Cyber Clashes

4Law 17/3/06

Judge: Google must give feds limited access to records
update In a move that alleviates some privacy concerns, a federal judge granted part of a Justice Department request for Google search data but said users' search queries were off-limits. The 21-page order (click here for PDF), issued Friday in San Jose, Calif., by U.S. District Judge James Ware, represented little change from his stance at a hearing earlier this week. Ware had indicated he would grant the U.S. Justice Department access to a portion of Google's index of Web sites but said he was hesitant to ask for users' search terms because of worries about the "perception by the public that this is subject to government scrutiny" when they type search terms into Google.com. Ware said in his Friday order that the government demonstrated a "substantial need" for Google's random URL sample, which it plans to run through filtering software to test the software's antipornography filtering prowess as the DOJ prepares to defend a child-protection law in court. But the DOJ did not meet that standard regarding search queries, Ware said. He noted that 50,000 URLs must be turned over, unless both parties agree to an alternative scenario on or before April 3.

Google rückt "Porno-Daten" nicht raus
US-Regierung fordert Zugriff-Daten auf Schmuddel-Seiten

Court documents reveal that the USDOJ has been pressuring Google for excerpts from its search logs for half a year. USDOJ hope to use the excerpts to show that filtering software can't protect children online. USDOJ Demands Search Data; Google Says No; AOL, MSN & Yahoo Said Yes.Last year 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. A motion has been filed  by US Department Of Justice to force Google to hand over the data.The USDOJ apparently wants to estimate how much pornography shows up in the searches that children do.According to the report, they wanted a list of one million web addresses. Not who went to the web pages and when, just a list of URLs picked randomly.They wanted searches for one week.Here's the official Google statement from Nicole Wong, associate general counsel with Google :Google is not a party to this lawsuit and their demand for information overreaches. We had lengthy discussions with them to try to resolve this, but were not able to and we intend to resist their motion vigorously.

Google défie l'administration Bush
Google refuse de fournir au gouvernement les listes des résultats des recherches lancées sur son site. L'administration Bush souhaite connaître les noms des sites de pornographie et les mots clés y menant. Cette fronde pourrait coûter cher au groupe.