Google battles government over porn investigation
By Jon Swartz, USA TODAY
SAN FRANCISCO — The Bush administration, in a bid to resurrect a controversial online pornography law, has asked a federal judge to force online search giant Google to surrender details on what its users are viewing.
Google has refused to comply with a subpoena, issued last year, to turn over a sweeping amount of material from its databases, including 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.
Silicon Valley-based Google, the world's largest search engine, opposes releasing the information because it says that would violate the privacy rights of its users and reveal company trade secrets.
"Google is not a party to this lawsuit and their demand for information overreaches," Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel for Google, said. "We had lengthy discussions with them to try to resolve this, but were not able to and we intend to resist their motion vigorously."
The government asserts the data is necessary to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches as part of a push to revive the Child Online Protection Act of 1998. That act would have required adults to register to view objectionable material online, and punished violators with fines up to $50,000 or jail.
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2 comments:
Hide the porn Jesus is coming soon.
The actions of the neocons never cease to amaze me. Just when I thought it couldn't get worse, they raise the bar.
What will next, harassing blog hosting servies for any users who use words critical of the bush administration?
I've been active on the net since the early 80's, and would mourn the loss of the only free place left on the planet. When bush's Internet II is in place will be the day I pull the plug on my Internet service.
But the vast red state majority will applaud his actions, after all they are keeping us safe.
This isn't a neocon movement. It's a paleocon action. I feel that the old fogies who get all up in arms about a little pr0n need to follow their own rules. The paleocons have gone so far to the right that they're beginning to overstep laws intended to protect people. This needs to come back to common sense and if they want the research information, then they need to research the information and not say "Well, they already have it so we shouldn't have to do any work for it. They should just give it to us." This is exactly what the neocons accuse of both the far right and the far left -- hand-outs for free. They're becoming indistinguishable.
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