Bush Administration Demands Search Records [Archive]

AnthonyCea

01-19-2006, 11:42 AM

in another thread (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=9533) we are currently debating the appropriatness, and value of search engine regulation. Despite my arguments in the other thread, I have to admit, that protection of children is certainly a valid arguement for regulation. Well, in a sense.

Regulation is really not the right word, as all they are really asking for is information they can use to protect children.

Do they have a legal right to it? Don't know the laws well enough, but I doubt they do. Which means, that laws would need to be changed. I think (enphasis on think) that Google is within their rights to refuse for the time being.

On the flip side, I think that while they are within their rights, this is probably one thing that they should comply with. Anything we can do to protect children from the scum that gets put on sites, and protect them from the scum who use children on sites, is a positive thing. I would support a change of laws in the case, (if it is needed) to force G to comply.

What is it, exactly, that you think they "really want"?

What they really want is to dictate what results people see on Google!

Cut and paste this into your favorite search engine!

Nixon Nazi

If they can get federal agents inside of Google and control freedom within the search index as far as what pages they can show, then we are doomed and the government can censor what we are allowed to see!

That's what they really want, the Bush administration is famous for hiding information and Google and Yahoo are the enemy of this strategy!

Did Cheney ever release the secret "Energy Task force" data, no!

Why do they hate free flow of information?

Because they have a lot to hide going back to Nixon and hate freedom of the press and freedom of information!

Rumsfeld and Cheney both served and got their start under Nixon and hate any freedoms that Americans have to expose fraud in the White House, this is "what they are after".

This is not a war on porno, this is not a war on terror, it is a war on the rights of Americans to watch Bush and Cheney and Google is the enemy of this administration!

We should all support Google here and write our lawmakers demanding an investigation of the Bush administration!

vayapues

01-19-2006, 12:05 PM

This post was not appropriate, so I am editing it. Too emotionally charged. Sorry about that.

vayapues

01-19-2006, 12:08 PM

Moving to the padded room. Edited, because it is getting way off topic.

Chris Boggs

01-19-2006, 12:21 PM

Hello everyone before we start bashing republicans and democrats in here lets keep this on keel and discuss the specific matter at hand.

In my opinion the US Govt has a right to this information, but that it is presented to them by research performed by Google or the specific search engines themselves, who would "promise" to get it right, and be paid for the information just as any other government contractor. I feel that people who search for child porn (***added*** and the number of porn results that show up for seemingly innocuous searches) should be counted as a percentage of the whole, but that the sample number should be closer to 50-100 million searches or more. If this can help create more protection for my child and others, I am 100% for it. But I am worried as Danny states in his blog that this could lead to more data being asked for as well as more data being mined from the sample than just child porn behavior.

AnthonyCea

01-19-2006, 12:27 PM

Uh huh, You know what else I heard. The Rockafellers and Free Masons are trying to coop search engines in partnership with the United Nations, in an effort to make it so that we only find positive stuff about the new world order. That way, they can ultimatly bring down the USA government, and impose International law.

Just look up New World Order in your favorite search engine.

See, there is one from the right that is just as extreme, and just as unlikely. Ah, but it does show up in the searches, and there are a lot of folks who feel strongly about it.

So you have not heard about the problem with Bush spying on Americans?

I guess you need to watch the news a bit more!

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bush+defends+domestic+spying&btnG=Google+Search

This issue has a lot to do with our freedoms and Google is defending US and WE should get behind GOOGLE RIGHT NOW on this major issue!

vayapues

01-19-2006, 12:32 PM

Anthony,

I will respond, but not in this thread. Lets talk in the padded room. I will post a thread in there. It is not fair to do it here, cause we are draggin this discussion off course for everyone else.

ok, I take it back. I just read the guidlines for the padded room. Sorry mate political discussions not allowed.

AnthonyCea

01-19-2006, 12:38 PM

You just went and ruined the thread by censorship, I am not interested in your debate, we are on topic, I refuse to let you ruin the subject matter!

Your posts were fine, so if you wish to ruin the thread that is your business!

learner

01-19-2006, 12:38 PM

I am surprised now that this is happening in the States, it has become big news.

So far Google, Yahoo and MS have all provided data to the government in China (and perhaps elsewhere) and that was just business as usual (for the three of them, at least - we know one person ended up in jail but hey, it wasn't our ass).

Why not continue being pragmatic and say "Who cares, let them get all the queries mapped to IP addresses - I'm not a pedophile"?
Or is it "It's okay in X, they aren't used to democracy, but here in Y we need privacy and protection because ..."?

We don't want our dot-com portfolio to crash, we aren't too concerned about the rights of others, but we don't like when bad things we condone return to hunt us. You can't have it all. What goes around, comes around.

Happy searching!

vayapues

01-19-2006, 12:49 PM

I am surprised now that this is happening in the States, it has become big news.

I don't think it is so much that it is happening in the states as it is, that it is Bush Vs. Google.

Anything Bush does makes news, and anything Google does makes news. The two together, and well, you get a lot of coverage.

BradBristol

01-19-2006, 12:51 PM

In my opinion, Google did the right thing!

The other SE's that caved in to these draconian demands should be ashamed of and in the process of firing their management...

Hmmm... the same guy that says he never heard of Bush/NSA spying scandal, talks about Fox News and free flowing information (very hard to put those two vastly different things in the same sentence, 'fox news' and 'free flowing information')... Well if he is watching Fox News that explains why he is not 'up' on the current news events.

In case you haven't figured it out, fox news is more one sided in it news coverage than Al Jazeera.

(BTW - Al Jazzera took its programming format directly from fox news... Same format different message)

vayapues

01-19-2006, 12:51 PM

I am curious how one stops pedifilia online? If not this way, then how?

Perhaps if a better solution could be thunk up (Bushisim) then we could all be happy. Unless someone comes up with a better idea though, this is what we are stuck with.

Unless you don't think pedifilia is worth fighting.

BradBristol

01-19-2006, 12:55 PM

Better idea... how about parents watch and supervise what their kids do online.

Why is it that lazy parents always want everyone to raise their kids for them?

vayapues

01-19-2006, 01:00 PM

In case you haven't figured it out, fox news is more one sided in it news coverage than Al Jazeera.

You will get absolutly no arguement from me there. That is really the point isn't it? Fox News is bias, and as a result of free flow of information, they have a microphone to say whatever they want.

This is my point when I say that "no one has benefited more from the free flow of information then the republican party."

I am not arguing that FoxNews is a freeflow of information. Rather that they are a bias one-sided part of that free flow, which has by in large benefited the conservative movement.

here is a simple test. Google the word Democrat. You get around 36 million results. Now google Republican. You get 75 million results. Clearly whether good or bad, right or wrong, freeflow of information is more beneficial to the republican party.

vayapues

01-19-2006, 01:04 PM

Better idea... how about parents watch and supervise what their kids do online.

Why is it that lazy parents always want everyone to raise their kids for them?

Amen!! Many of these problems would be completly eliminated if parents kept the computer out of bedrooms, and only let their kids surf when they can watch them.

Of course, this would not solve the accidental whitehouse.com kinda thing, but it would solve a lot.

We still don't address actually capturing and punishing pedifiliers though. I don't think they are after search results of children who are viewing Porn, they are looking for pedifielers who are searching for children porn, or children victims.

Better parenting, while being the most critical element, does not do anything towards the real issue of catching the criminals.

BradBristol

01-19-2006, 01:06 PM

here is a simple test Your test means nothing.

Words - the words "Democrat" and "Republican" appear on both political parties websites, not to mention the 'other' political parties websites... they even appear here...

vayapues

01-19-2006, 01:15 PM

the words "Democrat" and "Republican" appear on both political parties websites, not to mention the 'other' political parties websites... they even appear here...

Yes, exactly, it means that people say the word Republican twice as much as the word Democrat, well, probably not in real life, but clearly online they do.

This means that in the eyes of Google's Algos, Republican is a more important term then Democrat. This will effect what news feeds are pulled to the top, what search terms rise to the top, and on and on.

dannysullivan

01-19-2006, 01:17 PM

OK, I'm going to do a series of replies. Let me start with the political discussions. Some of that's going to be unavoidable. We're talking about a move made by the current US administration. Be polite to each other and ensure your comments are on target to the discussion, and things should be fine, OK?

AnthonyCea

01-19-2006, 01:17 PM

So what, Shakira has more results than a lot of other singers because she is searched on more than other performers!

Like he said your theory means nothing!

BradBristol

01-19-2006, 01:21 PM

This means that in the eyes of Google's Algos, Republican is a more important term then Democrat. Bullpucky - I think your understanding of how search algos work... needs to be worked on.

AnthonyCea

01-19-2006, 01:26 PM

Pat Robertson told the 700 club to use Google to find out where the Republican grass roots meetings are and it caused Google to add more to the index :D :p

vayapues

01-19-2006, 01:29 PM

So what, Shakira has more results than a lot of other singers because she is searched on more than other performers!

Like he said your theory means nothing!

Not sure I understand that, please clarify. Sorry, I can be a bit thick headed.

Let me explain what I mean, perhaps I can be a bit clearer in what I am trying to express.

Let's use something completly unrelated to politics, that way we can look at it without so much emotion.

Lets suppose that there are two major types of eggs in the world. White eggs and brown eggs. As a newbie to egg eating, I am wanting to do some research about eggs on Google.

Now, lets suppose that there are 36 million indexed pages which talk about white eggs, and 75 million indexed pages that talk about brown eggs. As a newbie, I have no idea that there are white, or brown, or anything else, all I know is that there are eggs.

In my research, what I am going to come across more often? Brown eggs, clearly. ok, now, what is going to be at the top of searches, probably more articles will rise to the top that discuss brown eggs, because the word "Brown" is more closely associated with the word "Egg", then is the word "White". So not only are there more articles about brown eggs, but more of those articles will be at the top of listings.

Now I decide to see what the news feeds are saying about eggs. Again, brown egg news stories will come up more often then white egg news stories, because the algos see them as more "important".

In the end, it really does not matter that 90 percent of the articles about brown eggs might be from people who don't like them, it only matters that they are mentioned more often.

AnthonyCea

01-19-2006, 01:32 PM

Here is what it means, it means Led Zeppelin has more results than the Monkies because they are much more popular and more searches are made on that term!

So Google has a larger database of results because it's users search for Led Zeppelin a hell of a lot more!

It is very simple logic, you have more inventory for faster selling items!

PS: Now we need to get back on topic, OK!

BradBristol

01-19-2006, 01:35 PM

Simply not correct.

vayapues

01-19-2006, 01:36 PM

Pat Robertson told the 700 club to use Google to find out where the Republican grass roots meetings are and it caused Google to add more to the index

If one man could increase google's index by tens of millions then he must have an awful lot of influence.

I am not saying that Repubs are right, and Demos are wrong, or that one is good, and the other bad.

Back to the origina point, I am arguing that the Bush Admin has far more to loose by interfering with Google, then do the dems.

AnthonyCea

01-19-2006, 01:38 PM

I guess you really don't understand the background of this administration wanting to control information and their lust for complete Presidential power over the direction of this nation!

vayapues

01-19-2006, 01:39 PM

PS: Now we need to get back on topic, OK!

lol. Agreed. Good discussion. I can tell you are someone I would like.

dannysullivan

01-19-2006, 01:41 PM

I have not seen any spying on American's stories in the news. Only stories about spying on known terrorists, but I digress.
I think the story being referred to is the news that the Bush Administration did wiretapping on domestic calls that many think may be unconstitutional. This is because, to my understanding, this monitoring was being done without proper warrants. Thousands of people may have been monitored even though they may have had dubious ties to terrorists.

This (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html?ei=5090&en=e32072d786623ac1&ex=1292389200&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print) is the New York Times story that kicked it off. I'm not trying to debate what Bush may or may not have done, whether it was legal or not. That's something the US Congress itself is about (http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113753396533348864-7gRm5KiImxptPw0kvWcloD_oQ4I_20070117.html?mod=tff_ main_tff_top) to do.

I think it's relevant to today's search news because of the widesweeping nature of what was done with the search engines. Give us a week's worth of search, they were told -- data that actually isn't that useful if you aren't accounting for automated requests and other skewing factors. Far better for the government to say "we're trying to assess the situation with porn on the web and minors, can you work with us on a study." And a request for a million random web sites? They need to issue subpoenas for that? Heck, you can get that data in any number of ways.

So yeah, wideranging demands especially in the wake of what seems like wideranging wiretapping? Some degree of paranoia makes sense. Certainly some degree of close examination is in order. I don't care if you are a Republican or a Democrat or an Independent or whatever. As an American, I don't expect my government to go on fishing expeditions. If they feel they need information, they should have a good reason to demand that. There was no good reason to take the legal route here.

I have to stress that they didn't request any personal information, as I said in my story. A list of a week's worth of search terms? Heck, Infospace sells that to WordTracker and has done so for ages. No one freaked out it was a privacy invasion. That's because raw search queries without being associated with IP addresses and other data don't reveal anything about those doing the searching. But that's the case this time. What's to prevent the administration for demanding all search data, with privacy information, and saying it's required to fight terrorism?

Some might say, why not? Shouldn't they do all they can to fight crime? Sure, with a warrant, with requests limited to the essential information they need about particular individuals who are suspected of something, in my book. Otherwise, you might as well install cameras to follow us all around wherever we go. That is not what I was brought up as an American to believe my government should be doing. Act with cause; don't act to be a Big Brother.

Moreover, the search data isn't that useful. Geez. I do porn searches sometimes because I want to measure the length of titles in search results. Porn pages always have HTML title tags that go longer than what will be displayed. I've done porn searches when I worked on the Terri Welles case against Playboy. When I met with a group about child porn and search engines in the UK, I went back and used some of the code words they gave me that child porn users try to see if the search engines were indeed showing anything. Am I a child porn viewer? No -- but you could see that a widenet could make you think I might be.

You want to find people viewing child porn? Target the sites that are out there delivering it, look at the records of those sites. This stuff has been done and successfully already. Hitting search engines with a big net won't provide that. It will just give you too much data and a lot of false matches.

Same thing with terrorists. Anyone looking for "how to build an a-bomb" must be a terrorist? Not at all. Nor are the really scary terrorists, the smart ones you'd want to fear, likely to be searching from a known broadband connection on Google.

vayapues

01-19-2006, 01:45 PM

I guess you really don't understand the background of this administration wanting to control information and their lust for complete Presidential power over the direction of this nation!

