Google stands up to government porn probe

US Federal prosecutors preparing to defend a controversial Internet pornography law in court have asked Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and America Online to hand over millions of search records — a request that Google is adamantly denying.

In court documents filed on Wednesday, the Bush administration asked a federal judge in San Jose, California, to force Google to comply with a subpoena for the information, which would reveal the search terms of a broad swath of the search engine's visitors.

Prosecutors are requesting a "random sampling" of one million Internet addresses accessible through Google's popular search engine, and a random sampling of one million search queries submitted to Google over a one-week period.

Google said in a statement sent to ZDNet UK sister site CNET News.com on Thursday that it will resist the request "vigorously."

The Bush administration's request, first reported by The San Jose Mercury News, is part of its attempts to defend the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, which is being challenged in court in Philadelphia by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU says Web sites cannot realistically comply with COPA and that the law violates the right to freedom of speech mandated by the First Amendment.

The search engine companies are not parties to the suit.

An attorney for the ACLU said Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL received identical subpoenas and chose to comply with them rather than fight the request in court.

Yahoo acknowledged on Thursday that it complied with the Justice Department's request but said no personally identifiable information was handed over. "We are vigorous defenders of our users' privacy," said Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako. "We did not provide any personal information in response to the Justice Department's subpoena. In our opinion this is not a privacy issue."

Osako declined to provide details, but court documents in the Google case show that the government has been demanding "the text of each search string entered" by users over a time period of between one week and two months, plus a listing of Web sites taken from the search engine's index.

"Our understanding is that MSN and AOL have complied with the government's request, that Yahoo has provided some information in response, but that information wasn't completely satisfactory [according to] the government," ACLU staff attorney Aden Fine said.

Jack Samad, senior vice-president for the National Coalition for Protection of Children and Families, a Cincinnati, Ohio-based advocacy group, said search engines should be willing to help the Bush administration defend the law.

"Young people are experiencing broken lives after being exposed to adult images and behaviours on the Internet," Samad said. "I'm disappointed Google did not want to exercise its good corporate branding to secure the protection of youth. I think [complying with the subpoena] would substantiate the basis of COPA if they get a free exchange of information on youthful use of the Internet."

AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein confirmed that the company received a subpoena from the Justice Department but said the information from the ACLU was not accurate.

"We did not and would not comply with such a subpoena. We gave (the DOJ) a generic list of aggregate and anonymous search terms, and not results, from a roughly one day period. There were absolutely no privacy implications," Weinstein said. "There was no way to tie those search terms to individuals or to search results." He declined to elaborate.

A Microsoft representative said: "MSN works closely with law enforcement officials worldwide to assist them when requested... It is our policy to respond to legal requests in a very responsive and timely manner, in full compliance with applicable law." The company would not confirm or deny whether it complied with the Justice Department's subpoena.

But in a statement released later in the day on Thursday, Microsoft said it was, in fact, contacted by the Justice Department.

"We did comply with their request for data in regards to helping protect children, in a way that ensured we also protected the privacy of our customers," the company said. "We were able to share aggregated query data [not search results] that did not include any personally identifiable information, at their request."

In a motion filed on Wednesday, prosecutors say that compliance is necessary to prove that the 1998 law is "more effective than filtering software in protecting minors from exposure to harmful materials on the Internet." Records from...

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