CORRECTION APPENDED. SEE BELOW.
Just how much pornography do web surfers go hunting for, and how easy
is it to find? The federal government wants to know, not because the
Department of Justice is looking for hot babes, but in order to defend
one of its own laws against a legal challenge.
On Tuesday, Federal District Court Judge James Ware ordered
Google to turn over a sampling of users†search queries to the Justice
Department. The government claims it needs Google data to show that
young people are getting around software intended to prevent them from
seeing pornography. As with any case that raises privacy concerns, Ware
was responsible for weighing competing claims: Google right to
protect its data against the government need for information to
enforce (and, in this situation, evaluate) its laws. In this case Ware
made the wrong decision. The government desire to prevent clever
youngsters from subverting anti-pornography software does not justify
an exploration of Google data, it represents a very real threat to
the privacy of Google users.
We do, however, recognize that the government has made
significant concessions in the Google case. The Justice Department
originally requested what could have turned out to be billions of web
addresses derived from Google searches. We believe that this data would
have made it possible for government investigators to uncover
potentially sensitive information about Google users. For example,
since users frequently include their own names and those of their
friends in their searches, the government could have used search terms
to uncover personal information on individual users. When Google
challenged the government right to claim this quantity of
information, the government scaled back its claim. It now requests only
