Will Googe keep the secret?

Over the weekend, a federal judge ruled that the world's largest search service provider Google had to provide the US government with information about service users.

This is considered a typical case of disagreement between the privacy of users online with the requirement to enforce legal protection.

Judge James Ware of the Northern California District Court, in his ruling, asked Google to provide the US government with at least 50,000 web addresses in the search engine index list.

Google should 'discuss' the government to develop a way to select any of the URLs in its web address index list and provide those addresses to the government and Google without publishing information. about this company's proprietary web site address database.

The government also needs to pay Google the cost to obtain the required data. These data will be kept secretly in accordance with the requirements of the court.

In addition, Judge James Ware also rejected the Washington administration's request to force Google to provide search patterns that users had made on Google's search service.

'This is really a great victory for our users. The court requirements have been greatly reduced and, most importantly, no longer require us to provide user search statements, 'said Nicole Wong, Google's lawyer.

History 'subpoena' .

Last January, the US Justice Department made a move to ask the court to force Google to provide web address index data along with its user information.

In a hearing on March 14, 2006, Judge Ware said he had learned about the Justice Department's request to force Google to provide user information.

At the hearing, a representative from the Ministry of Justice said the government had decided to cut down the number of web addresses Google had to provide to 50,000 and the number of users' search commands to 5,000. Meanwhile, the number included in the request made last year was 1 million web addresses and statistics on all search statements on its search service for a given week.

Google refused to enforce this request and said it violated the privacy of users. Moreover, providing this information will also reveal their business secrets. But the government says they are not interested in data that can identify users or their sensitive private information.

In contrast, Google believes that this is part of the Department of Justice's effort to protect and adopt the Online Child Protection Code (COPA). This is a not very well-supported law and it is considered a challenge for the US Citizenship Freedom Association (ACLU).

According to the ACLU, the Law of COPA violated the right to freedom of speech in the US Constitution. This law will be debated in court this October. In order to contribute more convincing evidence, the Ministry of Justice decided to force search providers such as Google, Yahoo, American online and MSN to provide search data. Other search engines deny this request to maintain only Google still complying with certain requirements.

The US government believes that they need the search engine data to demonstrate the effectiveness of the Online Child Protection Act rather than content filtering software against the 'black' content. rampant on the Internet.

The Pennsylvania District Court - where the COPA lawsuit was initiated - decided not to allow the US Civil Liberties Union to protest. The Court of Appeal in 2000 maintained that judgment.

The lawsuit was then brought to the Federal Supreme Court. But the federal high court decided to send the case to the Pennsylvania county court. The district court still defends its ruling.

HVD - Computerworld