounts of pornography is available before you enter in your credit card, because either the sites are amateur, or they try to get you with teaser images, or the images are on banner ads). The point they're trying to show is that children can access this stuff, even if filters are used. (Incidentally, that's where I think the uphill battle will be. Filters doomed the CDA, and I think they'll doom COPA, too.)

And yet you find nothing wrong with your extreme, where we should question nothing no matter how suspicious it looks.

Of course I think we should question, if something actually does the thing we fear. As I said, if the government was actually requesting identifying information, that'd be a different story.

We shouldn't bother stepping in until we know for sure that our rights are being trampled on.

We shouldn't bother steping in when we know for a fact that our rights aren't being trampled on. The government made a request. The requested information doesn't impinge on anyone's privacy. Therefore, there's nothing to "step in" on. It's a binary function. It's either there or it isn't.

The only problem with that is by the time that happens it will already be late to salvage those rights.

Nonsense. If the government had submitted a subpoena that did have identifiable information, Google could have the subpoena quashed. Or the people identified in the information could have it quashed. Or the judge could simply deny the subpoena. There are a lot of legal avenues before your rights are taken away, in this situation. The ACLU, et. al, just jumped the gun. And Leahy's staff didn't bother reading the subpoena before they told him what his position should be.

This isn't about the government trying to get people's private information. This is about Google seeking to protect its corporate information. And I'm not even saying that that's an invalid goal. It's just not the same as what it's being portrayed as. Google wants to protect its trade secrets (which I guess they think could be exposed somehow) and make sure they cover themselves in the PR realm by "protecting" their customers' data.

The problem isn't so much what the government's asking for, as it is what Google's capable of providing. Google knows it's sitting on a treasure trove of data that could have law enforcement and business value. They're trying to reassure their customers by demonstrating that they won't just roll over when asked for information. That's laudable. Nobody wants Google to just fork over anything the government asks for, so they had the government limit the scope of their subpoena to something smaller than what they'd asked for originally. (As I understand it, the government wanted a much larger set of search results and queries, originally.) What's not so laudable is the political opportunism that's going on around this issue.; Posted by: bhartman36 Posted on: 01/26/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use