I can't help but wonder what the government is really after in its attempt to force Google to turn over user search information from its databases -- somehow I suspect it has very little to do with pornography and a whole lot to do with control of the Internet. So while it certainly raises grave privacy concerns, it might pose an even bigger threat to free speech and other First Amendment rights.
A San Jose Mercury News report Wednesday revealed that for months Google has been battling a Justice Department subpoena for massive amounts of material that the government hopes will help it defend COPA, the Child Online Protection Act. Privacy advocates have rightfully been horrified by the "idea these massive databases are being thrown open to anyone with a court document." And many more are disquieted after learning that at least to some degree Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL rolled over and complied with similar government requests for information from their search engines.
The Justice Department points out that its demands (which initially asked for all queries for a two-month period and a complete list of URLs that could be located via Google) do not include any personal information about the user. It only wishes to protect children from obscene websites, and it believes Google's data will help it show that software filters are not enough to protect the kids from porn. Who could argue with that?
Well, the U.S. Supreme Court for one, which in 2004 barred enforcement of COPA because, while the law was having no noticeable impact on child pornography, it was clearly demonstrating "potential for extraordinary harm and a serious chill upon protected speech." It sent the case back to the lower court in Philadelphia, and it's there that the Justice Department hopes to use the information from Google and other search engines to argue against the ACLU for COPA's reinstatement.
Now, let's think about this a minute. When COPA was enacted, it was widely predicted that it, like most legal attempts to define what is and is not pornographic, would inevitably be overturned on First Amendment grounds. And it was. Even if Google had cooperated as the other search engines did, in the end the courts would still recognize that COPA is blatantly unconstitutional. So why did the administration decide not only to pursue a case it's not going to win, but demand more information (two months of Google searches) than it could possibly digest?
Well, we each might have our own theories about that, but I believe that protecting children from pornography is just the stalking horse here. Any government that wants to exercise some control over what its citizens can read on the Internet has got to start by exercising some control over Google. If Google had acceded to the Justice Department's original demands, imagine what additional requests for information might have resulted once the government got to look over the data. "Oh, yes, it's true we were primarily interested in pornography, but we've noticed patterns that suggest possible terrorist communications ..."
What we can all understand, though, is that there is much at stake in this case. In fighting over the constitutionality of COPA, the feds shouldn't have any more rights to demand information from a non-involved third party like Google than the ACLU does. And when it demanded that information, Google shouldn't have been the only search engine that told them no and stuck by it. If the government can get any information it wants any time for any ill-defined purpose, far more than the privacy of our search engine queries will be lost.
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