Search Records: It's NOT Just Google! It's ALSO AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo

[Triana]

Federal prosecutors preparing to defend a controversial Internet pornography law in court have asked Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and America Online to hand over millions of search records--a request that Google is adamantly denying.

In court documents filed Wednesday, the Bush administration asked a federal judge in San Jose, Calif., to force Google to comply with a subpoena for the information, which would reveal the search terms of a broad swath of the search engine's visitors.

Prosecutors are requesting a "random sampling" of 1 million Internet addresses accessible though Google's popular search engine, and a random sampling of 1 million search queries submitted to Google over a one-week period.

Google said in a statement sent to CNET News.com on Thursday that it will resist the request "vigorously."

The Bush administration's request is part of its attempts to defend the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, which is being challenged in court in Philadelphia by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU says Web sites cannot realistically comply with COPA and that the law violates the right to freedom of speech mandated by the First Amendment.

The search engine companies are not parties to the suit.

An attorney for the ACLU said Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL received identical subpoenas and chose to comply with them rather than fight the request in court.

...

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6028701.html?tag=nl.e589

[rodeodance]

1. Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL sold out

[arcane1]

2. argh, you know why this REALLY pisses me off????

I had a bug on my pc a few months ago, which would pop-up with a google page, with the search criteria already entered and searched-for. Topics ranged from hair-loss treatments to bizarre sex acts, and everything in between

those records would make it seem that "I" was searching for all that shit :mad:

[Triana]

7. Are you sure the NSA didn't install the bug?

Would you put it past them? I wouldn't.

[arcane1]

13. fuck no I wouldn't

I put NOTHING past them

nothing

these are the people who talk casually about crushing children's testicles, fer crissake!

[havocmom]

8. How's your spam mail? Full of garbage porn ads?

At first I wondered if the explosion in really offensive spam was a ploy to get people howling for internet censorship to stop the deluge.

Now, wondering if the whole population isn't being set up with possibly illegal materials on their hard drives. Then, the gestapo nuevo goes through the various search engine data, ferrets out computers being used to seek out the truth about PNAC doins. Wham, those become targets for investigation into illegal porn, then, 'whoa, fellow G-men, look at all the porn spam on these computers, we got us some real perverts', arrests to follow. Dissidents rounded up.

Not like some parts of the feds haven't done the agent provocateur routine to silence dissidents in the past here in the US of A. Keep coming back to Nixon/Cheney M.O.

[arcane1]

11. over the past 2 months or so, it's increased app 1,000%

and nothing would surprise me at this point

[gkhouston]

14. tons of it

Judging from the spam, I must want to meet sexy girls and ejaculate in enormous quantities while obtaining a college degree, getting a great mortage, and buying some hot stocks. I'm hoping it's the sexy girls that are supposed to cause the arousal (as opposed the the mortage or the stock tips), but since I'm female and don't swing that way, it's all kind of lost on me. :shrug:

[havocmom]

18. LOL gkhouston, thanks for a much needed giggle

Havocdad was grumbling that he got spam promising 'hot grandmas getting it hard'. Wonder if the porn is from those ENRON employees caught on tape...

[villager]

3. Devilfinder, here we come...

n/t

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. Just what we need

another fishing expedition. What a waste of time and valuable resourese.

If they want to look for terrorists they should just narrow the search to the WH computers.

[hwmnbn]

5. That's why I use these scraper sites.......

for yahoo searches: http://www.scroogle.org/scraper7.html


and for google searches: http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm

no cookies | no search-term records | access log deleted after 7 days

[RaleighNCDUer]

6. Being a tech moron, I ask

what does a scraper site do? How does it work?

[hwmnbn]

17. I'm glad you asked, and I'm no tech whiz either.....

but as far as I can tell:

It's like a proxy server that directs your search terms to Google and Yahoo.

You type in your search terms to scroogle. They are like a middle man who forwards your search terms to google. For all intents and purposes scroogle is the entity submitting your search terms. You are anonymous behind scroogle.

I hope this is this clear for you?


Here is the page where they describe how they do it.

http://www.scroogle.org/gscrape.html

[RaleighNCDUer]

30. Excellent. Thank you. nt

[Fridays Child]

9. Here is the great thing about this...

All of the "family values" defenders and fundie Christians (aka porn-addicted Republicans) will now come running over to our side on the issue of privacy rights.

