RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events pRAY that your google searches aren't EXPOSED!

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Judge to Order Google to Give Up Some Data
Mar 14 2:06 PM US/Eastern
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By MICHAEL LIEDTKE
AP Business Writer

SAN JOSE, Calif.

A federal judge said Tuesday he intends to require Google Inc. to turn over some information to the Department of Justice in its quest to revive a law making it harder for children to see online pornography.

U.S. District Judge James Ware did not immediately say whether the data will include words that users entered into the Internet's leading search engine.

The legal showdown over how much of the Web's vast databases should be shared with the government has pitted the Bush administration against the Mountain View-based company, which resisted a subpoena to turn over any information because of user privacy and trade secret concerns.

The Justice Department downplayed Google's concerns, arguing it doesn't want any personal information nor any data that would undermine the company's thriving business.

A lawyer for the Justice Department told Ware that the government would like to have a random selection of 50,000 Web addresses and 5,000 random search requests from Google, a small fraction of the millions the government originally sought.

The government believes the requested information will help bolster its arguments in a pornography case in Pennsylvania.

The case has focused attention on just how much personal information is stored by popular Web sites like Google _ and the potential for that data to attract the interest of the government and other parties.

Although the Justice Department said it doesn't want any personal information now, the victory would likely encourage far more invasive requests in the future, said University of Connecticut law professor Paul Schiff Berman, who specializes in Internet law.

"The erosion of privacy tends to happen incrementally," Berman said. "While no one intrusion may seem that big, over the course of the next decade or two, you might end up in a place as a society where you never thought you would be."

Google seized on the case to underscore its commitment to privacy rights and differentiate itself from the Internet's other major search engines _ Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and Time Warner Inc.'s America Online. All three say they complied with the Justice Department's request without revealing their users' personal information.

Cooperating with the government "is a slippery slope and it's a path we shouldn't go down," Google co-founder Sergey Brin told industry analysts earlier this month.

Even as it defied the Bush administration, Google recently bowed to the demands of China's Communist government by agreeing to censor its search results in that country so it would have better access to the world's fastest growing Internet market. Google's China capitulation has been harshly criticized by some of the same people cheering the company's resistance to the Justice Department subpoena.

The Justice Department initially demanded a month of search requests from Google, but subsequently decided a week's worth of requests would be enough. In its legal briefs, the Justice Department indicated it might be willing to narrow its request even further.

Ultimately, the government planned to select a random sample of 1,000 search requests previously made at Google and re-enter them in the search engine, according to a sworn declaration by Philip Stark, a statistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley who is helping the Justice Department in the case.

The government believes the test will show how easily it is to get around filtering software that's supposed to prevent children from seeing sexually explicit material on the Web.

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wannabuyamonkey said:
Even as it defied the Bush administration, Google recently bowed to the demands of China's Communist government by agreeing to censor its search results in that country so it would have better access to the world's fastest growing Internet market.

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Glad to see that google has its priorities straight:

Helping the US fight terrorists: bad
Helping China censor its people: good

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the G-man said:

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wannabuyamonkey said:
Even as it defied the Bush administration, Google recently bowed to the demands of China's Communist government by agreeing to censor its search results in that country so it would have better access to the world's fastest growing Internet market.

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Glad to see that google has its priorities straight:

Helping the US fight terrorists: bad
Helping China censor its people: good

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Matter-eater Man said:
If this topic is going to be named Ray Addler exposed than it needs to be moved to another forum I think. Topics in the DP shouldn't be titled to smear members.

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the G-man said:
I stand corrected jay.

Google's priorities are:

Helping the US fight child porn: bad
Helping China censor its people: good

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the G-man said:

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Matter-eater Man said:
If this topic is going to be named Ray Addler exposed than it needs to be moved to another forum I think. Topics in the DP shouldn't be titled to smear members.

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I agree.

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wannabuyamonkey said:

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the G-man said:

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Matter-eater Man said:
If this topic is going to be named Ray Addler exposed than it needs to be moved to another forum I think. Topics in the DP shouldn't be titled to smear members.

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I agree.

