Google stands up to government porn probe

...search logs would help to understand the behaviour of Web users and estimate how frequently they encounter pornography, the motion says. For instance, Internet addresses obtained from the search engines could be tested against filtering programs to evaluate their effectiveness.

A subpoena dated August 2005 requests a complete list of all Internet addresses that can "be located" through Google's popular search engine, and "all queries that have been entered" over a two-month period beginning on June 1, 2005. Later, prosecutors offered to narrow the request to random samples of indexed sites and search strings. It's unclear what version of the request AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo complied with.

Although the government is not asking for Internet addresses that would identify people, some legal experts fear that disclosing search terms would invade privacy.

"The more [the government] can figure out who the surfers are, the more people's First Amendment rights are in jeopardy," said Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University.

The Justice Department declined to comment on Thursday. But in court papers, it says that even though other search companies voluntarily complied, excerpts from Google's logs are "of value to the government" because it has the "largest share of the Web search market".

To analyse the logs, the Justice Department has hired Philip Stark, a professor of statistics at the University of California, Berkeley. Stark said in a statement that analysing information from Google would let him "estimate the prevalence of harmful-to-minors" and the "effectiveness of content filters" in blocking it.

Google, for its part, "is not a party to this lawsuit and [the government's] demand for information over-reaches," associate general counsel Nicole Wong said in a statement. "We had lengthy discussions with them to try to resolve this, but were not able to, and we intend to resist their motion vigorously."

In a letter dated 10 October, 2005, Google lawyer Ashok Ramani objected to the Justice Department's request on the grounds that it could disclose trade secrets and was "overbroad, unduly burdensome, vague and intended to harass".

The Bush administration's request is tied to its defence of the Child Online Protection Act, which restricts the posting of sexually explicit material deemed "harmful to minors" on commercial Web sites, unless it's unavailable to minors.

A divided US Supreme Court in 2004 stopped short of striking down the law and instead said that a full trial — to take place in Philadelphia — was needed to determine whether the law is constitutional.

A trial before US District Judge Lowell Reed is scheduled to begin on 2 October. ACLU attorney Fine said although the dispute with the search companies does not directly involve his organisation, until prosecutors "explain what they plan to do with this and provide a detailed explanation, they cannot meet their burden to justify forcing Google to turn over this information."

Privacy concerns
As part of their defence of the act, prosecutors are expected to argue that technological filtering methods are less effective than criminal prohibitions.

Privacy watchdogs have worried about the massive store of data that Google has assembled about the online behaviour of Internet users. Google keeps log files that record search terms used, Web sites visited and the IP address and browser type of the computer for every single search conducted through its Web site. It also sets cookies that can be used to correlate repeat visits to the company's growing network of Web sites.

Sherwin Siy, staff counsel at the privacy rights advocacy organisation Electronic Privacy Information Centre (EPIC), praised Google for fighting the administration's request. However, he said there would not even be an issue if the search engine hadn't collected the information and made it aggregatable in the first place.

"This continual aggregation of people's search streams and all this information and the other data from their other services like Gmail places privacy at risk. This is something you would think Google should have anticipated," he said. "It is not a recent phenomenon that overbroad government investigations will put people's privacy at risk by digging through business records."

EPIC's Siy said AOL and MSN should have fought the government's demands more vigorously. "In not doing anything to protect the privacy of their customers they are not doing the right thing," he said. "They are taking the easy way out."

A spokesman for Ask Jeeves said Thursday that it "has not received requests for search data from the Department of Justice in this matter."

Kurt Opsahl, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said he was glad Google "stood up in this case to protect the privacy of this information and I'm disappointed that other search engines would be willing to turn it over without a fight."

"Google has a massive database that reaches into the most intimate details of your life," he said. "What you are searching for, what you are reading, what you are worried about, what you enjoy. People should be able to use modern tools like search engines without the fear of Big Brother looking over their shoulder."

CNET News.com's Anne Broache and Greg Sandoval contributed to this report.