Chazzsongs Internet Censorship

Is Google Evil?

Is Google Evil?

Internet privacy?

Google already knows more about you than the National Security Agency ever will. And don’t assume for a minute it can keep a secret. YouTube fans--and everybody else--beware.


by Adam L. Penenberg - October 10, 2006

Google Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the two former Stanford geeks who founded the company that has become synonymous with Internet searching, and you’ll find more than a million entries each. But amid the inevitable dump of press clippings, corporate bios, and conference appearances, there’s very little about Page’s and Brin’s personal lives; it’s as if the pair had known all along that Google would change the way we acquire information, and had carefully insulated their lives—putting their homes under other people’s names, choosing unlisted numbers, abstaining from posting anything personal on web pages.

That obsession with privacy may explain Google’s puzzling reaction last year, when Elinor Mills, a reporter with the tech news service cnet, ran a search on Google ceo Eric Schmidt and published the results: Schmidt lived with his wife in Atherton, California, was worth about $1.5 billion, had dumped about $140 million in Google shares that year, was an amateur pilot, and had been to the Burning Man festival. Google threw a fit, claimed that the information was a security threat, and announced it was blacklisting cnet’s reporters for a year. (The company eventually backed down.) It was a peculiar response, especially given that the information Mills published was far less intimate than the details easily found online on every one of us. But then, this is something of a pattern with Google: When it comes to information, it knows what’s best.

From the start, Google’s informal motto has been “Don’t Be Evil,” and the company earned cred early on by going toe-to-toe with Microsoft over desktop software and other issues. But make no mistake. Faced with doing the right thing or doing what is in its best interests, Google has almost always chosen expediency. In 2002, it removed links to an anti-Scientology site after the Church of Scientology claimed copyright infringement. Scores of website operators have complained that Google pulls ads if it discovers words on a page that it apparently has flagged, although it will not say what those words are. In September, Google handed over the records of some users of its social-networking service, Orkut, to the Brazilian government, which was investigating alleged racist, homophobic, and pornographic content.

Google’s stated mission may be to provide “unbiased, accurate, and free access to information,” but that didn’t stop it from censoring its Chinese search engine to gain access to a lucrative market (prompting Bill Gates to crack that perhaps the motto should be “Do Less Evil”). Now that the company is publicly traded, it has a legal responsibility to its shareholders and bottom line that overrides any higher calling.

So the question is not whether Google will always do the right thing—it hasn’t, and it won’t. It’s whether Google, with its insatiable thirst for your personal data, has become the greatest threat to privacy ever known, a vast informational honey pot that attracts hackers, crackers, online thieves, and—perhaps most worrisome of all—a government intent on finding convenient ways to spy on its own citizenry.

It doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to worry about such a threat. “I always thought it was fertile ground for the government to snoop,” ceo Schmidt told a search engine conference in San Jose, California, in August. While Google earned praise from civil libertarians earlier this year when it resisted a Justice Department subpoena for millions of search queries in connection with a child pornography case, don’t expect it will stand up to the government every time: On its website, Google asserts that it “does comply with valid legal process, such as search warrants, court orders, or subpoenas seeking personal information.”

What’s at stake? Over the years, Google has collected a staggering amount of data, and the company cheerfully admits that in nine years of operation, it has never knowingly erased a single search query. It’s the biggest data pack rat west of the nsa, and for good reason: 99 percent of its revenue comes from selling ads that are specifically targeted to a user’s interests. “Google’s entire value proposition is to figure out what people want,” says Eric Goldman, a professor at Silicon Valley’s Santa Clara School of Law and director of the High Tech Law Institute. “But to read our minds, they need to know a lot about us.”