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Smear? Hell no! This is a warning to Ray. I don't want to see him exposed anymore than anyone else. If Ray isn't complaining then why are you? Also I've Seen President Bush post here and yet you have no problem what so-ever changing thread titles to smear him!

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A while back I had changed a thread name (but not thread title) that made fun of you. It was silly, G-man sent me a pm asking me to keep the titles on topic.

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magicjay38 said:
You seem to be incapable of getting it right, G-man. This has nothing to do with kiddie porn either. It's about the ability of children to defeat screening programs such as Net Nanny and gain access to adult content on the web.

Pay attention G-man. There will be a quiz at the end.

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So what you're saying is that Google's priorities are:

Censoring porn: bad
Censoring political thought: good

Got it.

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the G-man said:

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magicjay38 said:
You seem to be incapable of getting it right, G-man. This has nothing to do with kiddie porn either. It's about the ability of children to defeat screening programs such as Net Nanny and gain access to adult content on the web.

Pay attention G-man. There will be a quiz at the end.

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So what you're saying is that Google's priorities are:

Censoring porn: bad
Censoring political thought: good

Got it.

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No, what I'm saying is G-man off topic: Bad

G-man's a stupid asshole: Yes

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the G-man said:

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wannabuyamonkey said:
Even as it defied the Bush administration, Google recently bowed to the demands of China's Communist government by agreeing to censor its search results in that country so it would have better access to the world's fastest growing Internet market.

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Glad to see that google has its priorities straight:

Helping the US fight terrorists: bad
Helping China censor its people: good

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r3x29yz4a said:
I think they were right to refuse Bush but completely wrong to support the Chinese censoring.

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the G-man said:

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r3x29yz4a said:
I think they were right to refuse Bush but completely wrong to support the Chinese censoring.

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Yeah, at least that would be consistent. I think most people could respect that, even if they disagreed with it.

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rex said:
Google wanted to do business with China so they are playing by their rules, whats wrong with that?

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the G-man said:

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rex said:
Google wanted to do business with China so they are playing by their rules, whats wrong with that?

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That's a little like arguing that a U.S. company that wanted to do business with Nazi Germany had no moral obligation not to build the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

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rex said:

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the G-man said:

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rex said:
Google wanted to do business with China so they are playing by their rules, whats wrong with that?

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That's a little like arguing that a U.S. company that wanted to do business with Nazi Germany had no moral obligation not to build the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

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Thats completely different.

Please try to stay on topic.

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rex said:
Google wanted to do business with China so they are playing by their rules, whats wrong with that?

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the G-man said:
That's a little like arguing that a U.S. company that wanted to do business with Nazi Germany had no moral obligation not to build the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

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rex said:
Thats completely different.

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rex said:
Thats completely different.

Please try to stay on topic.

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rex said:
The G-Man always wins. Don't ever question The G-man.

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Google’s Thumbnail Images Violate Copyright

A federal court in California recently held that Google, Inc.’s (“Google”) use of its Image Search feature to display thumbnail versions of photographs found on Perfect 10, Inc.’s (“Perfect 10”) Web site likely infringes Perfect 10’s copyrights (Perfect 10 v. Google, Inc., et al., Case No. 04-9484 (C.D. Cal. Feb. 17, 2006)).

Google Inc has been ordered to turn over some data on sites in its popular search engine to the US federal government following a judge's ruling.

Maintaining that the case raises 'vital interests,' US District Judge James Ware issued a 21-page ruling Friday that ordered the California-based search engine to hand over data on a limited number of sites.

But he rejected the Justice Department's attempt to obtain more sensitive data that might disclose the online search habits of web users, noting that that could spark a possible 'loss of good will' among its users.

Federal prosecutors sought the information as ammunition in a legal fight to revive an overturned 1998 statute making it a crime for websites to allow minors access to adult material online such as pornography.

The government wants the information to bolster an effort to resurrect the law, which it contends made it tougher for minors to access pornography on the Internet.

A New York state lawmaker has filed suit against Google, claiming the search engine has profited from helping users access child pornography and saying that the company has already demonstrated the ability to stop such searches through its dealings with the Chinese government.

Jeffrey Toback, a representative in New York's Nassau County Legislature filed suit Thursday with the New York Supreme Court. The action seeks to stop Google from providing search results involving child pornography.