Hold on, that is not the topic of discussion.
We are talking about Google's refuseing to give info to the administration. Which is perfectly in their rights.

From the bill of rights thread (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?threadid=9700)
goodroi said
I thought this was why there is a privacy policy on websites. I understand that if I visit a website I am voluntarily sharing certain information with that website. However unless I explicitly allow it that information should never be shared with anyone else regardless if it is a business or government entity. If the governement needs the information they should go through the proper legal process and seek a warrant for it.

I wonder if telephone companies also regularly share their information with the goverment.

Great point. I think there is no harm in asking prior to resorting to a warrant, and if the SE says no, then should a warrant be sought?

dannysullivan

01-19-2006, 02:14 PM

Despite my arguments in the other thread, I have to admit, that protection of children is certainly a valid arguement for regulation. Well, in a sense.
Sure, I think you are going to find relatively few people who are going to argue that:

1) Children shouldn't be shielded from porn (which is what this is about)

2) Child porn should be stamped out (which wasn't what this case is about)

Better idea... how about parents watch and supervise what their kids do online.
That's good, but it's not a complete solution. First of all, as a parent, you shouldn't have to be sitting behind your 10 year old as they do reseach for homework on the web, to ensure they don't surf into a nasty place accidentally. Yes, you should educate them on how to protect themselves. Certainly I think you should install tools that will help them. But this isn't to me about keeping your 16 year old from seeing naked pictures on the web. It's more for the younger children who despite being young are still going to want some independence.

Aside from that, porn can sneak up on kids in other ways. This (http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/2166351) is about when Lycos launched one of the first search engine porn filters in 1998. I wrote:

A few months ago, I got a message from a teacher desperate to find some kid-friendly search services. She had done a search on a seemingly innocent topic in front of her classroom, only to have sites pitching pornography appear in the top results. She was anxious to avoid a repeat performance.

There's good news for her, along with other educators and parents who want search results appropriate for children. Three new services offer children a safer way to search the web.
So there are good reason to have porn filters.

But that's not what this case is about. This is about the Bush administration wanting a law to punish those who allow minors to see porn on their web sites. That law was struck down. To prove that it is needed, the government wants to show how much porn is accessible through search results to children.

Well, we know porn is still being sought. Sex Is Still A Top Search Term (http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050621-135706) is a recent blog entry that covers that. No need to subpoena for that tidbit. But how much of that searching is done by minors, who in turn actually reach web sites with porn? A week's worth of search queries is going to tell you nada about that. You need a proper study.

So go flippin study it. Go watch what some kids are actually doing, talk with some teachers, measure the size of the problem. But keep in mind, the government is NOT trying to regulate search engine access to this. They just want to grab some figure to back up claims that they need this law to shut down some porn sites that are accessible to minors.

Rather than do the study (unless this hasn't been reported), they seem happy to go down the raw count route. Fox News & Danger Of Citing Search Counts (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=299) here in the forums shows what a waste of time that is, due to inaccuracies. An expert witness that knows search would eat the government case alive.

FYI, back to the idea of child filters on search engines, the US government has tested this, as Government Report Says MSN Search Adult Filter Most Effective (http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050628-124458) covers. Note that to do this, they said:

We performed unfiltered 5-minute searches for six keywords: three keywords known to be associated with pornography and three innocuous terms that juveniles would likely use (a popular teenage singer/actress, a popular cartoon, and a popular movie character).
They managed to do this assessment (the US Government Accounting Office) without issuing a subpoena to anyone. Moreover, it has stats they say they want already produced and ready to go. Page 48 and 67 have details. The caveat is that this seems to have been a test of image search results (Yahoo was 92 percent non porn, MSN 76 percent, Google 64%). But you could do the same thing to measure web search.

Finally, if we're talking child porn, search engines are already reporting sites they know about, if they get reports. Google Removes Child Porn Post & Reports To FBI (http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050405-194137) covers that more.

shorebreak

01-19-2006, 02:52 PM

IMO, Google management and those who support their stance vis-a-vis the Bush administration request are showing *classic left-wing hypocrisy* as well as a *profound disrespect for the country* whose laws and freedoms have allowed them to exist in the first place.

1) Hypocrisy - were Google to put at risk the success of its Chinese operations for the sake of the principle of freedom of speech and individual rights, then while I still wouldn't agree with their stance on the Administration's request, I would certainly respect them for having principles they're willing to stand by. Regardless of my own opinion on the Patriot act and the correct balance of U.S. citizen rights vs. need to fight everything from pedophilia to terrorism, I do understand that there are different opinions. That said, however, Google has shown itself hypocritical in this instance. Why? Because at the same time they are willing to rebuff the Bush administration's request to access search data to ferret out pedophilia, they gave in to Chinese govt demands to censure their SERPs. That, my friends, is hypocrisy with a capital 'H'.

2) Profound disrespect for the United States - it's worth pointing out that over 99% of the world's SERPs are being served, ultimately, by U.S.-based search engines, and there are reasons for that. In this blessed country we are free to pursue crazy business ideas, we are free to access any information we want to access, and we are free to do so within the best set of intellectual property protection laws the world has ever seen. Just as importantly, we are free to pursue grand business schemes such as 'organizing the world's information' because our laissez-faire financial system allows investment dollars to freely flow to bright minds and ideas with no concern for history, tenure, age, ethnicity, sexual preference or political persuasion; in a word, we live in the truest meritocracy ever conceived.

Our liberal meritocracy, whose individual rights form the basis for the social contract, however, only exists because Americans have been willing to die for it. From the war of independence to WWII, Vietnam and now Iraq, our fathers, sons, brothers, mothers, sisters and daughters have rightly understood the American ideal of liberty as worth defending at all costs. For very good reasons as well, our social contract has been strong and beneficial enough over these last 230 years to facilitate acknowledgement en masse of periodic (albeit temporary) needs for federal gov't to suspect some individual rights in order to further the common good. Examples:

1. Military drafts - WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam wars all necessitated military drafts. Whether or not all Americans agreed with all wars is immaterial. The majority, however, do agree on one thing - we have an elected gov't who we empower to make decisions in times of war, decisions which public opinion must necessarily *not* be factored into.

2. Internment of Japanese citizens & nationals - it's easy in retrospect to say that 99.99% (perhaps even 100%) of interred Japanese were as loyal as the rest of America, but the perceived threat to America after Pearl Harbor was such that most Americans gladly supported internment.

3. Wiretapping - a federal anti-crime tactic nearly since the days of Alexander Graham Bell, wiretapping is the phone analog to Bush's request for search data, and it has been universally accepted by the vast majority of law-abiding Americans.

With these historical precedents in mind, I find Google profoundly disrespectful of their obligations to participate in the social contract developed here in the U.S. over the last 230 years and defended with millions of lives, *especially* in the context of one arena where Republicans and Democrats would appear to agree - that pedophilia is abhorrent and a crime nearly as horrible as murder.

Argue with Bush's policy's if you will, but bring more to the table in defending Google's actions than distate for the man personally and disagreement with his foreign policy.

-Shorebreak

AnthonyCea

01-19-2006, 03:04 PM

This issue is a smokescreen, we all know it, the Bush administration is an enemy of Google, Google is fighting for the people on this issue by not giving into the CIA and NSA!

Google is a private company, not part of the government and they sure have the right to defend the privacy of the search records and the queries and IP addresses of their users!

This is not Russia, Bush would like to be able to get away with the things that Putin does, maybe we should allow him to jail Larry and Sergey like Putin did with the Oil Billionaire that was going to run against him!

I am sure you would like that all in the name of National Security, now you bring something to the table beside Republican propaganda!

BradBristol

01-19-2006, 03:09 PM

I think we all agree that child porn is a very very bad thing, it is illegal and it should be reported and those involved should receive the harshest possible punishment.

But lets face facts, there are sick people on the www and we can’t filter all the sleeze and scum out of the search results, yet. Bearing these ‘facts’ in mind, in my humble opinion, a young child should no more be allowed unsupervised on the www than be allowed into a local strip club or house of ill repute. But IMO this is a subject that deserves its own thread.

Trying to get back on subject;

I think the majority of us would agree that, like Danny pointed out, there are other, more accurate ways to gather the information that the government wanted without asking for a weeks worth of search queries.

And Like Danny pointed out, just a list of search queries without any other information attached is for the most part harmless.

I think what offends me most is just the fact the government asked for this data in the first place.

In light of the current revelations on government spying, I guess my questions are; Where is this going to stop? How long before the government requires us all to provide copies of our server logs?

dannysullivan

01-19-2006, 04:03 PM

Because at the same time they are willing to rebuff the Bush administration's request to access search data to ferret out pedophilia, they gave in to Chinese govt demands to censure their SERPs. That, my friends, is hypocrisy with a capital 'H'.
They don't actually censor web search results in China. Yahoo does. MSN does, to my knowledge. Google does not. They do censor search results in other countries in accordance to other laws, such as Nazi sites removed in France and Germany or DMCA requests in the US.

I think you have to look at each case. The difficulty in saying they shouldn't follow Chinese laws but should follow US laws, I agree, that can be hypocrisy. If they operate in China, and China says take something down because it violates our laws, you do so because you obey the laws of the country you operate in. Alternatively, if you disagree with those laws, don't operate in that country or fight them to show why they are unjust and shouldn't be upheld.

In this case, Google fighting not a law but a request they feel has no legal right. Perhaps we'll see them do the same in other countries. Perhaps they have already, and that's not come to light.

Back to China, the only thing they've done censorshipwise was to not carry some sites in Google News China (rather than web search). They say it wasn't because they were ordered to but because China itself blocks these sites, so they aren't useful to carry for the user, since the user can't click through.

My feeling is it is effectively caving to censorship. But let's say they are following the law. So why follow it there and not in the US? I'm not saying that. In China, follow the law and drop sites if you're ordered, but I wish they'd put up a notice when doing so as they do with the DMCA in the US. In the US, follow the law or fight it, if you think the law is incorrect. That's just how our legal system gets shaped.

Profound disrespect for the United States
I don't find it disrespectful at all to question my government's actions, especially when they are -- well -- questionable. They are in this case, to me. They've asked for data they don't need, could get other ways and won't help them do what they say they need to do.

we have an elected gov't who we empower to make decisions in times of war, decisions which public opinion must necessarily *not* be factored into
This isn't war time thing. And just because we have an elected government, that elected government forms only two parts of our three part system of checks and balances. Right now, the third part of our government, the judicial branch, is being asked to decide if what the executive branch is doing is fair. That's how our government works. Nor does the executive branch get to trump the judicial branch. They are coequal.

I find Google profoundly disrespectful of their obligations to participate in the social contract developed here in the U.S. over the last 230 years
I find them completely respectful, and I don't think you can measure their actions with one case as damning in this way for everything. For all you know, they have complied with local, state and federal requests for information that have been properly served and court ordered. In this case, they are saying to the court that the request shouldn't be honored. The courts may very well find that this is the case. If so, it is mindboggling how a company doing what a US court agrees with could be considered disrespectful. It not even fair to say they are disrespectful in asking a court to rule. That is the exact reason we have courts. The founders of the US had very good reasons for setting them up. It is part and parcel of our heritage, the right to appeal laws to a court.

andrewgoodman

01-19-2006, 07:04 PM

With these historical precedents in mind, I find Google profoundly disrespectful of their obligations to participate in the social contract developed here in the U.S. over the last 230 years and defended with millions of lives, *especially* in the context of one arena where Republicans and Democrats would appear to agree - that pedophilia is abhorrent and a crime nearly as horrible as murder.

Argue with Bush's policy's if you will, but bring more to the table in defending Google's actions than distate for the man personally and disagreement with his foreign policy.

-Shorebreak

Of course pedophilia is abhorrent.

But extreme conservatives seem to think that ferreting out bad people is a justification for complete disregard of civil rights.

It's a slippery slope from gathering information about people's surfing habits to trumping up charges and using private data to hurt political enemies, people one disagrees with, people one finds creepy, etc.

In this society, you're allowed to be creepy as long as you don't hurt anyone. Let's not forget that. Live and let live.

bragadocchio

01-19-2006, 07:20 PM

In this case, they are saying to the court that the request shouldn't be honored. The courts may very well find that this is the case. If so, it is mindboggling how a company doing what a US court agrees with could be considered disrespectful. It not even fair to say they are disrespectful in asking a court to rule. That is the exact reason we have courts. The founders of the US had very good reasons for setting them up. It is part and parcel of our heritage, the right to appeal laws to a court.
Exactly, Danny.

Just as the Government can ask for the information, under the Federal Rules of Procedure, Google (and other search engines) have the right to file a motion to quash a subpoena.

From the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 45.Subpoena (http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/Rule45.htm)

(c) Protection of Persons Subject to Subpoenas.

(3) (A) On timely motion, the court by which a subpoena was issued shall quash or modify the subpoena if it

(iii) requires disclosure of privileged or other protected matter and no exception or waiver applies, or

(B) If a subpoena

(i) requires disclosure of a trade secret or other confidential research, development, or commercial information, or

(ii) requires disclosure of an unretained expert's opinion or information not describing specific events or occurrences in dispute and resulting from the expert's study made not at the request of any party, or

There do seem to be better ways to find this information, as Danny has described very well. Regardless, the subpoena might ask for information that is personal and protected, but it definitely asks for disclosure of trade secrets, and for information that really has little to do with "specific events or occurences in dispute."

Hopefully Google will be able to quash the request before them. From the latest Bloomberg article (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=arCWSKEPoJaE&refer=top_world_news) on this controversy, it's difficult to tell whether Google filed a motion to quash, and if it was timely if they did. I haven't seen anything anywhere else as timely or detailed however.

Kal

01-19-2006, 08:50 PM

Good for Google I say! Andrew is spot on about the slippery slope. When a government can introduce civil liberty protection on one hand yet completely disregard it when it suits them, there is something seriously wrong with that government. I fear Australia is heading in the same direction.

Let them investigate individual cases where warranted, but to trawl through private records in the hope of finding a case to prosecute is scary indeed.

AnthonyCea

01-19-2006, 08:58 PM

This is simply a scare tactic to get Google to give into the Bush administration's continued spying on Americans.

It is up to the American citizens to fight the continued violation of our rights by this administration, next they will be asking Google Video what videos you are watching on television!

http://www.alternet.org/story/31008/

Maybe they want to know who goes to the DNC websites also!

I am sure they would like to know if you have ever been to the following website and have read about how this administration seeks to take your right to privacy away from you!

http://www.alternet.org/rights/30905/

Read the above article that Al Gore wrote, he knows a little about the government in this nation and how this administration functions also!

