Google May Comply With Cut-Down Justice Department Request

by Glen Shapiro, LawAndTax-News.com, New York

20 March 2006

At last week's hearing of the Justice Department's demand for Google to disgorge details of web addresses and search queries in San Jose, California, the judge suggested he would order Google to comply with a cut-down request, but expressed misgivings about setting a precedent.

The Justice Department's original request, last August, sought the text of each search string entered into Google's search engine over a one-week period, and a random sampling of one million URLs from Google's database of websites. The Department is trying to prove that filtering software does not protect minors, after the Supreme Court upheld an injunction that suspended the Child Online Protection Act because of new technological possibilities.

After discussions with Google, the Department told the judge it is now seeking only 50,000 web addresses, of which it says it will look at 10,000. It has also reduced the number of search queries sought – down to 5,000 from one million. Of these, the Department says it will only look at 1,000.

Google refused to comply with the original request, although other search engines had given in, saying that to do so would breach the privacy rights of its users, but appears comfortable with the scaled-down request.

US District Judge James Ware however expressed concern that the public could come to believe that typing search terms into Google was “subject to government scrutiny”, doubted if the government would really keep the material confidential, and was concerned that if he granted the request, "a slew of trial attorneys and curious social scientists could follow suit."

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