Thanks to AdWords, Google's paid listings service, child pornography has become an "obscenely profitable and integral part" of the search company's business, the action claims.

Toback said Google demonstrated that it can completely prohibit certain words and phrases from being searched for when it agreed to demands from leaders in China to censor democracy-related words and phrases in order to be able to operate in that country.

The case stems from Google's ability to dynamically deliver ads based on a keyword search, Search Engine Journal editor Loren Baker said. As anyone who's used the search engine can attest, however, such keyword results don't always match up with the true target of a search.

Baker noted that Toback has made protecting young people a major part of his political career, having filed legislation limiting teens' access to tanning beds, for instance.

The case may well raise questions about the types of searches that Google is able to derive ad revenue from, and whether its "do no evil" motto is put in jeopardy by some of the searches that take place on its network, but those types of questions, while troubling, often do not translate well into legal action, Baker added.

Google has already had the "no evil" motto thrown back at it for its dealings with China, where it is one of several Internet companies that have agreed to go along with state-sponsored censorship rules in order to have access to that huge and growing market.

Meanwhile, regulators and federal lawmakers are moving forward with various plans to cut down on child pornography and on having pornography viewed by underage Web users. The U.S. Justice Department has proposed a system of stiff fines for Internet service providers and others in the space that fail to promptly report child pornography activities taking place on their networks.

So Google censorship is doing what official censorship cannot: It is bowdlerizing the internet. Any web publisher who needs a buck has to be super careful of what he/she puts up. The lesson is of course an age-old one: Always diversify your sources of information as much as you can.

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the G-man said:
It's Google again: "Te*nager", "Husb*nd" and "B*chelor" are now signs of "child porn".

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Google is in the hot seat again. It's faced this time with privacy advocates white knuckled and anxious over its proposed acquisition of DoubleClick. Privacy groups are worried a Google DoubleClick combo will turn Google into Big Brother - or worse the Thought Police.

In a joint complaint filed today to the Federal Trade Commission by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Center for Digital Democracy, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group the privacy groups are calling for an investigation into the potential threat to consumer privacy posed by Google's planned acquisition of DoubleClick.

A combined DoubleClick and Google would have an unprecedented ability to profile you and me. In 2005, more than 60 million American adults used search engines on a typical day, according to the complaint filed today. DoubleClick reaches an estimated 80 to 85 percent of the users of Internet with its ads, according to the complaint.

To me it seems Google's desire to own DoubleClick contravenes its "Don't be evil" policy. DoubleClick has a sorted history with privacy activists. In 2000 the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a complaint to the FTC accusing it of violating a section of the law forbidding "unfair and deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce."

EPIC was concerned about DoubleClick when it bought access to a trove offline data when it acquired Abacus Direct, a marketing firm. EPIC's complaint centered on DoubleClick's "Abacus Online," a group of DoubleClick's clients for which the advertising company tracks Web surfers' habits using online data, such as IP addresses, with off line data such as names, postal addresses, and catalog purchase histories.

In March of 2000, DoubleClick's CEO Kevin O’Connor released a statement that said that the company made a “mistake by planning to merge names with anonymous user activity across Web sites in the absence of government and industry privacy standards.” Since then DoubleClick has been on a watch-list of privacy activists.

• Ever check out YouTube? Have a user name and password for it? Then Viacom's going to find out all about what you like to watch.
  
  A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the online video-sharing Web site, owned by Google, has to turn over all its user logs to Viacom, the mega-corporation that owns MTV, Paramount Pictures, Comedy Central and VH1, among others.
  
  Viacom sued Google last year, claiming that YouTube willfully infringed its copyrights by letting its users post clips from "South Park" and "The Daily Show" willy-nilly.
  
  Judge Louis L. Stanton actually delivered a mixed ruling — he refused Viacom's demand that Google turn over YouTube's source code, the software that runs the site, agreeing with Google that that was a trade secret.
  
  But he used Google's own argument, explained here on Google's own site, that revealing users' Internet Protocol addresses — which identify every single computer, server, cell phone or toaster connected to the Internet — does not constitute an invasion of privacy.