Google rejects Justice Dept. bid for search info
Feb 17, 8:26 PM (ET)
By Eric Auchard
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc. on Friday formally rejected the U.S. Justice Department's subpoena of data from the Web search leader, arguing the demand violated the privacy of users' Web searches and its own trade secrets.
Responding to a motion by U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Google also said in a filing in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California the government demand to disclose Web search data was impractical.
The Bush administration is seeking to compel Google to hand over Web search data as part of a bid by the Justice Department to appeal a 2004 Supreme Court injunction of a law to penalize Web site operators who allow children to view pornography.
Google is going it alone in opposing the U.S. government request. Rivals Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. are among the companies that have complied with the Justice Department demand for data to be used to make its case.
Google's lawyers said the company shares the government's concern with materials harmful to minors but argued that the request for its data was irrelevant. They offered a series of technical arguments why this data was not useful.
The Mountain View, California-based company said that complying with the U.S. government's request for "untold millions of search queries" would put an undue burden on the company, including a "week of engineer time to complete."
"Algorithms regularly change. The identical search query submitted today may yield a different result than the identical search conducted yesterday," attorneys from Perkins Coie LLP, the company's external legal counsel, argue in the filing.
Complying with the Justice Department request would also force Google to reveal how its Web search technology works -- something it jealously guards as a trade secret, the company argued. It refuses to disclose even the total number of searches conducted each day.
Google's resistance contrasts with a deal the company has struck with the Chinese government to censor some searches on a new site in China, a move that has drawn sharp criticism from members of the U.S. Congress and human rights activists.
"Google users trust that when they enter a search query into a Google search box ... that Google will keep private whatever information users communicate absent a compelling reason," attorneys for Google said in the filing.
The legal spat also comes amid heightened sensitivity to privacy issues by the company as it recently began offering a new version of its Google Desktop service that vacuums up data stored on user PCs and makes it accessible on the users' other computers. For customers who consent to the service, copies of their data are stored on Google's central computers.
Privacy activists have rallied to the defense of Google for fighting the U.S. government request while some conservative and religious organizations have criticized the company for failing to help the government combat child pornography.
The American Civil Liberties Union, with other civil rights groups, bookstores and alternative media outlets filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of Google.
The hearing on the Justice Department motion to compel Google to divulge the search data is scheduled to take place on March 13 in San Jose before U.S. District Judge James Ware.
"The government must show that this request is the most relevant way to accomplish its goal," said Perry Aftab, an attorney, privacy activist and executive director of WiredSafety.org, a popular online child safety site.
"Why would Google or anyone else turn over data that might create further risks for their customers? The public policy gains don't outweigh the risks," she said.
http://reuters.myway.com/article/20060218/2006-02-18T012645Z_01_N17192366_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-GOOGLE-PRIVACY-DC.html
In a related privacy/censorship issue:
China’s virtual cops pinpoint web dissent
By Mure Dickie
Published: February 17 2006 19:19 | Last updated: February 17 2006 19:19
With their big blue blinking eyes and their quirky personal websites, there is no denying the cuteness of the cartoon cops at the front line of China’s battle for control of the internet.
But the role played by Jingjing and Chacha, the animated online icons recently introduced by police in the southern Chinese boomtown of Shenzhen, is entirely serious.
The cartoon couple patrol the city’s news and discussion websites to scare off anyone who might be tempted to use online anonymity to break China’s laws, says Chen Minli, director of the Shenzhen City Public Security Bureau’s Internet Surveillance Centre.
“Now internet users know the police are watching them,” Ms Chen says in an interview at the Bureau’s gleaming new 28-storey building in central Shenzhen.
Such official online oversight is highly controversial elsewhere. Human rights activists fiercely condemn the efforts of China’s ruling Communist party to stifle online political debate.
In recent weeks, moves by Yahoo, Microsoft and Google to bow to varying degrees to Beijing’s party censors have exposed them to fierce criticism from both customers and members of the US Congress.
But the no-nonsense Ms Chen and her comrades in the Surveillance Centre are proud of the online enforcement role played by Jingjing and Chacha (whose names are made up of the Chinese characters for “police”).
“All around the world there are internet police, but they always operate backstage... No other internet police have stepped to the front of the stage,” she says. “We really feel that this is a historic breakthrough.”
Jingjing and Chacha operate by appearing as clickable adverts on local websites and as virtual users of the hugely popular QQ instant messaging system operated by Nasdaq-listed Tencent.
In a demonstration at the Surveillance Centre, part of an internet division that has seen its staff more than double to 100 in less than a year, officer Xu Qian shows how the Jingjing icon keeps pace whenever a user of a local discussion website scrolls down a page.
“He is just like a policeman, interactively moving along with you. Wherever you go, he is watching you,” Mr Xu says.
By clicking on the icons, users can report crimes or learn about the rules on online conduct. Jingjing and Chacha also have their own websites with a selection of music including the “Song of the People’s Police”.
Ms Chen, a police technology veteran, says inspiration for the personal sites came from her 15-year-old daughter who keeps her up to date on new internet possibilities.
But deterrence remains the main goal for Jingjing and Chacha, who are just part of a huge system of government internet control that includes blocks on thousands of websites and sophisticated content filters.
Ms Chen says the mere appearance of the icons makes users think twice before posting sensitive messages. When Jingjing and Chacha arrived on local websites, the number of postings that had to be filtered out because of suspect content fell more than 60 per cent. I
When the pair send warning messages to websites under investigation for alleged fraud, the sites’ operators often immediately shut them down, she says.
China’s internet laws do not stop at such crimes. Users are also barred from a range of offences including the posting or even consultation of content judged to challenge the political order, incite secession, promote “feudal superstition” or harm the “honour of national institutions”.
Such laws have been used to jail people who peacefully question the Communist party, and they lie at the heart of debate overseas over the role international internet companies should play in China.
Ms Chen says since their official online launch in January, Jingjing and Chacha have not played any role in such cases. She has little time for suggestions that China controls the internet too tightly.
Only one in 50 internet users wants to break the law, and they are the only ones to complain about a lack of liberty, she insists, the web is “completely free” for those who stay within the “legal framework”.
Indeed, Ms Chen suggests US officials might want to consider adopting their own Jingjings or Chachas to police Google services following the US company’s refusal to share information about its searches with the government.
In any case, she says, overseas critics should not judge China by their standards.
“In my family, if my child does not lay her chopsticks down properly, then I will smack her, but maybe in your family you are too relaxed about such things,” Ms Chen says. “Each family has its own rules and countries are the same.”
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/63d181a0-9fe6-11da-a703-0000779e2340.html
