Google goes to court

U.S., Google Set to Face Off in Court By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer SAN FRANCISCO - The Bush administration will renew its effort to find out what people have been looking for on Google Inc.'s Internet-leading search engine, continuing a legal showdown over how much of the Web's vast databases should be shared with the government.

Lawyers for the Justice Department and Google are expected to elaborate on their opposing views in a San Jose hearing scheduled Tuesday before U.S. District Court Judge James Ware.

It will mark the first time the Justice Department and Google have sparred in court since the government subpoenaed the Mountain-View, Calif.-based company last summer in an effort to obtain a long list of search requests and Web site addresses.
The government believes the requested information will help bolster its arguments in another case in Pennsylvania, where the Bush administration hopes to revive a law designed to make it more difficult for children to see online pornography. [Yahoo News]

On one hand, I think we can all agree that there needs to be some monitoring of what children have unfettered access to on the Internet. However, and this is key, that job is not and never has been the purview of the Federal Government. It is the exclusive purview of the parent. If the parent is abdicating this responsibility, it is still not the job of the Federal Government.

What I search for on Google, or Altavista or any of a dozen other sites is no one's business. Really. Unless I turn that search into a purchase, it is little more than asking for a string of letters that have a meaning to me and me alone. Trying to say that the search criteria of millions of people will help the US Government's case to impose the CDA which is a law that is so flawed and broken it make the Patriot Act look unified and well thought out is such twisted logic that I have trouble following it.

Not only should Google be fighting this, they should prevail. And shame on Yahoo and Microsoft for turning over their search results without so much as a whimper.