Bush Wants YOUR Google Records

I just spent 30 minutes doing what you people asked, and had the site delete my post. So this attempt will be much shorter. Keep in mind this is a motion filed by the government's attorneys!!!!. Also,I have to put in my password every few minutes to keep from losing what I type...so this will be added to over the next few minutes.

A) Page 4, line 6 on, show how the government did want all data, including personal info, but now limited it to data that do not have that info. This is bogus, because they still want the original electronic data which does have such personal identifiers. There is no provision in this entire motion explaining how personal identifiers will be deleted, or how we as Google users can confirm such deletions.

Page 8, line 8 again confirms that the government wants the electronic files...and there is no provision whatsoever explaining how personal identifiers are to be deleted, or how such deletions are to be confirmed.

On this section, the motion also says that the government wants access to the databases where the URLs are stored...such databases certainly contain personal identifiers. You may be comfortable trusting politicians with your personal information, but I am not, be they Republican OR Democrat.

B)
"What an outrage!" says Paul Alan Levy, an attorney with the litigation group of nonprofit consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen. "There are two kinds of questions that are raised here. One is what ought a court to do about a subpoena like this? Our general view is that because Internet activity is a form of speech or association, there ought to be some standard of proof that a party seeking such discovery ought to be able to meet before obtaining information."

"The second problem," he continues, "is ISPs should be aware of the danger of such subpoenas and really should be thinking very hard about how much of this information they ought to be retaining."
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http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingnews.jhtml?articleId=177102097&pgno=2

C)It's not just me who is concerned. From an attorney actually fighting child porn:
Parry Aftab, a cyberspace lawyer who runs WiredSafety.org, an online safety group to protect children online, said the identification requirements of COPA violate the privacy of adults.


"There is not yet a way to identify that somebody is an adult without also identifying who they are," she explains. "And in this country, adults are allowed to view legal pornography without having to identify who they are. You might have to flash a driver's license to show that you're over 21 but nobody writes it down."
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http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingnews.jhtml?articleId=177102097&pgno=2

***FINISHED***
 
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manny said:
In fairness, I said that I have "no objection" to the request for random URLs. Let me amend that statement. I have no privacy-related objection to the government's request for that information. As regards the government's "right" to obtain the information by subpoena I can see some arguments on both sides and I'm content to let the big boys at the Justice Department and Google's legal department slug it out, but I'm secretly rooting for Google to win.
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Does anyone remember... was it Webcrawler or Lycos or Hotbot (remember when those were the last word in search engines? Boy I feel old)... anyway, one of them had an auto-refreshing window on its homepage that displayed 10 random search strings entered by users.

There was an option to filter out adult content if you wished, but otherwise it was practically a ticker tape of real-time searches spewed out 24 hours a day. It was presumably there to reinforce the engine's popularity, but from what I've seen here, it's more or less the same kind of random sampling of search strings under discussion here.

And that was pushed into the PUBLIC, by the website iself! I don't recall any uproar about it at the time.

Any other old codgers remember that? I'll see if I can dig it up.
 
Darat said:
Why is that comparable to this isue?
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Because, Darat. It's (apparently) the same "sensitive, personal information" that has everyone's knickers in a twist. Do you not see how that relates to the discussion at hand?
 
Jocko said:
Does anyone remember... was it Webcrawler or Lycos or Hotbot (remember when those were the last word in search engines? Boy I feel old)... anyway, one of them had an auto-refreshing window on its homepage that displayed 10 random search strings entered by users.
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Yes, and it was hilarious!

Last ten seaches:

Backstreet Boys
N Sync
naked AND girls AND girl on girl
Backstreet Boys
michael jackson AND freak AND children
nude girls
leather AND girls AND free porn
Backstreet Boys
Backstreet Boys
Backstreet Boys AND gay AND talentless
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Only the real ones were usually misspelled.
 
Nyarlathotep said:
Because it is the same level of invasion of privacy. It told you what was being searched for, not who was doing it.
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Jocko said:
Because, Darat. It's (apparently) the same "sensitive, personal information" that has everyone's knickers in a twist. Do you not see how that relates to the discussion at hand?
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One was what a company decided to do with its own data - one is a government telling a company what to do. I really don't see the comparison.
 
Darat said:
One was what a company decided to do with its own data - one is a government telling a company what to do. I really don't see the comparison.
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Again, though, I think most people here that don't see this as an egregious breach of privacy still agree that the aspect of the government forcing a third party with no involvment in the case to hand over info like that is troubling. As I said, they are two different issues.
 