More here from the NY Times, Danny is quoted in this article!

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/20/technology/20google.html?hp&ex=1137733200&en=2452e6e9f4075968&ei=5094&partner=homepage

:eek: :eek: :eek:

fulton savage

01-20-2006, 01:08 AM

Nacho

01-20-2006, 01:46 AM

Good for Google! Companies have their rights and although I don't know the law perfectly to the letter, it sounds like the government is violating their rights to confidential information and freedom of speach.

First and foremost, the case doesn't originate with Google, so why should Google provide such data.

Secondly, handing over that data may reveal information that Google wants to remain as trade secrets.... Hey, it's their right to do what they want with their information and the law protects them from it.

Unfortunately, there will be some costs for Google to do this, but well worth the fight.

Be strong Google!

vayapues

01-20-2006, 09:18 AM

The concern for children viewing objectional content is NOT valid.

Accessing the Internet isn't free, meaning someone has to subscribe to the service in order for it to be accessed. I doubt many children are granted subscriptions by ISPs, so that means someone else is permitting the child to use the service.

With computer passwords, browser controls, and software blockers there is no reason that a child should have free reign online if such actions aren't desired.

If the US government is worried for the children they should focus on the root of the problem--which is not the accessbility of content, but accessibility to the Internet as a result of poor responsibility.

Actually, it is free. Any public library, the entire downtown area of the city I live in has free wifi, the downtown area of the neighboring city has free wifi, or just walk into any neighborhood, and it won't take long to find an unsecured wifi connection.

Granted a wifi connection requires a device, but these devices are more and more common. I see kids walking around with palms all the time. As far as libraries go, well, at least in my city, there is no protection what-so-ever. They actually fight putting filters on their Internet access, saying that porn is an art-form(Give me a break), and protected under the first amendment.

Incidentally, the issue is much more complex then simply passing a law that punishes those who provide porn access to minors. What about search engines themselves, who provide porn, simply by virtue of the fact that they provide searchable indexed content, such as google images?

I wonder if this has anything to do with their refusal to comply, because of concern that they themselves might be in violation of the laws the administration is pursuing?

vayapues

01-20-2006, 09:23 AM

it sounds like the government is violating their rights to confidential information and freedom of speach.

Difficult to argue a violation of law. is there a violation of law, or even ethics, to request something of someone else. A violation might be easier to argue if they forced G to hand it over, ie. via physical force. But to follow legal channels you think that is a violation?

I am sure that the Bush Admin fully expected Google to simply hand over the information, and was completly taken off guard when they didn't.

vayapues

01-20-2006, 09:28 AM

Incidentally, the issue is much more complex then simply passing a law that punishes those who provide porn access to minors. What about search engines themselves, who provide porn, simply by virtue of the fact that they provide searchable indexed content, such as google images?

I wonder if this has anything to do with their refusal to comply, because of concern that they themselves might be in violation of the laws the administration is pursuing?

What about getty images, which many of us use to find images for our sites, and print media?

bruhaha

01-20-2006, 11:14 AM

First and foremost, the case doesn't originate with Google, so why should Google provide such data

I'd actually put this argument last. At least as stated, this seems to be the weakest argument for Google's position. (They are much better off arguing their obligation to protect the privacy of their customers, for instance.)

It is hardly unusual in a legal case to subpoena someone who has evidence relevant to the case. In fact, I would think that most subpoenas are issued to people who have evidence but are not themselves a party in the case itself.

I'm not saying that the parties to a case have some unlimited right to compel testimony from others, much less who is right in this particular dipute. But the ability to present evidence from witnesses who are not parties to a dispute, and even to compel them at times, is critical to a fair legal system.

dannysullivan

01-20-2006, 12:11 PM

Again, please keep all points directly tied to the topic of this thread.

DarkMatter

01-20-2006, 12:31 PM

Actually, it is free. Any public library, the entire downtown area of the city I live in has free wifi, the downtown area of the neighboring city has free wifi, or just walk into any neighborhood, and it won't take long to find an unsecured wifi connection.

Incidentally, the issue is much more complex then simply passing a law that punishes those who provide porn access to minors. What about search engines themselves, who provide porn, simply by virtue of the fact that they provide searchable indexed content, such as google images?
Kids manage to get their hands on a lot of things they shouldnt have, and it's ALWAYS due to an irresponsible adult. If I enjoy smoking ciggarettes, drinking beer, and watching porn...damned if you're going to tell me I can't just because some lazy parent can't be bothered to watch their kids. Google is just another way for responsible adults to get things they want, and children's viewing should be supervised just as it should for television, video games and other media.

I wonder if this has anything to do with their refusal to comply, because of concern that they themselves might be in violation of the laws the administration is pursuing?

I can't imagine what laws those would be. Porn is not illegal. If someone has illegal content on their website, such as child porn, then the website owner would be punished, not Google. I think they did this to make their users feel more secure.

Chris Boggs

01-20-2006, 12:43 PM

Thanks Danny for all the great postscripts to your initial blog post (http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060119-060352) (in case others have not read that). Postscript #5 fits me as well, and I have returned to clarify my argument. Although I am more specific in regards to the Bill of Rights subtopic in that thread (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=9700), the case being discussed here is one of Search Engine Content, not child porn in general. This mistake is an easy one to make, as Danny points out, but it is not altogether an error to assume this has something to do with the overall production of child porn. In my opinion, the ability to get such content presented for seemingly innocuous searches signals a need for greater production in that “industry.” The more space there is; the more children will eventually be hurt by these vile pedophiles, all adult porn aside.

Even though the arguments about filtering adult content if you are a parent or a school are valid, it is obviously hard to hide this content from all children all of the time. Kids will hear about certain searches or sites in school or from their friends, and will find a way to get to this adult-oriented content.

Yet to me this request signals something "not right" about the whole thing. If a government like ours wants something they usually try to get it while keeping the people "on their side." So as has been suggested, this may be a good way to have enough conservative-minded people (including fence-sitters like myself) back such a request. Once this is done though, the slippery slope begins and other data will be mined. It is not out of the question that extremists on either side of the political fence could be identified, along with people who may seek information that could be related to something judged illegal or immoral by society’s standards.

I have to repeat my argument from the other post that in this particular case, Google should be paid as a subcontractor and gather the information requested from a much larger sample than one million, forwarding only the specific data to the government. Or else, pay a current research subcontractor to do the work and move on, IMO.

I am very interested to see how this plays out.

Chris Boggs

01-20-2006, 01:14 PM

In reference to the Postscript #11, how about this search (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&rls=GGLD%2CGGLD%3A2004-32%2CGGLD%3Aen&q=sample+adult+video) which leads to 296 results before being cut off out of 18.5 Million. Looks like a lot of websites. If you search for "sample video" without "adult," then you get over 80M with the first adult site appearing on page 2.

Even politicians on the hill know these are the kinds of searches kids will probably be doing. Unless you can somehow block search terms it seems as if the government is trying to fight a wildfire with a glass of wine, because these sites aren't going anywhere any time soon unless this is China...

DarkMatter

01-20-2006, 01:26 PM

Even politicians on the hill know these are the kinds of searches kids will probably be doing. Unless you can somehow block search terms it seems as if the government is trying to fight a wildfire with a glass of wine, because these sites aren't going anywhere any time soon unless this is China...

This new "war on porn" is just pandering to the religious folks who are the power base of the administration. It will have as much practical effect as the war on drugs: none. It just makes some people feel better.

AnthonyCea

01-20-2006, 01:39 PM

The government wanted all the searches, not just those on porn, porn is the excuse to open the door and we all know that this is a major rights violation and a breaking of constitutional laws that is a troubling pattern of privacy rights being taken away from all of us by the Bush White House!

Webvisitor

01-20-2006, 01:58 PM

Danny makes a great point that the government are not search experts. The government employs few experts in newer technologies because as in the case of search what search expert would work for government pay?

MSFT, Yahoo and Time Warner complied but you have to believe this was with some degree of negotiation between their lawyers and the government lawyers.
You can bet none of the complying companies compromised their business plan.

Why not Google? No one can deny Schmidt is a Gore man and Google has an arrangement with Gore's TV project Current. Google Current is channel 366 on Directv.
I believe Google has taken more a political stand than a legal stand and I believe it will ultimately backfire on them. Wrongly in the end it will look like Google does not want to help the government track down pedophiles.

btw- Shorebreak, that was an amazing post. Made me proud to be a citizen of the U.S.A.
:)

Meanwhile Google stock is tanking. Following the "trader" banter on Yahoo Finance some are hitting Google quite hard on this issue.

fulton savage

01-20-2006, 02:10 PM

Actually, it is free.

False.

Any public library, the entire downtown area of the city I live in has free wifi

Libraries are funded by grants and taxpayers. Someone is paying for that service and allowing children to use it unrestricted.

just walk into any neighborhood, and it won't take long to find an unsecured wifi connection.

Again, security and software responsibility is lacking in this case.

What about search engines themselves, who provide porn, simply by virtue of the fact that they provide searchable indexed content, such as google images?

I wonder if this has anything to do with their refusal to comply, because of concern that they themselves might be in violation of the laws the administration is pursuing?

I can't agree. A gun provides you with the service of making a bullet travel fast, but isn't guilty of murder.

ChrisP

01-20-2006, 02:20 PM

Danny:

Good article, and I guess there's no surprise it was the lead story at the top of Google News Tech! <smile>

I thought your proposed statement was particularly strong:

AOLMSGooHoo did provide a list of URLs and search terms in response to the subpoena. We reviewed the request and determined that we could cooperate without any harm to the privacy of our users. We would have preferred not to have been given a legal summons and have serious doubts if the information will help the US government determine what it seeks. However, we felt our time was not best spent fighting on this front. Rest assured that if personal information had been at stake, we would have vigorously fought to defend the privacy of our users, to the degree the law allows.

I'm worried for my job -- you should be in tech PR!

Chris Parente

vayapues

01-20-2006, 02:23 PM

Kids manage to get their hands on a lot of things they shouldnt have, and it's ALWAYS due to an irresponsible adult. If I enjoy smoking ciggarettes, drinking beer, and watching porn...damned if you're going to tell me I can't just because some lazy parent can't be bothered to watch their kids. Google is just another way for responsible adults to get things they want, and children's viewing should be supervised just as it should for television, video games and other media.

That is a nice attitude, but the fact is, that as a society, we do in fact tell each other what we can and can't do. If you enjoy smoking weed, are you going to be damned if society tells you that you can't.

All of which, is beside the point. No one is saying you can't do any of the things you mentioned.

vayapues

01-20-2006, 02:27 PM

I said:
I wonder if this has anything to do with their refusal to comply, because of concern that they themselves might be in violation of the laws the administration is pursuing?

Darkmatter responded:
Porn is not illegal. If someone has illegal content on their website, such as child porn, then the website owner would be punished, not Google. I think they did this to make their users feel more secure.

Porn is not illegal, but showing it to children is. I wonder if in the back of their minds they are worried about google images. Anyone can search google images and find endless porn. I agree that it is probably not the main reason they said no, but I do wonder if they are thinking about it.

mcanerin

01-20-2006, 02:49 PM

A few thoughts:

1) I'd like to point out that this thread will probably show up shortly for "child porn" and that due to this controversy there will be people doing searches for things related to this discussion, making the searches in this area highly skewed. The fact that I'm looking for this thread does not mean I'm looking for kiddy porn. This is a fundamental flaw in the data collection method and assumptions, and anyone with any brains should know that.

2) on a related note, there is a good chance that a significant portion of people searching for a particular topic are actually law enforcement officials, journalists and concerned parents. This reason for the collection of this data is to attempt to identify pedos, but it's method captures the very people doing the looking.

3) on another related note, in general people are already familiar with themselves and therefore do searches on things they are less familiar with. That being the case, if the norm was (to use an earlier example) democrats, then you would expect that they would do more searches, and write more often, about republicans. Look at any democrat-oriented page, and you will see that the word "republican" comes up far more often than democrat, and vice versa.

The fact that I discuss and look for spam and spammers more often than I do white hats does not mean I'm a spammer. I don't get this thinking. Does the fact that cops are obsessed with looking for crime mean they are criminals?

4) there is no indication that I can see of the limits of this search. If it's aggregate, non-personally identifiable data then I don't see what the issue is - it's little different from someone doing a Wordtracker search. If we are talking about the searches combined with the time date and IP, etc, that's more of an issue.

5) to reiterate, you can't draw a conclusion based on searches, other than interest. Someone looking for "terrorist" isn't necessarily a terrorist. Maybe they are doing research on 9/11, maybe they are military or police doing their jobs, maybe they are a friend or family member of someone captured, maybe they are planning a trip.

6) At what point is, for example, a teenage boy who is interested in a teenage girl a pedo? Frankly, that's more likely to be age-appropriate behaviour than a 50-year old man looking for a 20 year old, no? This method of date collection assumes there are no teens on the net, or that if there are, they don't search for things that interest them. I question that assumption...

No one ever takes away the freedoms of others by telling people they are doing it just for fun, or because they like being evil.

They do it with some sort of justification, and the justification is always noble and wonderful, like protecting kids, protecting society, hunting terrorists, fighting crime, hunting down undesirables like democrats or communists, etc.

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster."
— Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher (1844-1900)

I don't accept the fact that because I think this method of data collection is flawed that I support child abuse or whatever. These are totally different issues. I can oppose the Spanish Inquisition without it meaning I oppose religion, for example. It's a straw man argument.

If you want to get rid of people doing this, then set up a sting or something - that way you know who is really interested child porn, and who is just trying to protect their kids.

As a final thought, this issue is a really clear reason why I think the age of all the major search engines being based in the US is likely to come to a close sooner than later.

Regardless of the reality, if the public perception is that US search engines are now data collection tools for the CIA and FBI, then that perception, real or not, will destroy them, IMO.

My opinion,

Ian

vayapues

01-20-2006, 02:54 PM

Libraries are funded by grants and taxpayers. Someone is paying for that service and allowing children to use it unrestricted.

Yes they are. But to the end user, they are free. A child (who may be as old as 17, drive a car, and have easy access to libraries) does not have to pay for the service. Thus, to them, it is free, and for them there is no responsible adult supervision. The issue has been taken out of the hands of responsible parenting.

Are your or my children going to do that? Probably not. But curiosity is a powerful emotion. Even children who have so-called responsible parents, who have talked to them, and who monitor them closely, can do nothing to prevent a child who is determined to find there way to the filth that is on some of these sites.