Every search engine gathers information about its users—primarily by sending us “cookies,” or text files that track our online movements. Most cookies expire within a few months or years. Google’s, though, don’t expire until 2038. Until then, when you use the company’s search engine or visit any of myriad affiliated sites, it will record what you search for and when, which links you click on, which ads you access. Google’s cookies can’t identify you by name, but they log your computer’s IP address; by way of metaphor, Google doesn’t have your driver’s license number, but it knows the license plate number of the car you are driving. And search queries are windows into our souls, as 658,000 aol users learned when their search profiles were mistakenly posted on the Internet: Would user 1997374 have searched for information on better erections or cunnilingus if he’d known that aol was recording every keystroke? Would user 22155378 have keyed in “marijuana detox” over and over knowing someone could play it all back for the world to see? If you’ve ever been seized by a morbid curiosity after a night of hard drinking, a search engine knows—and chances are it’s Google, which owns roughly half of the entire search market and processes more than 3 billion queries a month.

And Google knows far more than that. If you are a Gmail user, Google stashes copies of every email you send and receive. If you use any of its other products—Google Maps, Froogle, Google Book Search, Google Earth, Google Scholar, Talk, Images, Video, and News—it will keep track of which directions you seek, which products you shop for, which phrases you research in a book, which satellite photos and news stories you view, and on and on. Served up à la carte, this is probably no big deal. Many websites stow snippets of your data. The problem is that there’s nothing to prevent Google from combining all of this information to create detailed dossiers on its customers, something the company admits is possible in principle. Soon Google may even be able to keep track of users in the real world: Its latest move is into free wifi, which will require it to know your whereabouts (i.e., which router you are closest to).

Google insists that it uses individual data only to provide targeted advertising. But history shows that information seldom remains limited to the purpose for which it was collected. Accordingly, some privacy advocates suggest that Google and other search companies should stop hoarding user queries altogether: Internet searches, argues Lillie Coney of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, are part of your protected personal space just like your physical home. In February, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) introduced legislation to this effect, but Republicans have kept it stalled in committee. Google, which only recently retained a lobbying firm in Washington, is among the tech companies fighting the measure.

When I first contacted Google for this story, a company publicist insisted I provide a list of detailed questions, in writing; when I said that I had a problem with a source dictating the terms for an interview, he claimed that everyone who covers Google—including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal—submits advance questions. (A Times spokeswoman told me the paper sees no ethical problems with such a procedure, though individual reporters’ decisions may vary; an editor in charge of editorial standards at the Journal said the same thing.) The Google flack assured me that this was so he could find the best person for me to talk to—more information for Google, so that Google could better serve me.

Eventually he agreed to put me in touch, sans scripted questions, with Nicole Wong, Google’s associate corporate counsel. I asked her if the company had ever been subpoenaed for user records, and whether it had complied. She said yes, but wouldn’t comment on how many times. Google’s website says that as a matter of policy the company does “not publicly discuss the nature, number or specifics of law enforcement requests.”

So can you trust Google only as far as you can trust the Bush administration? “I don’t know,” Wong replied. “I’ve never been asked that question before.”

Spooks at Google… and MySpace, PayPal, YouTube, Ebay, and Yahoo

Friday October 27th 2006, 2:36 pm

It comes as no surprise that Google is in bed with the CIA, or rather it is no surprise the CIA ate Google and has turned it into yet another front company. “A former clandestine services officer for the CIA who also maintains close relationships with top Google representatives says that the company is ‘in bed with’ the intelligence agency and the U.S. government,” writes Paul Joseph Watson for Prison Planet.

Robert David Steele, the top-rated Amazon reviewer who recently admitted Webster G. Tarpley’s 9/11 Synthetic Terror “is the strongest of the 770+ books” he has reviewed for the online bookseller—and thus he believes there is enough evidence to have the Bush cabal do the perp walk in snazzy orange jumpsuits—told Alex Jones he thinks “that Google has made a very important strategic mistake in dealing with the secret elements of the U.S. government—that is a huge mistake and I’m hoping they’ll work their way out of it and basically cut that relationship off…. they were heavily in bed with the Central Intelligence Agency, the office of research and development…. If Google is indeed starting to do harm then I think it’s important that be documented and publicized.”

Of course, ending a relationship with the CIA is akin to ending a relationship considered vital to Don Corleone or the Stracci, Barzini, Cuneo, and Tattaglia crime families. No doubt Eric Schmidt, former chief executive officer of Novell, and current Google CEO harbors no desire to sleep with the fish.

