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The Wall Street Journal Reports That Google Will Have to Turn Search Data Over To The Government

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U.S. Court Likely Will Force Google To Turn Over Keyword Search Data

Wall Street Joural - 3/15/06

Google likely will have to turn over keyword search data to government lawyers making a case for a child-pornography law, but a much smaller amount than originally requested, a federal judge said. U.S. District Judge James Ware said he is inclined to require the company to respond to a Department of Justice subpoena seeking the text of search queries and randomly selected Web addresses from Google's index of Internet sites.

During a hearing in San Jose, Calif., the judge said he was persuaded partly by the government's willingness to seek only 50,000 randomly selected addresses and 5,000 search queries instead of the one million addresses and millions of search queries initially sought. The government filed suit in January seeking the information after Google, of Mountain View, Calif., resisted complying with an August subpoena.

"What I've been trying to balance is the interest society has in the litigation with the interest of a private company," Judge Ware said.

The government hopes to use the information to defend its Child Online Protection Act, a law designed to shield minors from sexually explicit materials on the Internet. The Supreme Court blocked implementation of the act and returned the case to district court in Pennsylvania, where the Bush administration is battling claims from the American Civil Liberties Union that it violates the Constitution's First Amendment right to free speech.

The government claims the Google information will help it determine whether filtering software can keep minors from seeing offensive material online or whether the stronger measures of the act are needed. It has received search data from Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp., and Time Warner Inc. Representatives from Time Warner's America Online unit, Yahoo and Microsoft wouldn't comment.

The dispute has drawn national interest to the Google case for signs of how readily U.S. courts will let the government subpoena search data for investigations and surveillance. The judge said he was troubled by the privacy issues surrounding the release of the search queries, where individuals enter search terms into the Google site to locate information and Web pages.

Judge Ware asked government lawyer Joel McElvain if the google keyword search queries couldn't inadvertently reveal personal information such as Social Security numbers, credit-card numbers or the sexual preference of a public figure. Mr. McElvain said the government didn't intend to use any personal information that might show up in the queries. Google Associate General Counsel Nicole Wong said the judge's questions and concerns "reflected our concerns about user privacy and the scope of the government's subpoena request."