Lets not skirt around the edges of the topic. Porn is addictive, it is ugly, it often leads to acts of violence.(I am not saying always, or even usually, but just often)

mcanerin

01-20-2006, 02:59 PM

Porn is addictive, it is ugly, it often leads to acts of violence

Same with religion and politics.

For that matter, almost anything that people can get obsessed about can bring out the worst in them.

Some people actually get obsessed about other people obsessions....

Ian

vayapues

01-20-2006, 03:08 PM

No one ever takes away the freedoms of others by telling people they are doing it just for fun, or because they like being evil.

They do it with some sort of justification, and the justification is always noble and wonderful, like protecting kids, protecting society, hunting terrorists, fighting crime, hunting down undesirables like democrats or communists, etc.
Ian, I always enjoy your posts. You always have great points.

Yes, this point I quoted from you is very true. But this is not the case in this instance. What freedoms are being eroded. Where is the slippery slope? I don't see it. Children and porn do not mix in any legal circumstances. This has never been a freedom. Lawyers have always had the right to sopena (ya, I know I can't spell), companies have always had the right to fight them. I see no new ground being broken.

As a final thought, this issue is a really clear reason why I think the age of all the major search engines being based in the US is likely to come to a close sooner than later.

Regardless of the reality, if the public perception is that US search engines are now data collection tools for the CIA and FBI, then that perception, real or not, will destroy them, IMO.

This is an excellent point. All though, I don't think the end user often considers anything other then finding results quickly. But it certainly could effect things. I can understand Google's hesitations, for this reason.

However, I think that you have to have a back-bone. Sometimes you do what's right iregardless.

vayapues

01-20-2006, 03:14 PM

Same with religion and politics.

For that matter, almost anything that people can get obsessed about can bring out the worst in them.

Some people actually get obsessed about other people obsessions....

Ian

Certainly true. But the cases of people in society today, where we all live and function, who are raised being exposed to religion and politics ending up as violent criminals, vrs the cases of people who are exposed to porn ending up as violent criminals is vastly different.

Yes, there are millions of zealots, blah blah blah, but we are talking about our society, which is after all who the Bush Admin is trying to protect.

DarkMatter

01-20-2006, 03:23 PM

dannysullivan

01-20-2006, 04:06 PM

Just to keep things in line, the debate isn't really about porn being good or bad. The issue is the government wanting information from the search engines.

In this case, they want data to try and prove how likely it is that children might encounter porn through web searches. They want that so they can then convince the Supreme Court that filtering software alone isn't a solution.

You can debate that good and bad of that law, porn in general, porn and children, but I'd rather you keep it as close to the issue of what's been asked for and the facts of this case, or how this case might (or might not) lead to other requests, or cases you think infomation should or shouldn't be given up. Those are all search related issues. Debating porn in general is not, and it just starts the thread spinning out of control.

vayapues

01-20-2006, 04:10 PM

Responsible parenting doesn't end until the parent makes a choice to end it. If I'm sending my child to the library where they can access the internet, there's plenty I can do to curtail their viewing of porn. I can accompany the child to the library or I can talk to them and tell them that they should not view this material.

Dead on!! That is Exactly my point! If you are sending your child to the library, then you have the ability to control them.

If on the other hand your child is 16, and drives them self, or rides with a friend, or heck, uses a friends palm, the choice is gone.

So, as a parent, who is not choosing to stop parenting, what do you do? The only thing you can do. Snuff it out at the source. IE, exactly what Bush is doing.
we have to admit that the majority of men in the US (if not the world) view porn on a regular basis
That is simply a ridiculous assumption. Perhaps the majority of men you know view porn, the majority I know certainly do not, nor do a majority of men in the USA, or in the world.

we don't need to pretend that it's making people violent. That is just nonsense.

There are numerous studies that back up the trend of violent criminals getting their start by simply viewing porn, getting addicted to it, seeking more and more blatant forms of it, until a crime has been committed. No, not studies funded by Dr. James Dobson. Studies done by Major universities, etc.

mcanerin

01-20-2006, 04:32 PM

In this case, they want data to try and prove how likely it is that children might encounter porn through web searches. They want that so they can then convince the Supreme Court that filtering software alone isn't a solution.

In that case, I'm missing something. I don't see a coorelation between searches for something and the likelihood of it showing up, or even existing, for that matter.

The fact that the SETI project is spending a lot of time looking for aliens doesn't mean there are any to find. It also doesn't mean there aren't. It's completely unrelated. A search is a different thing from a result.

What I'm concerned about is that the wrong information is being collected. There are lots of porn sites. There are lots of porn searches. And?

The missing link here is whether or not any of those searches were by kids, and if so, which ones and how many? I don't recall being asked my age the last time I did a search.

Let's Venn diagram this.

The logic appears to be: "There are lots of searches for porn. There are lots of kids doing searches on the internet. Therefore there must be lots of kids searching for porn"

The problem with this "logic" is that the coorrelation between kids and porn searches is not being made. The assumption is that every searcher searches for everything that people search for, and that's nonsense.

I would suggest to you that if you found that, say 22% of all searches were for porn, then assuming that I sent 22% of my time searching for porn is not a logical leap. I've NEVER done a search for Britney Spears, but according to this logic I apparently spend a good potion of my online time doing so!?

Now, if Google was collecting data on the age, gender, political affiliation and so forth of their searchers and corellating that with this data, then the data would be useful (troubling, but useful). But right now it's useless.

I note with some dismay that Yahoo and MSN (how did comply) DO collect demographic data on searchers, so that information may actually be useful, depending on the demographics. But searches themselves are not.

My question would be - what other data was sent? Was demographic data send along with the searches? If so, it's more likely to be useful (but it's very troubling) and if not, then the data is useless.

Unless I'm missing something here, pure search data's only purpose would be to apply flawed information to create an unrealistic picture intended to justify a pre-determined action, IMO.

Ian

DarkMatter

01-20-2006, 04:34 PM

So, as a parent, who is not choosing to stop parenting, what do you do? The only thing you can do. Snuff it out at the source. IE, exactly what Bush is doing.

With respect to keeping the thread on target, I'm going to forego replying to the bulk of your last post and just reply to this one statement.

It is my view that it is wrong to stop adults from viewing legal material in the privacy of their own home (whether they got it from the internet, magazines, or cable tv) because some parents cannot stop their kids from viewing it. If we are to take this content off the net (a ridiculous idea since porn is the main business of the internet), then why would we not remove it form cable tv or magazines...because kids might find those too. So we end up with a world that has no entertainment above the G rating. :(

We don't have to turn the world into Romper Room to make our kids safe.

Incidentally, I don't think this has anything to do with why Google refused to give this data. I think they did it because their users, who have been proven to be more internet savvy and educated than the average user, might not approve of the move because of privacy issues.

Personally, I don't have a problem with the government requesting the info or with google giving it so long as theres no personal data involved. I would, however, take issue with the idea of banning search engines from indexing porn.

vayapues

01-20-2006, 05:10 PM

Incidentally, I don't think this has anything to do with why Google refused to give this data. I think they did it because their users, who have been proven to be more internet savvy and educated than the average user, might not approve of the move because of privacy issues.

Agreed. But it does go back to why Bush's people did what they did.

Swigeon

01-20-2006, 05:21 PM

Good essay Danny, however I would have gave Yahoo a -5 instead of a 5. I say this because of their recent history of giving personal information to the Chinese government so they could crack down on dissidents. This just goes to show how much these guys will bend with a little pressure. As more and more liberties are stripped away from this society we have nobody to blame but our own politically jaded selves. Keep up the good work.

rogerd

01-20-2006, 06:36 PM

Search engines are businesses. The operate in various countries and abide by the laws of those countries. Their global scope and sometimes nebulous nexus (define exactly "where" Google is) make them slightly different than, say, a machinery supplier with a factory in Michigan, but not that much. If you do business someplace, you obey the local law. If the local law is too onerous, you can decide not to to business there. Businesses make that kind of decision all the time.

In the US, search engines, like telephone companies and machinery makers, generally must comply with a valid court order. If the company thinks the court order is flawed, they can fight it in court.

The difference between the US and some other nations is that there is, by and large, a belief in freedom of thought. An individual can hold, or even espouse, racist views, for example; as long as those beliefs don't translate into an illegal activity, like personal violence, property destruction, employment discrimination, etc., that individual won't be tossed into jail.

Demanding lists of searchers from search engines is perilously close to saying "thought" is illegal; of course, in this case, someone clicking on a search result probably WOULD end up in violation of the law. It's an interesting legal issue that, in some form or other, will probably end up before the Supreme Court.

Will the searchers include a few cops? Sure... and if this is a legitimate part of their job, they won't have a problem. Perhaps there are a few other legit reasons, but in each case there will be documentation, e.g., a reporter assigned by an editor to research the topic. Any random "researcher" would be a bit suspect, IMO.

Having said that, if I were the CEO of Google, I would have been offering child porn searcher IDs (IPs, email addresses, Google Accounts, etc.) to the FBI, Interpol, or whatever law enforcement agency wanted them from the beginning - without them having to ask for them, much less get a court order. I'd give 'em everything I knew about the websites, too, including related sites, usage patterns, etc. Google has access to a lot of data, and could help put a dent in that awful trade. I'd much rather say, "Tough luck, sue me!" to a pedophile than to a cop trying to get the pedophiles off the streets.

bragadocchio

01-20-2006, 06:53 PM

The information that the Department of Justice is seeking in this instance is really a matter of grasping at straws.

I'm not certain that I agree with Justice Breyer's dissent (http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-218.ZD1.html) in the Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union (03-218) 542 U.S. 656 (2004) (http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-218.ZO.html) certiorari hearing, but these sentences from his dissent of the Supreme Court ruling puts this request for information into perspective for me:

After eight years of legislative effort, two statutes, and three Supreme Court cases the Court sends this case back to the District Court for further proceedings. What proceedings? I have found no offer by either party to present more relevant evidence. What remains to be litigated? I know the Court says that the parties may “introduce further evidence” as to the “relative restrictiveness and effectiveness of alternatives to the statute.” Ante, at 14—15. But I do not understand what that new evidence might consist of.

The initial request for information within the subpoena to Google appears to have been a record of all URLs in their database, and a month's worth of search queries. It's likely that the same was asked of AOL, MSN, and Yahoo!.

Is this the kind of "new evidence" that Justice Breyer might have been asking for? Danny and Ian have demonstrated pretty well that it isn't really relevant evidence. It really doesn't add anything to the legal discourse taking place over the case in question.

andrewgoodman

01-20-2006, 07:18 PM

Yes they are. But to the end user, they are free. A child (who may be as old as 17, drive a car, and have easy access to libraries) does not have to pay for the service. Thus, to them, it is free, and for them there is no responsible adult supervision. The issue has been taken out of the hands of responsible parenting.

Are your or my children going to do that? Probably not. But curiosity is a powerful emotion. Even children who have so-called responsible parents, who have talked to them, and who monitor them closely, can do nothing to prevent a child who is determined to find there way to the filth that is on some of these sites.

Lets not skirt around the edges of the topic. Porn is addictive, it is ugly, it often leads to acts of violence.(I am not saying always, or even usually, but just often)

And while we're on such vital topics, let's not forget that deranged bachelors living in basement apartments who stockpile massive caches of assault weapons are a huge menace to society when they go on their annual Spring killing sprees. I call for immediate random entry, search, and harrassment of at least 100,000 bachelors living in basement apartments by April 15, 2006, just so we can figure out who we're dealing with, and begin to put a dent in this enormous threat.

But to be serious for a second. Whenever children are involved, a lot of people with little sense of historical perspective seem to forget why we have rights. A couple of years ago a child was sexually assaulted and murdered several blocks from where I live. The killer, a computer programmer living alone near the site of the crime, was eventually caught and convicted. During the investigation, however, the police decided they would go door to door and begin collecting "voluntary" DNA samples from everyone who lived nearby. Some refused to comply (bringing themselves under suspicion, which should never be allowed to happen, not least because suspecting the wrong people is going to lead to bad policing).

It boils down to this. The pattern does not look good when (a) something like child welfare is used as a cover for a broader agenda, such as the erosion of civil liberties and an increase in arbitrary power; (b) the police start "going door to door" as it were, going on fishing expeditions.

If you want to get something done quickly, you change your nation into a totalitarian state. You may however find the cure is much worse than the disease, if the cure becomes extreme enough. Wanting to enforce laws against child pornography and being concerned about how that is done are not mutually exclusive. These tradeoffs are what you signed up for when you signed up to live in a free society.

rnarvaez

01-20-2006, 08:07 PM

It does not surprise that this admin. has literally got away with torture, now it is legal to torture in spite of all the decent advances in human evolution.

Now it is legal to violate the Constitutional rights to be safe and secure and private.

The search engine user now should be clear that it is only safe to search for terms like bambi, mickey mouse, the, of, a. What will happen to the Google stock value when the search engine becomes useless?

Kal

01-20-2006, 08:49 PM

It boils down to this. The pattern does not look good when (a) something like child welfare is used as a cover for a broader agenda, such as the erosion of civil liberties and an increase in arbitrary power; (b) the police start "going door to door" as it were, going on fishing expeditions.
Amen! Where will it end? I find it terrifying that a so-called democracy is seeking the power to put an end to the very freedoms they hold up as symbols to the rest of the world.

unreviewed

01-20-2006, 09:35 PM

A couple of years ago a child was sexually assaulted and murdered several blocks from where I live. The killer, a computer programmer living alone near the site of the crime, was eventually caught and convicted. During the investigation, however, the police decided they would go door to door and begin collecting "voluntary" DNA samples from everyone who lived nearby. Some refused to comply (bringing themselves under suspicion, which should never be allowed to happen, not least because suspecting the wrong people is going to lead to bad policing).

I understand your point Andrew, but if a child was killed on my street and the police came to my door asking for a DNA sample ... I'd hardly be inconvenienced, that would be the "least" I could do. In fact, I would want everyone on my street to give up a sample, as well as all relatives and friends of the child. Fact is, in the vast majority of cases, the killer could be caught if this were allowed.

As for the subject of this thread, we are not allowed privacy on our public streets, in fact most us appreciate the ever growing amount of video feeds monitoring our streets, why should the Internet be any different?

mcanerin

01-21-2006, 01:22 AM

I have another point to make on this whole issue. It's currently being positioned as US government issue, but it's bigger than that.