[ClintonTyree]

10. What is the point of this?

They've got so much freaking "terraist" data they can't come close to researching but they want more freaking data? For what? I'm not buying this pedophile bullshit, they're looking for something but it's not sick, twisted sex offenders. We've got to shut these pieces of shit down, our civil liberties are being blown up like one of bush's frogs.

[arcane1]

12. they don't want "terra-ists" and they don't want sex-offenders

they want CONTROL

[gkhouston]

15. exactly. They hope to slide this one in on the pretext of

"protecting" us.

[Triana]

16. Exactly...I think this 'porn' thing is just a ruse.

What they're really trying to gain is the ability to control the internet, internet searches, and control the info available via the internet in the U.S. They do it China. They're looking to do it here and this is a step toward that.

That's my tinfoil hat .02.

[SoCalDem]

19. Computers are just like guns..

Gun people do not want control because they assert it's THEIR responsibility to protect their own children from the harm guns cause..

Children do not buy computers and video game systems..parents do.

SO


the parents should be responsible to make sure their little darlings are not looking at "nasty pictures" or making dates with 50 yr old pedophiles..

[Triana]

21. I agree. This whole thing makes no sense.

That's why I really think it's a two-pronged ruse.

1. Gain brownie points with the religious right control freaks.
2. Gain the information needed to control internet search, information avialable via the internet, gain knowledge of Google, Yahoo, et al search engine technology to help do so. Just like China.

I think #2 is the primary reason for all this. #1 is there just to help get it past the public - just like the claims of WMD and Osama-Saddaam ties were put up just to get the invasion of Iraq past the public. We later found out it was all lies and have since discovered the real reasons for the invasion (profit, control, oil).

[ikri]

24. It creates a precedent

The government asks for search records pertaining to possible child abuse. Since there's such universal revulsion over child sexual abuse there are far fewer complaints about civil rights infringements and companies are far more likely to readily hand over the information in the guise of "helping to protect children", the search engines themselves can't be blamed too much since if they hadn't complied we'd be reading about how Yahoo or AOL supported child abusers.

It also means that in the future the search engines will find it a hell of a lot harder to fight any future information requests that they might object to. If they've been willing to dismiss civil rights objections in one case, they can't realistically use that defense in the future.

[Catherine Vincent]

20. Are they trying to make it so bad for us internet users that we'll

just throw the computer out the window? I think that's what they are hoping for.

[Javaman]

22. They want to scrub the net clean of any negative moron* information.n/t

[alfredo]

23. Here's what we should do, search terms like bush sucks, bush nazi

impeach bush, fuck bush, bush eats shit. You get the idea. Let's flood the search engines with terms like this.

[linazelle]

25. Pardon me, but is pornography only on the WEB? What about books

and TV?

Why aren't they looking to clamp down on those? Hmmmm...could it be because they don't have ADDRESSES and PERSONAL INFORMATION about users????

[radio4progressives]

26. CNN reports that Google is NOT Co-Operating...

that was the first segement of the "situation room" with our pal wolfy..

[Deja Q]

27. 1998? Why did Clinton sign it into law?

Sorry to be a party pooper, but as with NAFTA and a slew of other nasty things, this COPA act was done by Clinton: The best president republicans ever had.

I wonder how it got passed at all.

[arcane1]

28. shit, the supreme court has already ruled on this in 1994!

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with a lower court injunction against a law intended to protect children from sexually explicit material posted online, saying the law is likely unconstitutional because less restrictive ways of shielding children from pornography are available.

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, upheld the Third Circuit Court of Appeals' injunction against enforcing the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) of 1998, which allows for a fine of US$50,000 per day and a six-month prison sentence for posting online materials that are "harmful to minors." The Supreme Court's ruling sends the case back to the lower court to decide whether the law violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The case that challenged the law, Ashcroft vs. the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), pitted U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft against the civil liberties group, representing several publications, including Web sites that include information on sexually transmitted diseases. Among the publications the ACLU represented in the case were OBGYN.net, PlanetOut Corp., Philadelphia Gay News and Salon.com.

-snip

http://www.thestandard.com/article.php?story=20040629182640925

[bklyncowgirl]

29. Yo, people, Osama Bin Laden's alive and well. So what do these clowns do

They go after porno peepers.

If the FBI hated tracking down useless tips from warrentless wiretaps, they're just gonna love trying to find out who downloaded clips of Colin Farrell and his beloved making sweet nookie.

Yo People, the guy who murdered 3,000 of our fellow Americans is still out there, free as a bird thanks to the imcompetence of the Bush administration.