Darat said:
One was what a company decided to do with its own data - one is a government telling a company what to do. I really don't see the comparison.
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No one, as far as I can tell, is arguing that the feds should have the right to demand the data, so you can stop thrashing at that strawman any time. My point was, and I really think I was quite clear on the matter, is that the SAME DATA was available publicly, where anyone could see it, even an FBI agent with an AOL account - and no one cared.

My point of dispute is not over Google's rights and responsibilities, but rather over the predictable hysteria that flows in the wake of every "Bush is out to destroy us all" issue like this one.

Like most of the others, it's a non-starter, no matter how much outraged spittle flies from the lips of the "aggreived."
 
TragicMonkey said:
Yes, and it was hilarious!



Only the real ones were usually misspelled.
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Right on. Glad to see I'm not recalling incorrectly. Those really were funny... and if the records of these searches and their identities were ever given to any agency, it should be the Department of Education so they could assign mandatory remedial grammar classes.
 
Jocko said:
No one, as far as I can tell, is arguing that the feds should have the right to demand the data, so you can stop thrashing at that strawman any time. My point was, and I really think I was quite clear on the matter, is that the SAME DATA was available publicly, where anyone could see it, even an FBI agent with an AOL account - and no one cared.
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Again, let's be fair. Some of the very same people screaming about this were in fact screaming about the search engines collecting (and in particular retaining, of course) the data in the first place. That's why Firefox has a Google cookie scrambler, for example.

Google, of course, is not in the same position, having collected the data in the first place.
 
Jocko said:
No one, as far as I can tell, is arguing that the feds should have the right to demand the data, so you can stop thrashing at that strawman any time. My point was, and I really think I was quite clear on the matter, is that the SAME DATA was available publicly, where anyone could see it, even an FBI agent with an AOL account - and no one cared.
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But why should anyone have cared? That is what that company said to its users that it would do with that information.

That is why the two things are not comparable.
 
Darat said:
But why should anyone have cared? That is what that company said to its users that it would do with that information.
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That is not the issue. The issue is that the same anonymous data is considered humorous when disseminated one way, and a mortal threat to the American way of life when used the same way by someone else, even though that someone else already had access to it, as in the Lycos matter.

Again - I have made no comment on the legal standing of Google or the feds. I think the feds should get stuffed just on basic free market principles. But I also think it's does us no favors to conflate data that has already proven itself to be harmlessly innocuous with Big Brother paranoia.

That is why the two things are not comparable.
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I and most people here obviously disagree.
 
Jocko said:
That is not the issue. The issue is that the same anonymous data is considered humorous when disseminated one way, and a mortal threat to the American way of life when used the same way by someone else...
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Absolutely. I apply much stricter rules to government than I do to private industry.
 
Freakshow said:
Absolutely. I apply much stricter rules to government than I do to private industry.
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As do I. But with the data that's on the table, it's no more a practical concern than cameras posted on the interstate to measure traffic flow. It's all out there for anyone who cares to sit by the road and watch.

Perhaps a bigger issue here is the general (and erroneous) impression that one's exploits on the web are anonymous. It feels like we're trying to protect a right that has never really existed in the first place.
 
Jocko said:
As do I. But with the data that's on the table, it's no more a practical concern than cameras posted on the interstate to measure traffic flow. It's all out there for anyone who cares to sit by the road and watch.

Perhaps a bigger issue here is the general (and erroneous) impression that one's exploits on the web are anonymous. It feels like we're trying to protect a right that has never really existed in the first place.
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Perhaps the alarm isn't over the particulars, but the principle: the government wants information from a private company, and it demands it. Is the government entitled to seize whatever information it wants, from anyone, for any reason? Or are there limits and qualifications?
 
Jocko said:
As do I. But with the data that's on the table, it's no more a practical concern than cameras posted on the interstate to measure traffic flow. It's all out there for anyone who cares to sit by the road and watch.

Perhaps a bigger issue here is the general (and erroneous) impression that one's exploits on the web are anonymous. It feels like we're trying to protect a right that has never really existed in the first place.
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I understand, but I don't want to set a precedent where it is okay for the government to start doing this. Because the next step is to get information like this that DOES have personal information in it.

"Slippery slope" isn't always a logical fallacy when talking about the advancement of government power. Rights can be taken away step by step, in small increments. There are a lot of historical examples to support that.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Perhaps the alarm isn't over the particulars, but the principle: the government wants information from a private company, and it demands it. Is the government entitled to seize whatever information it wants, from anyone, for any reason? Or are there limits and qualifications?
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Holy crap, that's pretty much exactly what I just said! Me and TM, saying basically the same thing? First Mark...now TM! I think I need to see my shrink...
:D
 
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