When I do a search (as a Canadian), it's usually on Google.ca unless I'm rank checking for a US client. Does the US government have a right to that information? There is certainly nothing I've seen so far that implies it is being segmented (though I imagine it could be if they wanted to).

"So what?", Is what many of my US counterparts may be thinking.

Well, Google has local offices (that are required to obey local law) in the following countries:

Ireland
Australia
Brazil
Canada
Denmark
France
Germany
India
Italy
Japan
Korea
Mexico
Netherlands
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Turkey
England

Any of these countries can, just like the US, issue a warrant for information (or just demand it, depending on local law and convention). On you, my American friend. Surfing from the US looking for US information.

Think about that. I sure do, as a Canadian surfing in Canada looking for Canadian information. As far as I'm concerned, the US government has no business knowing about my maple syrup addiction... ;)

Still uninterested in globalization and legal issues regarding your personal information?

Bottom line, this is an issue, and the equivalent of an international wiretap, if the information is focused and relevant.

If the information sought after isn't focused, then then it's useless for anything other than political posturing, at which point I don't care and will leave the issue up to my US counterparts to deal with, since they elected the people in question and therefore it's pretty much their problem.

Ian

crazylogic

01-21-2006, 02:00 AM

I could not think of a better issue for the government to use than porn and children for them to go after the data. Since most people want to protect children from porn. Although they have tried in the middle east for countless years to prevent teens from viewing porn with little success despite hard punishments for the immoral and criminal act.

---

But I am alittle confused, how does getting a weeks worth of search terms, without knowing that they are coming from teenages, help them in determining what sites teenages are using to find porn? I would think playboy would be the top porn site but would prevent teens from viewing. Do they even know if teenagers find more porn sites from SEs as opposed to word of mouth from other teenagers. Wouldn't it make more sence to setup a caching DNS server for libraries to identify what porn sites teenages most visit?

---

Does anybody know if the data can be optained by the FOIA. I would like to mine the data for terms that have nothing to do with porn.

---

Oh on DNA samples, the government should setup a database and keep the data as they do for finger prints.

Kal

01-21-2006, 05:04 AM

What will happen to the Google stock value when the search engine becomes useless? Unfortunately, the stock has already been negatively impacted. According to our national news in Australia, Google stock has dropped to its lowest price since launch :(

Kal

01-21-2006, 05:13 AM

As for the subject of this thread, we are not allowed privacy on our public streets, in fact most us appreciate the ever growing amount of video feeds monitoring our streets, why should the Internet be any different? You're only talking about public streets, cities and countries where CCTV exists. Compare that to having a CCTV camera set up in your private home office, with your elected officials monitoring you 24/7.

Interesting point Ian brings up - is the U.S. Gov asking for search data from engines in countries outside the U.S.? Or search data by U.S. citizens living in other countries?

rnarvaez

01-21-2006, 05:45 AM

What this is showing is that privacy in the electronic age is a convenient illusion. We could pretend but the government has the final word and it can justify its procedures in various fashions. Another thing that is revealed is that the business of electronic information as a product is a sort of a peculiar animal (product). It is not private property you cannot own it like a t-shirt. It is privately owned on one hand, but on the other it is considered intellectual property still owned by a third party, and ultimately controlled by the government. How good/relevant is an information search company (search session & results) whose products are not really owned by the end user. Is this realization, our first steps in the return to the brick and mortar library, and to the use of printed and other resource (vs electronic) materials to conduct meaningful research?

Computer Dave

01-21-2006, 12:00 PM

Amen!! Many of these problems would be completly eliminated if parents kept the computer out of bedrooms, and only let their kids surf when they can watch them.

Of course, this would not solve the accidental whitehouse.com kinda thing, but it would solve a lot.

I believe that parents are the number one defense when it come to their children. Too many parents nowadays want the Government to be their babysitter and guide thme. These people need to realize the government doesn't always know what it is doing itself. Parents need to educate themselves on the internet and basic functions of computers. Simple parent intervention, software and heaven forbid even talking to your children will help.

We still don't address actually capturing and punishing pedifiliers though. I don't think they are after search results of children who are viewing Porn, they are looking for pedifielers who are searching for children porn, or children victims.

Better parenting, while being the most critical element, does not do anything towards the real issue of catching the criminals.

It is my understanding(I will go back and review) that the 1998 Online Child Protection act really has nothing to to do with tracking and catching of pedophiles. It was intended to keep children safe from accidently running across porn. It included gudlines for parents and fines.

Computer Dave

01-21-2006, 12:02 PM

I have not seen any spying on American's stories in the news. Only stories about spying on known terrorists, but I digress.

You haven't seen anything on the illegal wiretaps?

Elisabeth

01-21-2006, 01:46 PM

Unfortunately, the stock has already been negatively impacted. According to our national news in Australia, Google stock has dropped to its lowest price since launch :(

oh, ::SOB:: it's down to $399/share, what ever will they do??;)

OttoRommel

01-21-2006, 08:40 PM

You haven't seen anything on the illegal wiretaps?
I've seen plenty about legal warrantless wiretaps being called illegal by people who either choose to ignore the truth or are lying to promote an agenda.

"Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth." - FDR

How about a truthful headline and article for you that you will never find.

"Bush Administration Chooses Not to Continue Clinton Administration Warrant-less Physical Searches Opting for Warrant-less Wiretap Authority."
The Bush Administration has decided not to continue the Clinton Administration's warrant-less Physical Searches. Instead, the administration requested, and was given approval for, warrant-less wiretap authority from the FISA court which was established by the Carter Administration 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The FISA court approved the warrant-less wiretaps on calls coming or going from the US to known terrorist countries and/or foreign terrorist operatives. The FISA court also revised the every 6 month review policy of the warrant-less physical searches down to a 45 day review cycle for authority approval of the warrant-less wiretaps. Warrant-less wiretaps have been challenged, in court, many times and were upheld again in the most recent case in 2002 of [U.S. v. Truong] where the federal court found that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrant-less searches to obtain foreign intelligence information.

With regard to headline of this thread, how about this instead. "Attorney General Subpoena's Google Search Information to Defend Clinton Administration's 'Child Online Protection Act' from Attack by ACLU." The Attorney General's office is being forced to defend the 'Child Online Protection Act' signed into law in 1998 by then President William Jefferson Clinton. The Attorney General is considered the nation's lawyer and therefore defends laws in the US when their constitutionality is challenged. The ACLU has challenged the COPA's constitutionality with regard to free speech and the availability of online pornography. In order defend the law the AG had requested data from the major search engines to show depth and accessibility of pornography to children on the Internet, but, Google sided with the ACLU and pornographers by refusing to provide the requested search data. Google's stock took a hit after the announcement.

If any of the above information is news to you, I suggest that you stop being a lemming and find out the truth behind the agenda based headlines.

The pornography industry could choose to regulate itself by lobbying for the creation of a .xxx domain and requiring that all of its members and affiliates maintain sites only in this domain. That way it would be easy for parents, schools, etc... to limit access of pornography to children. And, it would make it obvious which pornography sites and/or affiliates are not acting in the good faith of the industry and trying to target children with their material. This could protect the legitimate pornography industry from prosecution and persecution.

There is way too much money to be made in click-thru payments of re-directs from mis-typed search terms. Until something like the .xxx domain is done, the accidental exposure of children to pornography must be protected and enforced. There have always been regulations to protect children from adult entertainment. I challenge you to find a city in the US that doesn't have a city ordinance preventing strip clubs from operating near a school. The COPA is no different except that it is online.

The adult industry should take a hint from the electronic gaming industry. Even the half-hearted attempt to regulate themselves via the ESRB has prevented the government from taking any kind of real legislative action against them. Even the Hilary Clinton chest pounding over the GTA-San Andreas Hot Coffee mod has produced nothing.

The money is obviously good enough to continue their ways and try to defend themselves under the guise of free speech via the ACLU. The industry's rights to make and distribute their product are not being taken away. Their ability to distribute their product to children is being regulated. The ACLU's argument is that the law will limit access to legitimate sites relating to sexually related material. However, as Justice Breyer said the last time the ACLU challenged the law in the Supreme court, their argument about free speech limitations doesn't hold water. The sex advise, gay and lesbian sites appear to be unaffected by the law because they had some redeeming value and probably did not merely appeal to prurient interests.

If you don't know your Supreme Court Justices, Breyer is not one of the conservative ones.

Google has the legal right to take action to fight the request for data. However, if you take an action, you must be willing to live with the consequences as well.

andrewgoodman

01-21-2006, 11:22 PM

I understand your point Andrew, but if a child was killed on my street and the police came to my door asking for a DNA sample ... I'd hardly be inconvenienced, that would be the "least" I could do. In fact, I would want everyone on my street to give up a sample, as well as all relatives and friends of the child. Fact is, in the vast majority of cases, the killer could be caught if this were allowed.

Wrong. The action had no effect on the eventual capture of the actual perpetrator. But did allow a police force to experiment with unconstitutional actions.

Computer Dave

01-21-2006, 11:55 PM

How about a truthful headline and article for you that you will never find.

The FISA court approved the warrant-less wiretaps on calls coming or going from the US to known terrorist countries and/or foreign terrorist operatives. The FISA court also revised the every 6 month review policy of the warrant-less physical searches down to a 45 day review cycle for authority approval of the warrant-less wiretaps. Warrant-less wiretaps have been challenged, in court, many times and were upheld again in the most recent case in 2002 of [U.S. v. Truong] where the federal court found that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrant-less searches to obtain foreign intelligence information.

The main point of the warrantless searches is to combat terrorism. As as you have pointed out, it is for calls made to or coming from known terrorist countries, not to listen in on ordinary domestic calls. Now I will admit I have no clue if the reports are true or not. But there seems to be enough reports circulating to warrant an investigation into this matter to conform or disprove these allegations, I could be accused of child abuse and even if it is not true, I can bet you that I would be investigated.

With regard to headline of this thread, how about this instead. "Attorney General Subpoena's Google Search Information to Defend Clinton Administration's 'Child Online Protection Act' from Attack by ACLU." The Attorney General's office is being forced to defend the 'Child Online Protection Act' signed into law in 1998 by then President William Jefferson Clinton. The Attorney General is considered the nation's lawyer and therefore defends laws in the US when their constitutionality is challenged. The ACLU has challenged the COPA's constitutionality with regard to free speech and the availability of online pornography. In order defend the law the AG had requested data from the major search engines to show depth and accessibility of pornography to children on the Internet, but, Google sided with the ACLU and pornographers by refusing to provide the requested search data. Google's stock took a hit after the announcement.

I am quite aware that this was from the Clinton era. But the information that has been requested will not show any evidence what so ever to help. All it would show is that people were searching for things and porn may or may not have popped up. Plus, as it has been stated before, all AG would need to do is conduct a search on their computer and submit those findings. Why open the door for requests of "random" searches to see who might be searching for "HEMP" because the government wants to go after pot growers? This sort of request has more far reaching implications.

If any of the above information is news to you, I suggest that you stop being a lemming and find out the truth behind the agenda based headlines.

98% of the above was not news to me, for the other 2%, thank you - quite interesting. Please don't assume from one statement that a person is a lemming or uneducated. I in turn could request that you stop being a lemming and believing that the Republicans can do no wrong.

The pornography industry could choose to regulate itself by lobbying for the creation of a .xxx domain and requiring that all of its members and affiliates maintain sites only in this domain. That way it would be easy for parents, schools, etc... to limit access of pornography to children. And, it would make it obvious which pornography sites and/or affiliates are not acting in the good faith of the industry and trying to target children with their material. This could protect the legitimate pornography industry from prosecution and persecution.
I am in total agreement. I don't think a .xxx domain can be put into action fast enough. As the parent of a child, I know firsthand what can pop up while doing innocent searches but I am not willing to sacrifice my liberties for it. Even using software to block out porn is not 100% full proof the way the internet is configured right now.

There is way too much money to be made in click-thru payments of re-directs from mis-typed search terms. Until something like the .xxx domain is done, the accidental exposure of children to pornography must be protected and enforced. There have always been regulations to protect children from adult entertainment. I challenge you to find a city in the US that doesn't have a city ordinance preventing strip clubs from operating near a school. The COPA is no different except that it is online.
Once again, I am in agreement.

The adult industry should take a hint from the electronic gaming industry. Even the half-hearted attempt to regulate themselves via the ESRB has prevented the government from taking any kind of real legislative action against them. Even the Hilary Clinton chest pounding over the GTA-San Andreas Hot Coffee mod has produced nothing.
Would never work. Pornography is on the hit list and always will be.

The money is obviously good enough to continue their ways and try to defend themselves under the guise of free speech via the ACLU. The industry's rights to make and distribute their product are not being taken away. Their ability to distribute their product to children is being regulated. The ACLU's argument is that the law will limit access to legitimate sites relating to sexually related material. However, as Justice Breyer said the last time the ACLU challenged the law in the Supreme court, their argument about free speech limitations doesn't hold water. The sex advise, gay and lesbian sites appear to be unaffected by the law because they had some redeeming value and probably did not merely appeal to prurient interests.
The ACLU always seems to want to drag freedom of speech into everything. This has nothing to do with freedom of speech but the welfare of children. I think the ACLU is way off on this one. I have a feeling the ACLU know this as well which is why they are playing the freedom of speech card.

bltc

01-22-2006, 09:22 AM

Ok guys, if you start with the word paedophilia you're playing marketing spin with the argument, and didn't quite follow the thread of the article.

I believe that the article referred to HTM, as far as I know that means anything that can harm minors in their browsing habits.

Harm a very subjective terms that would include things such as:

Porn (of which paedophilic or beastial material would be a very small subset).
Violence (I didn't see anybody mention this... strange)
Subversive material (Harry Potter (http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bbwlinks/100mostfrequently.htm) .)
Overly liberal viewpoints (like, “How bad is porn compared to violence”, why do yanks always jump on porn as the most despicable thing, not killing?)
Strange religious ideas (mummy, people say Jesus was a Jewish?)
Conspiracys theory web sites (Iraq Body Count (http://www.iraqbodycount.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=08c15bd5a1facb20e03e7ea7eba248 6a&submit3=Enter+Site) )

Now, as important as it is to say that kiddies are important, and our future relies on them (ya ya ya), today (and the next 16 years) relies on me, and I rely reasonably accurate view on the world as it is presented through my search terms. Not some edited version managed by a foreign power with an agenda to push which got it's claws into things by claiming "What about the kiddies!".

So I say F*^# the kiddies (not literally coz that’s bad as previous posts have mentioned) and teach your kids to trust their parents, and to ask for help when they get freaked out by something they see.

