Confessions of a Mad Librarian

News, news and more news.

1) The U.S. gummint is trying to re-animate COPA (or maybe it's not news ... I've had my head in a few books for quite a while now).

2) In its efforts for 1, the gummint subpeonaed an unspecified number of search engines to get data on how many porntastic queries are searched in a given week.

3) Most of the unspecified search engines gave it up [add tasteless yet apropos analogy to a sexually promiscuous person here]

4) Google is fighting the subpeona.

From the SJ Mercury News' SiliconValley beat:

The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order Google to turn over a broad range of material from its closely guarded databases.

The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law was meant to punish online pornography sites that make their content accessible to minors. The government contends it needs the Google data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches.

In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Justice Department lawyers revealed that Google has refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year for the records, which include a request for 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.

The Mountain View-based search and advertising giant opposes releasing the information on a variety of grounds, saying it would violate the privacy rights of its users and reveal company trade secrets, according to court documents.

Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel for Google, said the company will fight the government's effort "vigorously."

For those concerned with privacy of search engine usage, and especially concerned about Google's commitment to privacy, this is an interesting development. Some may even be heartened by it, until one remembers that:

a. some other search engines [at this point, there is some confirmation that Yahoo!, MSN and AOL were subpeoned and complied with the requests] acquiesed with nary a word; and
b. the U.S. government is continuing its quest to fight child pornography with constitutionally questionable measures that are vague and overbroad.

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch is doing great updates on what the govt wants and why, whether their request is the most efficaeous way of demonstrating the need for COPA, what search engines may be involved and why we should care, even if individual IP addresses aren't being included in the data dump. Gary Price has highlights of and links to the government's brief and supporting statements presented to the court to force Google's compliance with the subpeona.

As it happens, my school is throwing a privacy symposium next Friday (1/27) in downtown San Jose ... boy, are we going to have a lot to talk about.