I exaggerate, but only a little.

It is no exaggeration, however, to state that the CIA has fished around for top drawer search technology for some time. Back in 2002, shortly after “everything changed,” the CIA went shopping at Inktomi for “search and retrieval technology,” according to Internet News. Inktomi entered into a business relationship with In-Q-Tel, described as the “venture capital arm of the American Central Intelligence Agency,” that is to say a front company set-up to roll investment hungry technology companies into the spook Borg Hive. According to Buzzy “Put Options” Krongard, a onetime investment banker and former Executive Director of the CIA, In-Q-Tel presented a “wonderful model… in accessing the capabilities of the private sector,” that is to say snooping and sleuthing by way of the private sector.

“Even while Google presents a public image of vigorously protecting its users’ privacy, it has quietly provided assistance to several U.S. intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency, as the U.S. prosecutes its war on terrorism,” writes Michael Hampton for Homeland Stupidity. “In addition, Google may be providing assistance to the National Security Agency.”

According to Hampton and IT professionals, the CIA is not simply interested in the search capability of Google, but those of us who use that unparalleled capability. “The intelligence community appears to be interested in data mining Google’s vast store of information on each user who uses Google’s services. Google collects data on each user’s search queries, which web sites users visited after making a query, and through its Google Analytics service, can also track users on cooperating web sites. It’s not clear what level of access to or how much of this information has been made available to intelligence agencies.” Hampton continues:

The contractor, who spoke on a not-for-attribution basis, said that at least one US intelligence agency he declined to identify is working to “leverage Google’s [user] data monitoring” capability as part of an effort by the IC to glean from this data information of “national security intelligence interest” in the war on terror. . . .

One of the sources did say, however, that the CIA’s Office of Research and Development “has been giving them additional money and guidance and requirements.”

Last November, the CIA—through In-Q-Tel—issued notices to sell $2.2 million worth of Google stock.

Robert David Steele, intelligence veteran and CEO of OSS.Net, Inc. which sponsored last week’s event, told HSToday.us Tuesday evening that “Google is being actively hypocritical and deceptive in playing up its refusal to help the Department of Justice when all along it has been taking money and direction for elements of the US Intelligence Community, including the Office of Research and Development at the Central Intelligence Agency, In-Q-Tel, and in all probability, both the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command.”

Steele added, “I have no doubt that Google, in its arrogance, decided it could make a deal with the devil and not get caught.”

Hampton suggests blocking all Google cookies, but even “with cookies blocked, a limited amount of user tracking is possible, so unless you really are a terrorist, it probably isn’t worth the trouble.” Of course, as the CIA is responsible for creating a large share of what passes for terrorism, tracking terrorists through Google is not really necessary.

In fact, they are interested in tracking and profiling you and me, not the dead Osama.

But if this does not make you paranoid enough, consider a post at Internet Portal Community Watch. Ebay is run by Richard T. Schlosberg III,
former graduate of the United States Air Force Academy. MySpace, of course, is now owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. According to blogger Josh Smith, the “social networking” site Facebook is a data-gathering operation that received initial funding from Peter Thiel, who is connected to James Breyer, who is the former chairman of In-Q-Tel. Thiel is the co-founder of PayPal. Yahoo, the IPVW post asserts, is a possible “U.S. Military or psyOP Pentagon front.” Yahoo director Ed Kozel worked at Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, and SRI International. Chad Hurley, a former PayPal employee, is CEO and Co-Founder of YouTube. As we know, Google bought up YouTube, and Google’s connection to the CIA is less than speculative.

Finally, if you’re thinking about using Yahoo over Google, think again. Earlier this year, Michael Callahan, Yahoo’s senior vice president and general counsel, under “cross-examination during a congressional hearing … refused … to say whether the company opens its records for government surveillance [that is, the NSA] without a court order,” according to ZDNet. Although the NSA is supposedly restricted by its charter from “acquiring information concerning the domestic activities of United States persons,” it has done so habitually since its establishment on November 4, 1952. The NSA captures civilian telephone, fax, satellite, and data traffic through ECHELON. It runs “the largest database ever assembled in the world,” containing call detail records of all calls (domestic and international) placed through AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth.