And remember whats the worst that could happen if kiddies see nipples?

rezz

01-22-2006, 09:33 AM

Ok i just read the article on the bush demand and he seems intent on just peeing everybody off. First he taps peoples phones without there concent or knowledge and then he wants to invade ppls privacy or the internet. Theres just no barrier to where this man will go. Well i guess from now on i will be searchin for jack sh*t until i hear that google has won the case.

Put it this way ill be lookin under my bed every time i go to sleep to see if bush or his goons are not there to check how many hours sleep i get lmao

Oh well keep it real ppl

see yas

Panthere Noir

01-22-2006, 10:58 AM

I've followed the issue of the US Government vs Google with some interest after seeing it mentioned almost simultanously both in the German Der Spiegel and the British Guardian and I much support Google's refusal to hand over data - regardless whether the data requested contains privacy data or not, since even if it does not now, once the practice of "just asking for it" has been established, the boundaries are likely to be pushed more and more - because based on the information I have found publicly available this appears to be an attempt to establish a precedent that, while it would serve the current control-obsessed US government very well, would be ultimately detrimental not only to US citizens but the larger net community as well. I believe that in this case the "harmful to minors" argument is just a useful smokescreen, since, as even this thread shows, few people are willing to argue that minors* need protection. All in all, this request strikes me as a very small piece of a much larger picture.

*Off topic, too, but I think someone should point out that there appears to be some strange mix up - at least in this thread; I haven't checked the subpoena papers - equalling "HTM" with pedophily, and equally mistakingly equating "children" - by most definitions individuals up the the age of 13 to 14 - with "minors" - which in the United States, depending on the state, can be individuals up to the age of 21 (the notion, just FYI, of a "21 year old child" being, by most people in most places in Europe and Asia I've ever lived in or visited, considered somewhat . . . surreal), in which case quite a large number of the latter, I suspect, are not entirely uninterested in the topic of s - e - x. :rolleyes:

Back to topic, having said the above, beyond the current issue and aware that this might strike a lot of people as a non sequitur, I think that American citizens would be well advised to take some history lessons right now, in particular of Germany in the first half of the 1930s: as a German by birth and upbringing and a history and politics afficionado, I find some, in fact, many, disturbing similarities between the behaviour of the then national-socialist government after it came - by legally questionable means - into power and the current United States administration, both sizing on whatever most convenient excuse was at hand to enhance government power. (I'll refrain from elaborating on how this already seems to have happened to a scaringly large part in the US, as that would get me wildly of topic.)

This "Google thing" might look like some silly minor spat but, as history shows - try wikipedia on "Joseph Goebbels" for example - there are plenty of precidents to show that what looked like a minor accommodation can lead to large losses - in this case, of privacy and civil rights (on the civil rights of US citizens, even now, you might want to check "Jose Padilla"), if smart people succeed in "adjusting" law to their liking. Media control - that is, the manipulation of public opinion in favour of the government - being the first step for a successful take over, with, this having been largely achieved, it seems to me, already in the USA where traditional media such as print, radio and TV are concerned, the internet the next logical step in the attempt.

I hope this is not going to turn into a "Good night, America" for the country that a large part of the world has greatly admired as the most liberal in matters of personal freedom for a long time, even if not recently . . .

PhilC

01-22-2006, 11:51 AM

I may be swimming against the tide here, but I'd welcome the loss of some privacy. Suppose a country has a DNA database of all of its citizens, how much crime would be solved and reduced? I'd say it would be a huge step in the right direction, and one that would be welcomed my many or most people. It is sure to happen before too long. Governments just need to ease it in gently. It's beginning to happen already in the UK, and probably in other countries too.

IMO, the current issue is merely the first act of a larger agenda - to legally force search engines to turn over all sorts of data, and even force them to store it for governments. The U.S. government may even welcome Google's stance, so that they can get it into court.

The Internet has changed things a lot. Many organisations already have personal data about us (e.g. credit card companies), but the data is limited. Search engines can store a lot more profiling information about us than anything there has ever been. They can virtually store the way we think, and in a form that is vastly easier to work with than, say, phone calls - and on a massive scale. The potential for Big Brother from search engine data is enormous, and it will only increase over time. In a world of terrorism and child sex activities, it is not surprising that governments would want access to that data, and for those particular reasons, I'm not at all sure that they shouldn't have it. I don't think too many people would object to them having profiling data (perhaps selected data) if it is only used for fighting crime.

dazzlindonna

01-22-2006, 12:08 PM

PhilC, I have to agree with you, even though most people I know think I'm crazy for it. Once you've been a victim of a serious crime (as I have), or known someone who has been, you often tend to see the value of having a bit less privacy. I've long thought that every baby born should be fingerprinted and have dna results stored in a central database - for crime-solving purposes, as well as for missing persons reasons.

Yes, there need to be strong rules in place to prevent use of our private details for anything but the most important uses.

Yes, I agree that the government could better accomplish their stated goal in regards to seeing how much porn is available to children without forcing search engines to give up any data. Danny spelled out how quite clearly.

But I also agree that *sometimes* we need to consider when it might be a good thing to give up some of our privacy rights.

andrewgoodman

01-22-2006, 12:52 PM

PhilC

01-22-2006, 02:15 PM

I also thought about getting the DNA of newly born babies, Donna. I can't see it not happening, but it will take time as governments have to move slowly with this kind of thing.

I can't dispute those thoughts, Andrew - especially in most countries of the world. (I don't think you were addressing the idea of national DNA databases, and I can't think that too many people would object to that.)

About the profiling data that search engines can, and will be increasingly be able to, provide, the saving grace may be democracy. Looking into the future, I can envisage the governments of undemoctratic countries, with their own language search engines, taking full advantage of the data, but the governments of democratic countries always have to answer to the people. There may be no absolute safeguards against the secret misuse of the data, but that's no different to the secret and wrong goings on that exist in different areas today. Personally, I'm not against having to consider my use of the Internet as though it isn't totally private, especially if it reduces crime. If privacy on the Internet stands in the way of reducing child sex activities, terrorism, and other crime, I'm happy to give up that privacy.

searchoptimization

01-22-2006, 02:30 PM

Danny Sullivan and Search Engine Watch were referenced in the OC Register’s editorial section under “Googling Google.” The last line was by the editor, not Danny, “Google was right to resist.” The Register is a client and privately owned.

We are going to need to extend our privacy laws to search. The recent extension of the Homeland Security act allows the US government to request and receive information from a wide range of sources including libraries. Those sources are prohibited from informing their users of the request. Does this include search?

If you would like to learn more about China read the article “Internet Filtering in China in 2004-2005: A Country Study” and the Harvard Law “Documentation of Internet Filtering Worldwide.”

Panthere Noir

01-22-2006, 08:21 PM

has put it best, I think:

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania (1759)

Aside from that, there is no such thing as perfect safety and while - potentionally, at least; I personally would never exclude the possibility of errors or worse, deliberate tampering - the creation of fingerprint and DNA might make crime solving easier, I much doubt that it would prevent criminal actions to the extent that supporters of such ideas suggest.

Luis Morais

01-22-2006, 09:44 PM

Webvisitor

01-22-2006, 11:43 PM

I think that American citizens would be well advised to take some history lessons right now, in particular of Germany in the first half of the 1930s: as a German by birth and upbringing and a history and politics afficionado, I find some, in fact, many, disturbing similarities between the behaviour of the then national-socialist government after it came - by legally questionable means - into power and the current United States administration, both sizing on whatever most convenient excuse was at hand to enhance government power.

At ease soldier there is no similarity. If it were the the info would be seized, not subpoenaed. In our country a subpoena is issued and lawyers negotiate. Ultimately a judge decides. Nowhere on Earth is there a more fair system.

This "Google thing" might look like some silly minor spat but, as history shows - try wikipedia on "Joseph Goebbels" for example - there are plenty of precidents to show that what looked like a minor accommodation can lead to large losses - in this case, of privacy and civil rights (on the civil rights of US citizens, even now, you might want to check "Jose Padilla")

Padilla, the guy who tried to blow up the World Trade Center the first time.
Amazing someone dragged his name into the thread while at the same time subtley equating the current government action with the evil works of Joseph Goebbels.
Incredible and distasteful.

rnarvaez

01-23-2006, 12:48 AM

He he eh, I believe that by now all of us taking part in this discussion have been assigned a spaking brand new file in the C I A archives. Nevertheless, I would like to ask something:

Assuming all searches worldwide are performed by servers hosted in the US, does that mean that, in fact, the jurisdiction of the subpoena is not actually limited to US soil and anyone in the world doing searches via the all the web option could be included in the one-week sample requested by the US government?

Do you really think that they can limit themselves, or abide by any law, national or international? They can declare, for example: "enemy electronic-combatant" and figure out some way to "waterboard" you and make you cry uncle, and in some way justify it as in the olden days by infallible divine-royal disposition. I see no limit/end to the insanity. As skilled Internet/information users we need to assume that there is no guaranteed privacy anywhere and proceed with caution and that understanding and perhaps figure, as time goes by, some way/method to encrypt our search sessions (perhaps when quantum computing arrives) if that is desirable.

Panthere Noir

01-23-2006, 04:24 AM

At ease soldier there is no similarity. If it were the the info would be seized, not subpoenaed. In our country a subpoena is issued and lawyers negotiate. Ultimately a judge decides. Nowhere on Earth is there a more fair system.

If you really and truly belive that, then I suggest you take a good look at two laws of Februrary and March 1933 - the "Reichstagsbrandverordnung"* and the "Ermächtigungsgesetz"** - and compare their content and real and possible effects with the same of your own Patriot Act.

*Reichstagsbrandverordnung: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_Fire_Decree
**Ermächtigungsgesetz: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act

There are also some comments from some of your fellow Americans on the topic (the authors of which I know nothing about aside from what they are writing in those particular pieces, so I haven't selected them for any particular political preference, if they have such):

http://www.covenantnews.com/cronkrite041018.htm
http://neilrogers.com/news/articles/2004090311.html

Concerning Padilla, I really have to say I find your claim that he tried to blow the WTO the first time amazing, even the US government hasn't been saying that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Padilla

As to the assertion that there is nowhere on earth a more fair system, I think that Padilla's case as well as the simple existence of "enemy combatants" already invalidates that claim, but I rather prefer not to discuss that topic, since it would lead way beyond the intended scope of this thread.

It's also funny that you are accusing me of making a comparision - that of Joseph Goebbels to the current US government - that I haven't made. Since you brought it up, however, I guess you know the saying about "if the shoe fits . . ." (personally, I think it doesn't: Goebbels actually had to fight for control over contemporary German media; in the USA, the mainstream media seem to have decided to roll oer and play dead on their own).

Finally, while I am not a soldier, I am quite at ease: I am not a citizen of the United States nor living there, so anything unfortunate that might - likely will - be happening in that country very likely is going to have very little impact on my life. Cheers.

PS, re your "incredible and distasteful" closing: All that arguments at hominem usually show it the paucity of one's manners and one's arguments. Next time, try arguing your case instead of attempting to insult the person you're addressing.

PhilC

01-23-2006, 08:25 AM

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania (1759)"essential liberty"? You consifer that the storing of a population's DNA in the fight against crime is giving up some "essential liberty"? What's so essential about not having your DNA profile stored? And what liberty would it deprive anyone of? Benjamin Franklin was as entitled to his view as anyone else, and there's nothing special about his view. But he was talking about essential liberty - we are not.

... the creation of fingerprint and DNA might make crime solving easier, I much doubt that it would prevent criminal actions to the extent that supporters of such ideas suggest.I've no idea how much crime people think that DNA records would solve and prevent, but I'm darned sure that it would solve and prevent a lot, including many rapes, murders, sex against children, etc. If it cuts into serious crime by say 20%, is it worth it? Of course it is. It's not even a trade-off, because the population loses nothing in terms of privacy, freedom, or anything else.

vayapues

01-23-2006, 10:14 AM

Wow!! Take the weekend off from posting, and the thread goes crazy! :)

So much to respond to.

First from Computer Dave
You haven't seen anything on the illegal wiretaps?

No I haven't heard any stories about "illegal" wiretaps. I have heard plenty of stories about legal wiretaps though. Calling them illegal is simply grasping at straws by those who dislike the President. Polls show that a huge majority of Americans approve of wiretapping known terrorists. That aside, since opinion has nothing to do with law, the fact remains that there have been no laws broken, and no privacy violated. If you are emailing or calling known terrorists, then by all means, expect your conversations to be listened in on.

Actually, I wonder how history will view Bush. Lincoln was seen in his day as a tyrant, who was trampling freedom under his feet. Yes, Panthere Noir there were even foreigners who commented how Lincoln would destroy the United States. Polls were very unfavorable to the man. Many called him too ignorant and stupid, also ugly (which, lets be honest, he was). Will History see Bush as one of our greatest presidents?

Why do we see Lincoln the way we do today? Well, certainly the assassination has a lot to do with it. But also, because he was a true man. He recognized the dangers of his day, and had the courage to hold the country together by shear will power. Had he not been President, had any other man been president, there is almost no doubt that the union would have collapsed.

The challenges Bush has successfully faced are amazing, and many. The opposition within our own country has been great. Yet he has, by his own will power managed to protect us.

blah blah blah.

ok, now back to the topic. I have given this topic some thought over the week-end, as I spackeled my bathroom walls. Yes, I like Bush (put some spackle on the wall), yes, I think he will be seen as a great President(sand down the spackle), but... (whip the sweat off my forehead)

Here it comes

Everyone makes mistakes. Lincoln went too far during the civil war, Roosevelt certainly went to far during WWII. Hind-sight is 20/20. Bush has certainly gone too far more then once, in the War on Terror. Not any more or less then any other president. He just gets a lot more flack for it by a 24/7 media, and those who hate him. Honestly, given the fact that he makes dozens and dozens of high stakes decisions every day, it would be truely amazing, if some of them were not wrong.

I don't think asking for the search data is wrong. I don't believe for a minute the ridiculous argument that they only want to lay a foundation to control search, and display only favorable results to them self. I do think though that Bush should give up the fight, if a court determines that they can't have the data. Which is of course exactly what he will do. So, what conclusions did I draw over the week-end?

Bush is a great guy.

But not perfect.

Asking for the search results was all well and good.

Perhaps a little pointless, since it really won't tell them much, but not a violation of privacy.

Our system of government is truly inspired and amazing.

