Google's Response to the DoJ Motion

neoviky writes "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."

Here's some more.

[Voltageaav]

An article about it. http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3 578821 [internetnews.com]

Re:Equal treatment?

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I heard, M$ and Yahoo both turned over their records without even raising a fuss. Note this is just here hearsay*.

*Any hearsay on /. should be considered a researched, and verified fact. If not, write a wikipedia article on it, then it will be verifiable.

Re:Equal treatment?

[Voltageaav]

MSN and Yahoo both complied. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060218/wr_nm/google_p rivacy_dc_4 [yahoo.com]

Warning! PDF behind article link!

[Da w00t]

[this is bad] (yes, I am a member)

Link to the blogger post [blogspot.com], that's the article, and THEN the pdf [blogspot.com]! Thank you!

(karmawhoring)

Here's a portion of the introduction:

• I. INTRODUCTION
  Google users trust that when they enter a search query into a Google search box, not only will they receive back the most relevant results, but that Google will keep private whatever information users communicate absent a compelling reason. The Government's demand for disclosure of untold millions of search queries submitted by Google users and for production of a million Web page addresses or "URLs" randomly selected from Google's proprietary index would undermine that trust, unnecessarily burden Google, and do nothing to further the Government's case in the underlying action.
  
  Fortunately, the Court has multiple, independent bases to reject the Government's Motion. First, the Government's presentation falls woefully short of demonstrating that the requested information will lead to admissible evidence. This burden is unquestionably the Government's. Rather than meet it, the Government concedes that Google's search queries and URLs are not evidence to be used at trial at all. Instead, the Government says, the data will be "useful" to its purported expert in developing some theory to support the Government's notion that a law banning materials that are harmful to minors on the Internet will be more effective than a technology filter in eliminating it.

Re:Equal treatment?

[fafaforza]

Yahoo fought hard the request from RIAA a while ago for identifying information of owners of IPs that they logged on Kazaa. In the end they lost and a court ordered them to provide such information. In this case, the information provided contained no identifying data. Only statystics on searches.

Now, if you put in identifying information on the web search, then that is your own folly. My startup page is on my own domain, which is comprised of my last name. You can be sure that I never pull up any pages from that startup page becase I don't want my domain -- and my last name as a result -- to pop up on various sites' Referrer field.

Re:Only way to get it ... Google to volunteer

[savorymedia]

What's the government thinking anyways? If they just tapped on Microsoft's shoulder I'm sure Bill would hand over all of MSNs search data.

Ummm...Bill DID just roll over and send the gov't MSN's search data...as did Yahoo and AOL.
http://www.techweb.com/wire/ebiz/177101984 [techweb.com]

Thoughts

[fimbulvetr]

The funniest part of TFS follows:

"The Government, of course, has told the Court none of this. Instead, it relies on a
talismanic incantation that the standard of relevance is met 'so long as [the request] is reasonably
calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence.'"

Talismanic incantion! LOL!

Google's lawyers appear to be a good job refuting the Government's "expert":

"The court should view the Cutts Declaration as standing in strong contrast to the
Government's declarant, Professor Phillip Stark, a statistician who apparently has been hired to
produce a study to support the Government's contentions. The Stark Declaration is vague,
cursory, and uninformed about the operation of Google's search engine. In any event, Professor
Stark's opinion ought to be viewed with some scrutiny. Although positioned as the Government's
expert, he has not yet been qualified as a reliable expert by the Pennsylvania court trying the
underlying case pursuant to Federal Rule of Evidence 702 or Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharms.,
Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993). The Pennsylvania court has thus not yet determined whether Professor
Stark's testimony is reliable and of any assistance to the trier of fact."

And I'd have to side with Google on this. I'd venture to guess that most of google's data is completely irrelevant when taken out of context, which Stark is trying to do. If Google does have to turn the data over, I wouldn't be suprised if Stark tried to strongarm his way into learning Google's methods, algorithms, etc.

Another good argument is the following:

"In addition, the Government will not be able to ascertain the content of a Web page from
its descriptive URL name. A Web site's name that suggests potential harmful material may be
benign. Conversely, a URL that seems innocent may actually return pornographic material. The
classic example is www.whitehouse.com, which was a pornography site. Here, the adage "you
can't judge a book by its cover" applies. A URL such as
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/prontline/shows/porn /etc/links.html [pbs.org] contains the word "porn" but
actually provides links to anti-pornography organizations."

Re:Google is claiming it is a privacy issue

[Urza9814]

"These are fearful times for Americans who value freedom from government snooping, and it's a clear measure of that mood that Google's fight with the federal government is persistently taken as a struggle over personal privacy. It is not. In its subpoena for a week's worth of search results, the Justice Department is specifically not asking for the identities of the searchers. In response, Google is specifically not citing its users' privacy as justification for declining to comply. Rather, it is defending its own trade secrets -- proprietary details of the workings of its Web-searching software that it says would be revealed in those endless lists of addresses." http://www.startribune.com/561/story/222963.html [startribune.com]

Re:Warning! PDF behind article link!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait until this gets to the supreme court with Bush's stooges Alto and Roberts, then we will see who "has has multiple, independent bases to reject the Government's Motion". My money is that the Supreme court will not find them, or will just decline to hear the case if the government wins and Google is forced to appeal up to the Supreme Court. But if Google wins, I'll be the Supreme Court rules in the government's favor.

Re:Laughable

[slavemowgli]

I'm sorry if this comes across as flamebait, but... honestly, are you a complete IDIOT? With a few exceptions (see below), the government has no, repeat, NO right to know about anything that goes on in the daily lifes of people, including businesses. There's an exception for criminal investigations, of course, wheen it might be necessary to obtain evidence for a trial, but that's about it.

What's happening here is that Google was asked to turn over a huge pile of information just because the government felt it might be useful for their own purposes to have this data. And you complain about *Google* when they don't roll over and comply?

I'm really at a loss for words at how stupid someone from the self-described "land of the free" can be.

"Don't be evil"* *-certain restrictions apply

[Churla]

What I am seeing is this is... Don't be evil unless you need to in order to do business, but definitely Don't be evil if it will get you publicity. I will not give them "not evil" cred for a stance of "don't be evil when it benefits us", which makes me now think that whole mantra was wishful thinking which was turned into a marketing campaign. I hope the founders can sleep at night, of course since they probably have mattresses made out of billions of dollars stuffed into bags they probably do

You talk about protecting user privacy, but what the government is asking for does not ask for any identifying information. They want the search strings, and no information about WHO made those searches.

As for probable cause and a reason to get the information, if they have suspicion that Google is being used to search for information about and subsequently facilitate illegal acts they have a grounds. They have to prove that second part though as , at least in most cases, just having information about an illegal act isn't illegal (i.e. the Anarchist Cookbook). How can they do this? Simple:

"Google, we request a list of all search strings run through your search engine which have the following keywords in them: Child sex, homemade bomb, American jihad"

If that doesn't get them a sizable list I would scream they were editing things. Which would open up for them asking for a complete list to verify context of those searches, probably WITH identifying information.

Another angle would be the DoJ pushing to have internet search engines considered a public service, if they pull that off it's a free for all with the information. (see phone companies and ISP's that have to keep RADIUS logging logs correlating dial up ID to IP)

Re:PR Stunt?

[Crackerman111]

No. Their stock dropped because earnings were below forecasts [mercurynews.com], not because of this incident with the DoJ.