Google Caught In Terror Storm Censorship

Viewing totals reset despite runaway popularity of Alex Jones video

Every time the ratings for "Terror Storm" place it among the "most watched" videos, Google "accidentally" erases the ratings.

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones/Prison Planet.com | September 25 2006

Google is again embroiled in a censorship farce after its Google Video sub-division was caught altering viewing statistics for Alex Jones' Terror Storm documentary, resetting runaway growth curbs to prevent the video making the website's top ten and its online viewership exploding exponentially.

Following last week's buzz about Terror Storm being available for viewing free on Google Video, numerous websites linked to our promo page and as a result viewing figures for all versions of Terror Storm at Google Video began to climb rapidly.

However, upon checking the same viewer figures on Sunday, Alex Jones noticed that many had been reset to zero and had only begun to climb into the hundreds and early thousands, nowhere near their previous levels of tens and hundreds of thousands for the previous days. The trends had been artificially reversed and this prevented Terror Storm from entering the top ten list of Google Video which would have ensured an explosion of further circulation of the video.

As you can see from the screenshot a reader e mailed us, Terror Storm was being highlighted as one of Google Video's most popular selections and was heading for the top ten, until late Saturday/early Sunday when viewership totals for the video were inexplicably reset.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Is this another mistake on the part of Google or is it an attempt to minimize the impact of Terror Storm and prevent it from mirroring the same online presence as Loose Change?

This is not the first time we have caught Google engaging in censorship of Alex Jones and his websites.

During our Charlie Sheen coverage, Google intentionally blocked news stories pertaining to Sheen's comments which were first made on the Alex Jones Show and turned into a nationwide media spectacle.

Even after the story had gone supernova, and our original write-up had been linked all over the web, including the Drudge Report, Google's main search engine did not list the article.

After we blew the whistle on this act of censorship, the story was re-listed and Google even began carrying some of our content in their news section - a practice that has now also ceased.

Google's penchant for abandoning their founding principle of "don't be evil" and kissing up to Communist China for privileged access into the world's biggest untapped Internet market, was exemplified in February this when Google completely erased the Space War website from its search engine. Space War is a large mainstream news website that carries articles about geopolitics and the defense industry from AFP.

Space War speculated that it was their reporting on advancements in China's military technology and missile programs that provoked a censorship order from the totalitarian Chinese government which Google acted upon. Again, after a mass e mailing campaign which we fully supported, Google re-indexed the Space War website.

We hope that by drawing attention to this matter Google will remedy the artificial alteration, whether a result of technical gremlins or deliberate censorship, and enable an accurate and true reflection of the growth and popularity of Terror Storm.

Google Caught Censoring Charlie Sheen 9/11 Story

Quickly re-indexes pages during live radio discussion

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones/Prison Planet.com | March 23 2006

Note: Before you e-mail, please understand that we are aware of the fact that Google now carries links to Sheen 9/11 articles, that is not our point as you will read below. The censorship issue began before Google reversed their policy.

Google is again embroiled in a censorship scandal after being caught blocking information about Charlie Sheen's 9/11 comments, despite the fact that every other major search engine had indexed the pages.

For days, major search engines like Yahoo and others contained tens of thousands of web pages relating to Sheen's comments first broadcast on the Alex Jones Show on Monday afternoon. Last night CNN aired a piece on the issue and by early this morning both the New York Post and the Boston Herald ran articles.

We first noticed that there were no search results related to the story on Google the day after we broke the Sheen story. At first we decided to be fair and wait another day for Google to index an article which was by now linked on thousands of other websites and blogs. By Thursday afternoon, and with the story receiving more traffic, Google still had not indexed any material relating to the Sheen interview, from Prison Planet.com or any other websites. This despite the fact that the Drudge Report had briefly directly linked to our article, sending it millions of visitors.