Nothing wrong with Bush's people taking it to court, other then it might be a bad PR move. But sometimes you have to do things that are unpopular as a leader.

If the courts say "No, you can't have Google's search results" then the Admin should quite.

of course they will quite. They respect the laws of the land. Which again, is why our system is so amazing.

As to the assertion that there is nowhere on earth a more fair system, I think that Padilla's case as well as the simple existence of "enemy combatants" already invalidates that claim, but I rather prefer not to discuss that topic, since it would lead way beyond the intended scope of this thread.

It's also funny that you are accusing me of making a comparison - that of Joseph Goebbels to the current US government - that I haven't made. Since you brought it up, however, I guess you know the saying about "if the shoe fits . . ." (personally, I think it doesn't: Goebbels actually had to fight for control over contemporary German media; in the USA, the mainstream media seem to have decided to roll oer and play dead on their own).

Finally, while I am not a soldier, I am quite at ease: I am not a citizen of the United States nor living there, so anything unfortunate that might - likely will - be happening in that country very likely is going to have very little impact on my life.

With all due respect, you really don't know what you are talking about. You don't know the culture of the people within the nation you are referring to. You seem to be implying that the USA is in imminet danger of some great claminty. The fact is that our system continues despite itself, because of the way powers are balanced. The most ambitious and hitleresk man on Earth could be elected President, and not have a hope of getting around the safety measures built into the system. Our culture simply wouldn't allow it.

I realize that this is difficult to understand, comming from a nation were power is not so guarded, and freedoms so protected, over here we celebrate the peaceful change of power every 4-8 years. If a President ever refused to leave office, he would be laughed at, and removed by his own office staff.

Well, in 100 years, when we are all dead, and the USA is still stable, and free, (and still debating how the current president of the day is pushing the limits) perhaps we can discuss the issue further.

mcanerin

01-23-2006, 01:27 PM

It's an established maxim of law that if you have no reasonable expectation of privacy, you can't complain about a lack of privacy. Common examples would be a nudist on a nude beach, or a celebrity in a shopping mall, or an employee on a work computer, during work hours.

Is there a reasonable expectation of privacy for the use of a search engine?

After all, if there isn't, then this whole thing is "much ado about nothing". If you have no reasonable expectation of privacy, then you really have no valid complaint about it's absence.

Of course, you may very well have a reasonable expectation that you SHOULD have privacy, but that's part 2.

How is a reasonable expectation of privacy determined? I would offer you the following possible criteria:

1) Stated Notifications. This includes posted privacy policies, and related materials.

2) Laws. If the law says you can't expect something to be private, then that's a pretty strong indication that it would be unreasonable to assume it's private anyway.

3) Common Practice or Knowledge. If you know that something is routinely monitored, then it's hard to say you had a reasonable expectation of privacy when they monitor you.

There is also an issue of de minimus non curat lex, or the law does not concern itself with trifles, that I'll get into why that might actually apply to something as important as privacy in a second.

What then, is your reasonable expectation of privacy when you do a search?

Well, let's start from your keyboard and work outward. Do you have a reasonable expectation of privacy at your desk? No, if you are at work on your companies computer. Yes, if you are at home, and are not a minor child, married, or have installed spyware on your computer after clicking an "I Agree".

Of course, your own browser is often collecting information on you, in terms of it's cache and history files. If you have a firewall or other security software, it may be collecting information, as well. Every time you go someplace that forces a firewall or other security software to block a pop-up, cookie, or program, that information (along with time, date and URL) is usually stored in the logs.

You may argue that the only ones left with any privacy rights at that point are a very small segment of the population. You may be correct. Let's move on, though.

You now connect from your desk to the internet through an ISP. Do you have a reasonable expectation of privacy with your ISP? Depends. It's up to the Privacy policy of the ISP. For example, AOL makes it clear that they DO collect information on you (most ISP's do).

Can your ISP see your searches? Yes. The server logs would show all the URL's you went to, including results pages for every search engine. Further, they would even show if you visited a site after a search. and what you did. This is more data than a search engine has on you. Also, unlike a search engine, an ISP may also have your home address, credit card information, and a lot of other information.

In practice, the only privacy you have with an ISP is their data-retention policies (how long they keep their logs for, and what is saved in the logs) and the fact that they can't be totally sure which subscriber on a connected computer was using it at any one time. Not a lot to hang your hat on, honestly.

Well then, we are at the search engine, aren't we? The search engine that you use then collects all the information of your searches as part of it's logs (your ISP is doing the same thing at the same time) in accordance (one would hope) with it's privacy policy.

Googles (http://www.google.com/privacy.html), for example, says:

We may also share information with third parties in limited circumstances, including when complying with legal process, preventing fraud or imminent harm, and ensuring the security of our network and services.
Reading their full privacy policy, it's pretty clear that they intend to maintain your privacy, unless legally required not to. You would probably have a reasonable expectation of privacy from everyone except a government or person with a valid warrant, then. The privacy policies of Yahoo and MSN are similar in this regard.

Alright, now you've done the search and then what? Well, maybe you go to a site. Question? What is your expectation of privacy at that point?

Well, even if a site has a strong privacy policy, you need to land on it and read it first, so it's unreasonable to assume that you have any privacy until you have read the privacy policy. For all you know, the privacy policy states clearly you don't have any. You can't assume you do until you check (and even then, they may be lying).

Once again, your ISP is logging this. Even if a website agrees to respect your privacy, the ISP may not, and has almost the same information on you. Those are the guys I'm actually worried about. They often have your email, too. :eek:

Feeling a little exposed? There are a few protections in place, though. Let's see if they work.

First, the EU, Canada and a few other places have fairly strong privacy laws, and those laws apply to any operations within their borders. In Canada, the rule is that you can only collect the absolute minimum information necessary to complete the requested transaction, for example.

This is very different from the usual marketing approach of "collect everything that we are legally allowed to". But that only helps Canadians, and not even then if the violation is in a different country on records held in that country.

Your privacy rights are only as protected as the rights granted in the weakest jurisdiction your information is held in or accessible from - the weakest link.

This has severe repercussions internationally. If country X has weak privacy laws and your data is held in countries X,Y and Z, then your protection is only as strong as X. Period. So much for jurisdiction specific privacy laws in an age of redundant international servers and local head offices.

As you can see from the above, Privacy is a "weakest link" issue, not a "totality of the whole" or "strongest rule" issue.

I think it would also be fair to argue that, based on the above, no one can currently have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their internet activities. There are too many data collection points with too many conflicting obligations, expectations and legal requirements.

This is why I brought up the de minimus issue. Even if you found that a search engine should maintain your privacy, does that really matter with every other aspect of your internet usage doesn't, and the same data (and often even more intrusive) is being collected elsewhere?

I guess the next question, which I have not addressed yet, is SHOULD we have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the internet, or in search in particular?

Ian

Kal

01-24-2006, 12:03 AM

Just to move the topic away from privacy issues for a moment.

Don't you think it's rather interesting that the US government had no idea how to phrase their request to provide meaningful data? As Danny said in the Newsweek episode, they clearly had no idea that they should be requesting data with automated enquiries removed so it didn't skew results.

Can you imagine if they draft anti-porn legislation based on raw data containing those millions of WPG ranking reports run by SEOs with porn clients? :eek:

Let's hope they hire Danny as a special consultant to the CIA and FBI on search issues eh?

projectphp

01-24-2006, 02:06 AM

Well, I for one can't wait for "Extraordinary Rendition of Data" as a way around what you wrote ian.

Graftcube

01-24-2006, 07:13 AM

The Bush administration demanded last year that Google and other search engines turn over aggregate search information to help revive a child protection law. Google has refused to comply with the subpoena. Other search engines apparently have.

In particular, the Bush administration wanted one million random web addresses and records of all Google searches for a one week period. The government apparently wants to find out how much pornography shows up in online searches and how often people may seek it.

Here's a solution -

Why not set up internet access in the big prison systems across the U.S. and monitor the results from them? I think you would get more of an idea of how much porn shows up online and how often people may seek it from those results rather than the possibility of invading someone's privacy.

projectphp

01-24-2006, 09:25 AM

<offtopic>I wonder how many prisoners search for "escape from jail"? Or maybe "escape from jail and meet newbile young women" is more the searches that the US gov want....

Reminds me of how Terry Waite, a hostage in Lebanon and a side story to Irangate (I love my gates), was in his cell, and he was handed reading material to keep him amused. The book? The great escape.

Anyhow, I best return you to your regularly sceduled serious debate</offtopic>

JAFO

01-24-2006, 02:09 PM

You raised some extremely valid points, mcanerin. Has anyone here read this rather topical article?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10968082/site/newsweek/

I hope the flag waving Republican who claims not to know anything of the US domestic spying programme will do so, I'd like to know his/her point of view.

vayapues

01-24-2006, 06:01 PM

JAFO,

I read the article through twice. the first time, I thought, "did I miss something", so I read it again. Then I thought "Nope, guess I didn't".

I see nothing wrong, inappropriate, or otherwise. You and I both know that they are damned if the do, and damned if they don't. If there is another attack, (which there will be) everyone will say "Why didn't Bush do more, he had all this technology available, why didn't he monitor things more closely."

A few days ago, the Government arrested several Eco-terrorists who were responsible for many millions of dollars in property damage. If you don't investigate so called "threats" how will you ever track down criminals?

The Talon program was just that.

You know what the real problem with today's society is? A couple things. Firstly, no one studies history. They think that everything falls under the first amendment (which it doesn't) and that there are a whole bunch of freedoms that we are loosing, which we never actually had in the first place. Also, we are becoming so ridiculously politically correct, that we are more worried about not offending anyone, than we are about doing whats right.

The folks in the article you shared were demonstrating peacefully, (which of course is covered in the first amendment) and should not suffer any negative impact from having done so, and I honestly doubt that they did. Lets be honest MNS is as bias as any other network.

Just because the people at the protest were investigated, does not mean that is why they were investigated. In all likelihood, they were being watched for other reasons. Probably someone who was at the protest and who was also doing other suspicious things, didn't like that they were caught, and so they sent MSN an email. Does not sound like MSN did much research before they went to press.

I see no mention of sources, no background, etc.

It would be nice to know what really happened, rather than what people who want to take down the Pres say happened.

I don't see how the article supports or detracts from Google's Decision last week.

andrewgoodman

01-24-2006, 08:54 PM

"essential liberty"? You consifer that the storing of a population's DNA in the fight against crime is giving up some "essential liberty"? What's so essential about not having your DNA profile stored? And what liberty would it deprive anyone of? Benjamin Franklin was as entitled to his view as anyone else, and there's nothing special about his view. But he was talking about essential liberty - we are not.

Where does it end, then? Would you like a kidney? "Do I hear a kidney?"

PhilC, have you heard of the term "Panopticon (http://www.google.com/search?q=panopticon&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official)"? Are you familiar with Foucault's views on the matter (http://users.rcn.com/mackey/thesis/panopticon.html)?

PhilC

01-25-2006, 06:05 AM

projectphp

01-25-2006, 09:05 AM

What objections? Seriously? Come on Phil! If you can't use Google (http://www.google.com/search?q=dna+and+civil+liberties) to answer a (rhetorical) question like that, humanity has no chance!

PhilC

01-25-2006, 09:42 AM

What has searching Google got to do with it? I don't need searches on Google to form my views, thank you.

If you are not happy to help make our societies safer, you are entitled to that view, but there is no good reason not to have a DNA database when it would harm nobody and help a lot - no good reason at all. I think you'd sing a different tune if a family member became a victim, and the perpetrator was never found.

bruhaha

01-25-2006, 11:34 AM

the flag waving Republican who claims not to know anything of the US domestic spying programme

The problem here is the use of the label "domestic spying program" --by political critics and many in the media-- to imply that the program is being used in a particular way, before determining exactly what the program in question is doing.

Most would agree that certain types of surveillance are good and necessary security measures. Spying on legitimate suspects and their contacts to try to glean evidence of terrorist plots is one thing; spying on one's political enemies is quite another. When people hear the term "domestic spying program" they are prone to think of the latter. But what's the evidence (at least so far) that any of this is happening? When someone produces credible evidence, by all means, let's pursue it!! But until then, I suggest we be more careful in our choice of terms.

Now, if asking people not to use loaded terms to imply we know something before the evidence has been offered is "flag waving" I guess I'm guilty.

andrewgoodman

01-25-2006, 03:50 PM

Don't be silly, Andrew - kidney indeed!

What objections could anyone (except criminals) have against the state storing everyone's DNA profile to combat crime?

As for privacy on the internet, Ian's excellent post nailed it - there isn't any privacy to defend. We can't have privacy when we interact with the outside world.

I'm not sure where Ian's going. He has some legal views but I also note that he claims that marriage is a reason for not having privacy. Maybe I'd better go to law school to bone up on that one, and possibly run for office after that to ensure that the laws are changed, if that's indeed the case.

As for the "state storing DNA records," how far we've come. A country like America was founded on a healthy degree of suspicion vis-a-vis forms of centralized power. "But it's just DNA!" you might say. Not exactly the point. Let's agree that we are talking about a range of information gather activities that are being proposed based on a "law and order" agenda. There is a huge fallout on people, when that agenda gets pushed too far, including arbitrary searches and incursions, and including subtle shifts in the seriousness of certain kinds of crimes, including minor drug offenses. Have you checked how many people are incarcerated in the U.S.? And how many are in jail in other countries, for crimes of similar magnitude?

What you're potentially arguing for, if you keep following that agenda, is total surveillance of everyone, in order to catch "criminals." It's quite simple, I don't believe in the arbitrary extension of police powers, information gathering, and witch-hunts.

If you don't want to see the subtleties involved, perhaps it's just because you have a consistent party line in your mind that "liberals" are wrong about everything and that "the government" is always right.

Again: "the government" can turn bad, as history has shown. It's all too easy for me to sit here and say: "go ahead and take all my info, fingerprint me, put my DNA on file, and go through every private message I've ever sent and through every search I've ever done, because I have nothing to hide," -- because by and large, like most people, I don't.

But I also believe in the power of the citizenry, and in their rights against such arbitrary investigations before any crime has been committed. You may want to draw the line differently from me as to when we've entered some 1984-like "full surveillance society," but we have to agree, I hope, that there is a line somewhere. If we don't agree that this is a line that can be crossed, then we can't have this conversation.

