SirFozzie
01-20-2006, 12:05 AM
Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc., the most-used Internet search engine, was sued by the Justice Department after it refused to turn over information that may help the government monitor sexually explicit material on the Web.
A motion to compel compliance with a subpoena, filed yesterday in federal court in San Jose, California, said the government seeks the data to enforce the Child Online Protection Act, designed to protect minors from pornography. A challenge to the law is being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Justice Department said it asked for all Google queries for a week and for 1 million Internet addresses in the company's database. According to the lawsuit, other search engines have complied with similar requests, ``and have not reported that they encountered any difficulty or burden in doing so.''
``We had lengthy discussions with them to try to resolve this, but were not able to and we intend to resist their motion vigorously.'' Nicole Wong, a Google lawyer, said in a statement. Wong said the demand for information ``over-reaches.''
The information would ``assist the government in its efforts to understand the behavior of current Web users, to estimate how often Web users encounter harmful-to-minors material in the course of their searches, and to measure the effectiveness of filtering software in screening that material,'' the government's filing said.
Yahoo
Mary Osako, a spokeswoman for Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo! Inc., said the company complied with the government inquiry on a ``limited basis,'' and didn't give the U.S. ``any personally identifiable information.''
``We are rigorous defenders of our users' privacy,'' Osako said. ``We did not provide any personal information in response to the Department of Justice's subpoena. In our opinion this is not a privacy issue.''
Ask Jeeves, an Internet search engine owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp, has not received any requests from the government, spokesman Patrick Crisp said.
Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller declined to immediately respond to questions about the lawsuit.
ACLU Challenge
The American Civil Liberties Union and other privacy rights organizations successfully sued to block enforcement of the Child Online Protection Act after it was signed into law in 1998, according government's lawsuit. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case after a federal appeals court twice upheld challenges to the Act on grounds it violates First Amendment free speech protections, the lawsuit said.
Google objected to the government's subpoena, saying it would reveal trade secrets by providing the data and disclose personally identifiable information about its users. In response, the government said it would keep the data secret and that the request wasn't for personal information.
Shares of Google fell $8.46, or 1.9 percent, to $436.45 in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading. They've risen 5.2 percent this year.
The case is Gonzales v. Google Inc., 5:06-mc-80006, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=arCWSKEPoJaE
A motion to compel compliance with a subpoena, filed yesterday in federal court in San Jose, California, said the government seeks the data to enforce the Child Online Protection Act, designed to protect minors from pornography. A challenge to the law is being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Justice Department said it asked for all Google queries for a week and for 1 million Internet addresses in the company's database. According to the lawsuit, other search engines have complied with similar requests, ``and have not reported that they encountered any difficulty or burden in doing so.''
``We had lengthy discussions with them to try to resolve this, but were not able to and we intend to resist their motion vigorously.'' Nicole Wong, a Google lawyer, said in a statement. Wong said the demand for information ``over-reaches.''
The information would ``assist the government in its efforts to understand the behavior of current Web users, to estimate how often Web users encounter harmful-to-minors material in the course of their searches, and to measure the effectiveness of filtering software in screening that material,'' the government's filing said.
Yahoo
Mary Osako, a spokeswoman for Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo! Inc., said the company complied with the government inquiry on a ``limited basis,'' and didn't give the U.S. ``any personally identifiable information.''
``We are rigorous defenders of our users' privacy,'' Osako said. ``We did not provide any personal information in response to the Department of Justice's subpoena. In our opinion this is not a privacy issue.''
Ask Jeeves, an Internet search engine owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp, has not received any requests from the government, spokesman Patrick Crisp said.
Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller declined to immediately respond to questions about the lawsuit.
ACLU Challenge
The American Civil Liberties Union and other privacy rights organizations successfully sued to block enforcement of the Child Online Protection Act after it was signed into law in 1998, according government's lawsuit. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case after a federal appeals court twice upheld challenges to the Act on grounds it violates First Amendment free speech protections, the lawsuit said.
Google objected to the government's subpoena, saying it would reveal trade secrets by providing the data and disclose personally identifiable information about its users. In response, the government said it would keep the data secret and that the request wasn't for personal information.
Shares of Google fell $8.46, or 1.9 percent, to $436.45 in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading. They've risen 5.2 percent this year.
The case is Gonzales v. Google Inc., 5:06-mc-80006, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=arCWSKEPoJaE