During a live radio discussion of this issue between Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson on Alex Jones' broadcast Thursday afternoon, Google, as if they had people listening to the show, immediately re-indexed the pages and a search for 'Charlie Sheen 9/11' now returns 111,000 results at time of writing.

Pictured below are screenshots we managed to cache shortly before Google re-indexed the pages with the search terms 'Charlie Sheen 9/11' and the entire headline "Actor Charlie Sheen Questions Official 9/11 Story". As you can see, the Boston Herald story is linked from Google News (Google do not censor their affiliates) but the main search engine below returned no results. To stress again, this is three days after we broke this massive story. The usual index time for a story of this size is 12-24 hours and at the same time that Google returned no results whatsoever, tens of thousands were being carried by other major search engines like Yahoo.



CLICK FOR ENLARGEMENTS



To make it crystal clear, Google's web spidering process is automated and we have received high Google rankings in the past for nothing stories that get little traffic. The Sheen story was linked everywhere and to eliminate it from Google's search results would have required technicians to physically access the spidering control panel and exclude an enormous amount of varied search terms.

Google has a history of censoring websites it dislikes within the US. Google Inc. banned and removed a mainstream news website from all its worldwide search engines, seemingly due to the website's reports on China's geopolitical affairs and military technology.

Google has banned its users inside the US and the rest of the world from accessing the Space War website from its search engine. Space War speculated at the time that this was at the behest of the "boys from Beijing."

Space War is a reasonably tame mainstream website that focuses on geopolitical affairs and satellite and military technology advancements. It is based in Australia and carries articles from AFP and United Press International.

After a complaints campaign supported by this website, Google agreed to re-index the website.

Did our defense of Space War cause Google to impose a blackballing campaign on our major articles or is this just a response to the sheer magnitude and influence of the Charlie Sheen story?

To emphasize, Google is now carrying search results related to Charlie Sheen's 9/11 comments, but only after it was exposed live on nationally syndicated radio that they had stonewalled this issue for three clear days even as it raged around the rest of the Internet as a viral story and broke into the mainstream yesterday and early this morning.

The floodgates on the Sheen story have opened, with CNN airing a balanced piece on the controversy. Meanwhile mainstream publications like Human Events, the New York Post, CBS and the Boston Herald used Sheen's comments to attack him and demonize anybody who questions the official line on 9/11. A round-up article of today's reaction to Charlie Sheen's comments will follow later tonight.

Google Is The New Surveillance

Google in bed with U.S. intelligence

by: Michael Hampton
Posted: February 22, 2006 11:31 am

Even while Google presents a public image of vigorously protecting its users’ privacy, it has quietly provided assistance to several U.S. intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency, as the U.S. prosecutes its war on terrorism. In addition, Google may be providing assistance to the National Security Agency.

IT contractors and intelligence officials familiar with the arrangement confirmed to HSToday.us that Google had been providing assistance to the intelligence community, but would not say under what authority that assistance had been requested or provided.

The intelligence community appears to be interested in data mining Google’s vast store of information on each user who uses Google’s services. Google collects data on each user’s search queries, which web sites users visited after making a query, and through its Google Analytics service, can also track users on cooperating web sites. It’s not clear what level of access to or how much of this information has been made available to intelligence agencies.

The contractor, who spoke on a not-for-attribution basis, said that at least one US intelligence agency he declined to identify is working to “leverage Google’s [user] data monitoring” capability as part of an effort by the IC to glean from this data information of “national security intelligence interest” in the war on terror. . . .

One of the sources did say, however, that the CIA’s Office of Research and Development “has been giving them additional money and guidance and requirements.”

Last November, the CIA - through In-Q-Tel [CIA venture capital company] - issued notices to sell $2.2 million worth of Google stock.

Robert David Steele, intelligence veteran and CEO of OSS.Net, Inc. which sponsored last week’s event, told HSToday.us Tuesday evening that “Google is being actively hypocritical and deceptive in playing up its refusal to help the Department of Justice when all along it has been taking money and direction for elements of the US Intelligence Community, including the Office of Research and Development at the Central Intelligence Agency, In-Q-Tel, and in all probability, both the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command.”

