admits it gave up our information...

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Fri, 20 Jan 2006 18:03:23 EST

admits it gave up our information...

 

 

 

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-2002169_1,00.html

 

Times Online,

 

admits it let White House access its databases

By Jenny Booth and agencies

 

has admitted that it granted the US Government access to its

search engine's databases this summer, as a battle develops over the

right to privacy in cyberspace.

 

Google, by contrast, promised last night to fight vigorously the Bush

Administration’s demand to know what millions of people have been

looking up on the internet.

 

It emerged this week that the White House issued subpoenas to a number

of US-based search engines this summer, asking to see what information

the public had accessed in a two-month period. It said that it needed

the information in order to help create online child protection laws.

 

But Google refused to comply with its subpoena - prompting the US

Attorney General this week to ask a federal judge in San Jose for an

order to hand over the requested records. Details of the confrontation

emerged after the San Jose Mercury News reported seeing the court

papers on Wednesday.

 

At the heart of the battle is the potential for online databases to

become tools for government surveillance.

 

has stressed that it didn’t reveal any personal information.

" We are rigorous defenders of our users’ privacy, " spokeswoman

Mary Osako said last night. " In our opinion, this is not a privacy issue. "

 

The Google court papers show that the US Government originally asked

for a list of all requests entered into Google’s search engine

between June 1 and July 31 last year. When Google argued, the request

was whittled down to a week's worth of search terms - a breakdown that

could nonetheless span tens of millions of queries. In addition, the

White House has asked for one million randomly selected Web addresses

from various Google databases.

 

Every other search engine company served similar subpoenas by the Bush

administration has complied so far, according to the court documents.

 

The co-operating search engines were not identified. Microsoft's MSN,

the third-most used search engine, has declined to say whether it

received a subpoena. " MSN works closely with law enforcement officials

worldwide to assist them when requested, " the company said in a statement.

 

The US Government says that it is not seeking any data that would

allow it to identify which individual made which search request.

 

Experts say nonetheless that the subpoena raises serious privacy

concerns, especially after recent revelations that the White House

authorised civilian phone-taps after the September 11 attacks without

obtaining court approval.

 

Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse charity in

California, called the subpoenas " the first shoe dropping " that online

privacy advocates had long feared.

 

" These search engines are a very tempting target for government and

law enforcement, " Givens said. " Look at the millions of people who use

search engines without thinking of the potential to be drawn into a

government drag net. "

 

The subpoenas were a " classic fishing trip " by federal prosecutors,

she added.

 

Thomas Burke, a San Francisco lawyer who has handled several prominent

privacy cases, said that many people contacted Google more often than

they spoke to their mother. " Just as most people would be upset if the

government wanted to know how much you called your mother and what you

talked about, they should be upset about this, too, " he said.

 

Pam Dixon, executive director for the World Privacy Forum, warned that

the content of search requests sometimes contain information about the

person making the query, such as names, medical profiles or Social

Security information.

 

" This is exactly the kind of thing we have been worrying about with

search engines for some time, " Dixon said. " Google should be commended

for fighting this. " She warned people to be careful what personal

information they entered into search engines.

 

The Department of Justice argues that Google's cooperation is

essential in its effort to simulate how people navigate the web. In a

separate case in Pennsylvania, the Bush Administration is trying to

prove that internet filters do not do an adequate job of preventing

children from accessing online pornography and other objectionable

destinations.

 

Obtaining the subpoenaed information from Google " would assist the

government in its efforts to understand the behavior of current web

users, (and) to estimate how often web users encounter

harmful-to-minors material in the course of their searches, " the

Justice Department wrote in its court petition.

 

Google issued a statement last night promising to fight the case.

" Google is not a party to this lawsuit and their demand for

information overreaches, " wrote Nicole Wong, Google's associate

general counsel. " We had lengthy discussions with them to try to

resolve this, but were not able to and we intend to resist their

motion vigorously. "

 

But Google's vigorous defence of privacy rights in the face of demands

from the US government is apparently at odds with the search engine's

stance in China.

 

There, human rights activists have complained that Google collaborates

with the Chinese government, which controls the activities of its 111

million web surfers with one of the most stifling internet censorship

policies in the world.

 

Google is locked in competition for the lucrative Chinese market,

along with and MSN, and the homegrown Chinese search engine

Baidu.com.

 

All the US companies have been criticised for censoring news sites,

search engines and weblogs that China's communist government considers

subversive or obscene. For example, a web user in China who tried to

search Google or for subjects such as democracy and human rights

would find nothing in his search results.

 

There was outrage in September when it emerged that had supplied

details to the Chinese authorities of the personal e-mail account of

Shi Tao, a 37-year-old journalist. He was found guilty of " spreading

state secrets " and jailed for 10 years, for forwarding to a foreign

website a Chinese government circular banning the media from reporting

the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.