Now as for private search records, and linking search behavior to people ACROSS ALL INTERNET SEARCHES, this is a prospect that I find terrifying. It doesn't surprise me, and nor would it surprise me if the gov't was monitoring my gmail messages or for that matter phone conversations. But no sir I do not believe it is their right to monitor such things just on the premise that there is a war on terrorism, child porn, drugs, or whatever the excuse du jour is for eroding privacy and using information for political gain. I would lobby vigorously against that, if it were my country.

The problem with your argument is, it could always hold true. What if listening devices were placed in every car, every home? If you're doing nothing wrong, you should have nothing to fear, right?

Come on.

Now let's try an exercise. Imagine the following two by two grid, based on measurable aspects of citizens' current "civic orientations" (based on answers they might give to survey questions, measuring their behavior, etc.).

You've got the trust dimension - hi & lo.

Now the "efficacy" dimension - hi & lo.

Trust = how much trust does one have that government actors are abiding by the law, and acting in the best interest of the citizenry.

Efficacy = how much impact does one believe one has in terms of exercising their democratic voice / rights in the current political system. A component of this is knowledge about how to effect change institutionally.

High efficacy + high trust = a citizen or patriot. This is presumably a desirable state to be in, but depends on institutions being truly transparent, one's personal background, and the administration earning trust.

Low efficacy + high trust = a belonger, obedient person.

High efficacy + low trust = a rebel or dissident.

Low efficacy + low trust = alienated, dropout from the political process.

As you can see, in an environment of low trust, we cannot have a record high number of "citizens". We are likely to see dissidents and over time, more alienated disaffected folks.

In fact, my trust in the current administration is low, because I see the precedent of similar administrations using private information and spying for POLITICAL PURPOSES. In an intensely partisan environment forgive me for believing that there is something political in every request to up the level of information gathering across a wide swath of the citizenry, including listening to private phone conversations.

Evidently, for your reasons, you don't feel the same way. But at least we need to agree that there are principles involved and that privacy is something to value in some sense, and that governments and security agencies aren't representing us at all, if they're free to sift through information in their own way, discovering what they like, for kicks.

dazzlindonna

01-25-2006, 04:28 PM

If you don't want to see the subtleties involved, perhaps it's just because you have a consistent party line in your mind that "liberals" are wrong about everything and that "the government" is always right.

Not necessarily true. I'm a big liberal, and I also pretty much assume the government is more often wrong (or corrupt). Which also means that I assume they already know or can find out any dang thing they want about me, whether they have the right to or not. However, I also assume it is what it is, and no amount of belly-aching or sign-waving is going to change that. There will always be corrupt people in office, and they will always do things that is not their right to do. Kick one out, you'll get another one in. (Hey, I live in Louisiana where this is firsthand knowledge). Defeatist thinking? yep, guess so.

In any case, if you've ever known first hand what it is like to watch criminals get away with heinous acts of violence (not at the person in some news story you read, but directly against you, or your daughter, or your son, or brother, or sister, or mother, or grandmother...), you would likely care much less about "potential" privacy invasions that the government "might" do somewhere in time. You would be wondering why the heck that DNA that was deposited upon your loved one couldn't be matched up, and the perpetrator couldn't be tracked down. You would be even more incensed, if that criminal then went on to harm your next door neighbor, and then your minister, and then your accountant, and on and on and on. One little DNA match might have avoided a lot.

Privacy? We ain't got none. Right to privacy? Sure, we have a right to it. But do we have it? Have we ever? Really? I seriously doubt it.

I'd much rather see some serial killer/rapist/jerk caught than worry about some sense of privacy that I never really had in the first place.

bruhaha

01-25-2006, 05:19 PM

as for private search records, and linking search behavior to people ACROSS ALL INTERNET SEARCHES, this is a prospect that I find terrifying.

First of all, please look back at the issue that started all this. As Danny has clearly stated, repeatedly, "the information [requested] is completely divorced from any personally identifiable data"

It doesn't surprise me, and nor would it surprise me if the gov't was monitoring my gmail messages or for that matter phone conversations.

Frankly, I doubt the government has any interest at all in your personal phone conservations, email, etc., unless of course you happen to be corresponding with someone already identified as or suspected of being a terrorist. Even if someone in the government did want to spy on everyone's private communications, where in the world would they get the resources to do so?!

But no sir I do not believe it is their right to monitor such things just on the premise that there is a war on terrorism, child porn, drugs, or whatever the excuse du jour is for eroding privacy and using information for political gain.

Well I suppose if we assume with you that all such things always being excuses --as if there were never any necessary or legitimate security needs (principally to try to protect real people from planned attacks)-- I'd have to agree with you. But most folks recognize that one of the major reasons for even having a government is to defend the people, and that there are therefore legitimate uses of such tools (even if there are also cases of abuse, which are NOT protected). And the courts have long and consistently disagreed with you that the government has the authority, indeed the constitutional responsibility, to use such means to protect the citizenry.

and using information for political gain.
This is another assumption you are tossing into the mix that only muddies the discussion. Is it possible for a government to do such a thing? Sure. And when there's good reason to believe that is happening, the matter should be pursued. But it is absurd to allege that every time the government taps phone calls, etc., it is on a political fishing expedition.

In fact, my trust in the current administration is low, because I see the precedent of similar administrations using private information and spying for POLITICAL PURPOSES. In an intensely partisan environment forgive me for believing that there is something political in every request to up the level of information gathering across a wide swath of the citizenry, including listening to private phone conversations.

Again, you are making rather large assertions about "political purposes", spying on many people (implication: all sorts of people, with no real justification) and the collecting of PRIVATE information. Where is your evidence for these things? What evidence do you have that any of this information is, in fact, being used for political purposes (by which I assume you meant to personally threaten or weaken a political opponent)? How do you know this is going on accross a wide swath of the citizenry? I'm sorry others' prior abuses of information gathering has you skittish, but that is not adequate reason to start leveling charges about current activities.

On the "privacy" issue, to return to the Google story, please note again, as Danny did, that this request did NOT involve collecting private, identifying information. (Also, incidentally, did you notice that the requests to Google, et.al., were not particularly covert?! Nor, for that matter were they "demands" or "subpoenas". . . .but I guess I don't expect the AP to check into such subtle details.)

projectphp

01-25-2006, 06:58 PM

Again, you are making rather large assertions about "political purposes", spying on many people (implication: all sorts of people, with no real justification) and the collecting of PRIVATE information. Where is your evidence for these things? What evidence do you have that any of this information is, in fact, being used for political purposes (by which I assume you meant to personally threaten or weaken a political opponent)?
Falacy of the Burden of Proof (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/burden-of-proof.html). If someone wants to change the law, wants to take away my fredoms, the burden of proof that it is all Kosher lies with teh people attempting to take away the rights. So, what proof do you have, that the government will never ever over step the mark? What proof do you have that governments never do bad? And who will, as they say, watch teh watchers? And who will watch them?

Again, we need to establish, in any argument, whom the burden of proof lies on. In this case, the Burden Of Proof lies with those wishing to start collecting data, not with those oppossing it.

And in any case, Extraordnary Rendition, alone and in isolation, proves that the law, International or otherwise, isn't a major concern of the governemtn of the United States of America.

unreviewed

01-25-2006, 08:42 PM

Andrew, good points, but consider the usefulness of a DNA database for the good of mankind. Think of all the useful health and disease information that could be produced with a cradle to grave DNA database.

The possibilities vs. the fear factor should be clear to you.

AnthonyCea

01-25-2006, 09:59 PM

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6030518.html?tag=zdnn.alert

MikeDammann

01-26-2006, 05:34 AM

I find it very important to provide our government with search data to help cut down on crime, terror and such. But giving as much access as requested is IMO unreasonable. We need to have some sort of privacy when surfing the web from the comfort of our own home. I personally don't believe that this is a Republican vs. Democrat issue. It would be speculation as to what if anything a Democratic government would try to get their hands on, but I'm sure that there is no government on earth that wouldn't gladly accept as much information as could possibly be provided to them.

Google has every right on earth to take the stand they are taking.

vayapues

01-26-2006, 07:37 AM

Google has every right on earth to take the stand they are taking.

The question is not about "rights", it is about right and wrong. Google absolutely has the right, but that does not mean their decision is right.

bruhaha

01-26-2006, 11:18 AM

If someone wants to change the law, wants to take away my freedoms, the burden of proof that it is all Kosher lies with the people attempting to take away the rights.

Again, we need to establish, in any argument, whom the burden of proof lies on. In this case, the Burden Of Proof lies with those wishing to start collecting data, not with those oppossing it.

You are correct, IF this is an instance of "changing laws" or trying to "take away" freedoms or rights you previously had. But has it yet been established that this is what is happening here, or are you just assuming it? I note, for instance, that people are complaining about the government violating their privacy. But is that the case? The request to Google specifically did NOT ask for personal, identifying information. You might argue that it still constitutes a violation your (or somebody's) privacy, but it's not self-evident nor widely agreed on. You have to prove that assertion; you cannot simply assume it.

Another part of your argument, I confess I do not even understand. You seem to be saying that one must first prove that 'the government' (or perhaps even any government?) never ever does or could abuse its powers before granting any request. Sorry if I've misrepresented you, but that notion is ridiculous, based on a presumption of guilt.

If, on the other hand, you are just asking that the government give evidence that it has a legitimate reason to be requesting the information, I think the Justice Department has attempted to do so. And for matters of authority granted by the Constitution (as historically recognized by the courts) the Executive does not need to offer proof for each thing they wish to do. (That may well not apply to the Google case, but it does have a bearing on the issue of "spying" that keeps spilling over into this discussion.)

Your concern about "who watches" is a legitimate one. There is, in fact, accountability in the system. It may not be foolproof (which system is?) or to your liking, but it is there. Investigations and impeachment are always options if there is some grounds for suspecting malfaesance. (And, if the public doesn't like what it is hearing about there are likely to be electoral consequences as well.) But this does not mean that the government has no right or authority to act in the first place!

DarkMatter

01-26-2006, 11:21 AM

There are a few other issues involved with a DNA database that could come back to bite us in the ass....once the government has this database, and a rapid way to do dna sequencing (currently in development), they will have data on your predispositions to genetic disease and other physical traits. There is a fear that this info would somehow eventually filter down to health insurance companies who would then deny coverage to people based on their genetic predispositions to disease.

I would hazard a guess that there would be some other negatives to this, but I'm not well educated on the subject.

grnidone

01-26-2006, 08:27 PM

Do you guys really think Google is doing this to "protect their end user's privacy?"

I don't think Google gives a rip about privacy. I think that is a nice thing for hte media.

I think Google is doing this more because they don't want to hand over intellectual property: at some point, the information they give to the government will be public domain.

Why would they hand over the keys to the castle?

mcanerin

01-26-2006, 08:34 PM

Actually, I think the issue might be closer to this:

Pop quiz: If someone is going to get sued here, which party DOESN'T have immunity?

I know I'd be a little...ticked off...if I found a specific and measurable instance of a search engine invading my privacy and giving it to the government without a warrant.

So ticked off I might want to do something about it, legally. I wonder if people on juries use search engines and care about their privacy, too? That might be helpful...

Ian

grnidone

01-27-2006, 10:54 AM

Ian

That is true as well. Especially when this search information becomes public domain -- google stands a chance of getting sued.

BradBristol

01-27-2006, 08:37 PM

What's so essential about not having your DNA profile stored?

What if a prospective employer could gain access to your DNA? Maybe they would not want to hire you because you have a Gene that has a tendency to produce different types of conic illness and that would increase the employers insurance costs. Or maybe you have the Addictive Gene so you are classified as an addict and can’t get a good job (BTW - Having the Addictive Gene does NOT make you an Addict).

What if an insurance companies could access your DNA? Would you and your children be denied insurance coverage because you have a recessive MS, MD or Alzheimer Gene?

Would your child be classified and educated based on his or her DNA?

The idea of security vs. freedom is not new, “to be Free” is the opposite of “to be Secure”.

In my opinion it is better to be Free and take care of your own security, than to turn over your security and Freedom to someone else.

andrewgoodman

01-29-2006, 01:48 PM

I'd much rather see some serial killer/rapist/jerk caught than worry about some sense of privacy that I never really had in the first place.

This assumes the point of gathering the information is to catch that criminal. But is it?

andrewgoodman

01-29-2006, 01:51 PM

First of all, please look back at the issue that started all this. As Danny has clearly stated, repeatedly, "the information [requested] is completely divorced from any personally identifiable data"

In fact, the first government request "forgot" to specify the removal of personally identifiable data. They later amended it.

My point is that this is a fishing expedition, and that it's a violation of individual and commercial rights. If people don't stand up and make this point, it merely opens the door to further fishing, and deeper and deeper surveillance of private data for any purpose the executive branch deems necessary.

andrewgoodman

03-18-2006, 12:15 PM

Update: Google's take on the judge's ruling, which drastically limits the information Google will be forced to hand over:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/03/judge-tells-doj-no-on-search-queries.html

MikeDammann

03-18-2006, 04:40 PM

According to this article by the San Francisco Chronicle, the Judge himself had some major concerns about too many secrets coming to light:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/15/BUG6LHO48Q1.DTL&hw=google&sn=001&sc=1000

andrewgoodman

04-04-2006, 06:45 PM

The latest is that the feds subpoenaed dozens of companies, including major telcos, ISP's, web hosts, web security firms, etc.:

http://www.ala.org/al_onlineTemplate.cfm?Section=alonline&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=122172

andrewgoodman

04-18-2006, 09:45 PM

http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20060417-104836-2055r

Robert_Charlton

04-20-2006, 05:08 AM

Andrew - The Wired Magazine version of the AT&T story goes into a bit more detail....

Whistle-Blower Outs NSA Spy Room
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70619-0.html?tw=wn_index_1

AT&T provided National Security Agency eavesdroppers with full access to its customers' phone calls, and shunted its customers' internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT&T worker cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against the company.

I've long felt this whole thing is about data mining, and that the attempt to get a lot of data from Google was simply a test run.

Other possibly related stories and pages...

Gonzales says calls in U.S. could be tapped without warrant
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/3777315.html

ISS Word Spring 2006
(Intelligence Support Systems for Lawful Interception, Internet Surveilliance and Investigative Analysis Conference and Expo)
http://www.telestrategies.com/ISS_SPR06/agenda.cfm

This article, which provides an overview of CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act) and the situation that communications providers are facing, was given to me by a friend in academia...

About CALEA
http://www.telecomweb.com/reports/calea/calea_comp.htm

I'm not technical enough to know how this act relates to web search. My guess is that it doesn't yet, but it well could if expanded, and perhaps that's what this effort to get search data from the engines was all about.