Steele added, “I have no doubt that Google, in its arrogance, decided it could make a deal with the devil and not get caught.” — HSToday.us

If you are extremely concerned about the possibility that your private browsing information is going to wind up in the hands of U.S. intelligence agencies, you can throw a spanner in the works by blocking cookies from the following domains: google.com, googlesyndication.com, google-analytics.com, and your country-specific Google domain (e.g. google.co.uk). If you actually use Google services, such as Google Mail, then this obviously will prevent you from using those services.

Even with cookies blocked, a limited amount of user tracking is possible, so unless you really are a terrorist, it probably isn’t worth the trouble. I still have all of my Google Cookies. Then again, I already know they’re watching me…

Former Intelligence Agent Says Google In Bed With CIA

Steele also sounds off on 9/11 doubts
Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | October 27 2006

A former clandestine services officer for the CIA who also maintains close relationships with top Google representatives says that the company is "in bed with" the intelligence agency and the U.S. government. He has also gone public on his deep suspicions about the official explanation behind 9/11.

Robert David Steele appeared on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones radio show and began by voicing his deep doubts about the official 9/11 story.

While Steele stopped short of saying 9/11 was a complete inside job, he agreed that the evidence points to the overwhelming complicity of the Bush administration.

"The U.S. government did not properly investigate this and there are more rocks to be turned over," said Steele adding, "I'm absolutely certain that WTC 7 was brought down by controlled demolition and that as far as I'm concerned means that this case has not been properly investigated."

"There's no way that building could have come down without controlled demolition."

Steele pointed the finger of suspicion directly at the Vice President saying, "There's no question in my own mind that Dick Cheney is the tar baby in this whole thing."

Steele outlined the bizarre circumstances preceding the attack that would have greased the skids for bombs to be planted in the buildings.

"You do have the whole issue of the security cameras being disengaged, the bomb sniffing dogs being removed, the family ties with Bush - I mean if you smell a rotten fish there's probably a rotten fish somewhere around."

Steele's biography is impressive. He was the second-ranking civilian (GS-14) in U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence from 1988-1992. Steele is a former clandestine services case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency.

He is the founder and president of Open Source Solutions, Inc., and is an acknowledged expert on computer and information vulnerabilities. Steele holds graduate degrees in International Relations and Public Administration from Leigh University and the University of Oklahoma. He has also earned certificates in Intelligence Policy from Harvard University and in Defense Studies from the Naval War College.

Before the 2004 election Steele advocated the re-election of George W Bush and he has been cited by numerous Republican luminaries as a credible source. His testimony is added to the chorus of other credible 9/11 whistleblowers both in and out of government and academia.

Steele raised eyebrows when he confirmed from his contacts within the CIA and Google that Google was working in tandem with "the agency," a claim made especially volatile by the fact that Google was recently caught censoring Alex Jones' Terror Storm and has targeted other websites for blackout in the past.

"I think that Google has made a very important strategic mistake in dealing with the secret elements of the U.S. government - that is a huge mistake and I'm hoping they'll work their way out of it and basically cut that relationship off," said the ex-CIA man.

"Google was a little hypocritical when they were refusing to honor a Department of Justice request for information because they were heavily in bed with the Central Intelligence Agency, the office of research and development," said Steele.

Steele called for more scrutiny to be placed on Google if it continues to engage in nefarious practices, saying, "If Google is indeed starting to do harm then I think it's important that be documented and publicized."

Google Vows to Fight White House Over Porn Probe

Jae C. Hong / AP
Truthdig.com
Posted on Jan. 19, 2006

The Bush administration, seeking to revive an online pornography law struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, has subpoenaed Google Inc. for details on what its users have been looking for through its popular search engine. Google has refused to comply with the subpoena, issued last year, for a broad range of material from its databases, including a request for 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period, lawyers for the U.S. Justice Department said in papers filed Wednesday in federal court in San Jose.

Google may have to fight second subpoena

By Declan McCullagh, CNET News.com
February 17, 2006

Google may be about to face a second round of subpoenas for search-related information.

If the U.S. Justice Department is successful in obtaining a week's worth of search terms from Google, which it demanded as part of an attempt to defend a 1998 Internet pornography law, a second round of subpoenas is shaping up to be far more intrusive.

The American Civil Liberties Union warned Friday that if the first subpoena is granted--giving the government's expert the information to use to evaluate the effectiveness of porn filters--the ACLU's legal assault on the same antipornography law will require it to target Google as well.

"If the government utilizes the information in any manner, we're very likely going to need to do follow-up discovery," ACLU attorney Aden Fine said.

A legal brief the ACLU filed with a federal judge in San Jose, Calif., on Friday says its request would seek to learn how Google's search engines operate, how Google serves up links in response to queries and whether there is "any way to distinguish between queries generated by actual individuals and queries generated by artificial programs or software."

The civil liberties group, which characterizes itself as a staunch defender of privacy, says it is not eager to expose details about Google's inner workings and the habits of its users. The ACLU says it has "no need or desire to obtain any of this information from Google." But, the group warns, if the government gets the information, it would have little choice.

The unexpected news of a second subpoena from the ACLU could complicate the Justice Department's attempt to convince U.S. District Judge James Ware to grant its request. Ware has scheduled a hearing for March 13.

The Justice Department is seeking a random sample of 1 million Web pages from Google's index, along with copies of a week's worth of search terms to aid in the defense of the Child Online Protection Act (COPA). America Online, Microsoft and Yahoo voluntarily complied with similar requests.

A representative for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.

For its part, Google has raised the possibility of being enmeshed in the increasingly complex COPA lawsuit as a reason to oppose the subpoena. That would place Google "in the witness chair, and exposes Google's intellectual property to cross-examination in open court by the ACLU, its counsel, experts and consultants," the company said in its own brief filed Friday.

AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo each have received two subpoenas from the Justice Department, one asking for information about filtering technology and the other asking for search terms. The ACLU has given AOL a subpoena to appear at a deposition "asking for testimony about their parental control technology," according to the ACLU's Fine.

The Justice Department has disclosed nothing about what it plans to do with the records from search companies, except to say it has hired Philip Stark, a professor of statistics at the University of California at Berkeley, to evaluate the search logs.

Google Sued Over Refusal To Comply With US Subpoena

by Axxel
January 21st 2006

You might have never though it possible, but yes, giant search engine Google is being sued by none other than its own country, the United States. The reason? Protecting its users privacy and refusing to comply with a subpoena from the Department of Justice.
As you might have read during these past few days (including the two articles above on the subject), the world’s most popular search engine, used by 90 million people every month, has been asked to hand over an entire week of search requests made at Google.com.
The US Department of Justice wants the information to help it to establish how much child pornography is available on the internet.
And since Google refused to comply with the subpoena, it has now been taken to court in California by Alberto Gonzales, the US Attorney-General. The lawsuit describes any privacy concerns as illusory, arguing that it does not want to see “any additional information that would identify the person who entered the search”.
Other search engines, such as Yahoo! and AOL — which use Google technology — have complied with the request, although it is not clear what they handed over. Google was originally asked to hand over every search made between June 1 and July 31 last year.
The site’s lawyer said: “Google’s acceding to the request would suggest that it is willing to reveal information about those who use its services. This is not a perception that Google can accept.” However, despite this statement, it seems that the company objected to the breadth of the government's request but did not consider it to be a privacy issue since the search terms would not include personally identifiable details.
But others were not reassured. According to the Reuters agency, Massachusetts Rep. Edward Markey, the ranking Democrat on the telecommunications subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said he would introduce a bill to strengthen consumers' Internet privacy by prohibiting the storage of personally identifiable information Internet searches beyond a reasonable time.
"Internet search engines provide an extraordinary service, but the preservation of that service does not rely on a bottomless, timeless database that can do great damage despite good intentions," Markey said.
Chris Jay Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center worried that the government could follow up its initial request with a demand for more information.
"If Google hands over the search logs and the Justice Department finds search strings like 'child porn' or 'naked children,' could they not then go back and ask Google for the user's Internet address?" he said.
Ari Schwartz of the Center for Democracy and Technology said he was glad Google was fighting the case but the company needed to make privacy a more fundamental part of its products. He said the case was a wake-up call to all Internet users that information was being collected on them all the time and was stored indefinitely.
Danny Sullivan, an Internet consultant who created Search Engine Watch, said in a posting on his site: "Such a move absolutely should breed some paranoia. They didn't ask for data this time, but next time, they might."
This is a very serious situation, and especially for the Bush administration, which is already under fire from a number of rights groups over security measures it has taken since the September 11, 2001 attacks on America, including pursuing checks on library records and eavesdropping on some telephone calls.
It remains to be seen what the judges will decide in this case. But, no matter what verdict will be reached, it will represent a very important precedent for the future of online privacy.

Google Imposes Worldwide Ban On China Critical Website

Paul Joseph Watson | Prison Planet.com | February 24 2006

Space War accuses company of selling out to
the "boys from Beijing"

For the first time in what some fear will signal a growing trend, Google Inc. has banned and removed a mainstream news website from all its worldwide search engines, seemingly due to the website's reports on China's geopolitical affairs and military technology.

Google came under fire last month for agreeing to install government search filters on its Chinese based search engine. The company that was founded on the motto "don't be evil," claimed that some censorship was acceptable because in the long term the Internet would be opened up to a wider audience and freedom of speech would expand.

That excuse can today be put to bed because Google has banned its users inside the US and the rest of the world from accessing the Space War website from its search engine.

Space War is a reasonably tame mainstream website that focuses on geopolitical affairs and satellite and military technology advancements. It is based in Australia and carries articles from AFP and United Press International.

In a statement posted on its website today, the President and Publisher of Space.TV Corporation Simon Mansfield released the following comments,

"Google Inc. has banned SPACEWAR.COM, a news site covering military space. Reasons for the ban by Google are unclear. The company did not communicate with Space.TV Corp., the owner of SPACEWAR.COM, prior to its action, and Google representatives did not respond to requests for comment."



"Google Inc.'s preferred method of banning a site is to delist its primary domain URL - www.spacewar.com - from the Google search index. Google also can reduce a site's page rank, or eliminate it entirely, as it has done to SpaceWar.com."

"Google Inc in the wake of pressure from the Chinese government has begun blocking access to various websites deemed unfriendly to the "Boys From Beijing" (TM)."

"At this stage we have no evidence to suggest this is the reason why Google has banned SPACEWAR.COM. The lack of any forewarning that SPACEWAR.COM was operating in violation of Google's increasingly strict search engine compliance requirements, however, leads us to suspect the ban is politically motivated."

"Google Inc.'s corporate mantra is "Do No Evil." Obviously, this is not true given Google's willingness to submit to the censorship requirements of the Chinese government."

It is important to stress that Space War is not even outright hostile to the Chinese government, it simply reports on publicly available information about its military progression and relations with other countries.

This sets the precedent for Google to ban any website that is even mildly critical of the Communist dictatorship in China. Much to our surprise, the website you are reading now is still accessible in most areas of China but we don't expect it to remain that way for very much longer.

The Chinese government is held aloft by the UN and others as the model of the New World Order. The country is no less totalitarian than it was when the PLA massacred as many as 2600 protesters and injured 10,000 more at Tiananmen Square on June 4th 1989.

Political dissidents and peaceful practitioners of the Falun Gong religion and even the lawyers who defend them are subject to mobile execution vans or if they're lucky, hauled off to permanent detention camps.

US companies like Microsoft and Yahoo have been complicit in helping the Chinese government locate and arrest Chinese bloggers who post even mild criticism of the government.

Space War is inviting its readers to complain to their political representative. We urge you to support them by following this link and ensuring that the practice of worldwide censorship of websites critical of the ChiComs ends now.

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posted by Chazzsongs at 10:43 AM | 0 comment(s)