The Issue:
The U.S. Judicial Courts have requested search records from the major search engines (including google, yahoo, aol according to the article) to submit search records in order to prove that child pornography is possible to find on the internet with little trouble. According to the department of justice, they won't read the documents in a more then cursory way. However, Google is not complying with the courts' requests, because it says it wants to protect the privacy of it's users. Also, Google has said that they face the loss of business if their users find out about Google giving the courts access to the records. Other search engines including Yahoo, MSN and AOL have already complied with the request.

My Opinion
I believe that Google is correct in its resistance of the federal courts' request, because complying with this request creates a precedent that could be used in future cases with less of a solid background. For example, suppose the Bush administration decides that all forms of pornography should be banned (not all that far-fethced), and requests search engines' support, would we want them to give it?

I believe that the freedom of speech, as the first ammendment of the U.S. Constitution, is more important than any law, regardless of the case. This is further reinforced by the fact that the internet as a whole has been given the highest level of protection available by the first ammendement by some U.S. government body or other.

Food for thought:
What should the search engines have done?
How great is the first ammendment's "trump" of other laws?
Does/Should freedom of speech have limits? Who should decide them?

This post has been edited by smartbei: Feb 27 2006, 03:35 PM

Smartbei, if I may be so bold as asking, as an additional item to this "food for thought" list of yours :

- Who will be warden of these self-appointed wardens?

I seem to recall an old French saying that goes : "Fish always start rotting from head to tail". I don't believe in hunting small game animals. The problem lies rather where the top dogs hide.

Cheers, all!

I don't really see the point in it all really. If judges want to find child pornography why don't they just Google it themselves?! I wouldn't really want people knowing what I search about but it's nothing interesting and I have nothing to hide.

THere is one point in the request that I don't quite understand google not compilying with. I compleatly understand (and approve) their resistance to give search histories. However I feel that in an act of good faith they could turn over their internet index/database.

Now get this Google claims that this could take up to a week in human hourse to produce. How much data do they really have?

Moldboy, Google's got A LOT of data. A LOT. Some people don't really want other people finding out about what they google. Who knows, they could be googling hot wet donkey pr0n. Sure it's not like the person that handles that data is going to care about that but what if the data gets leaked? Then their friends and relatives could all find out about what they've done on google. Privacy should be protected. Google was smart in not giving it out. Another reason i never use other search engines...

Don't get me wrong, I don't want them saying who searches for what, or even something as anomous as this region (Western Canada, Northren europe, etc) tends to search for this more then that. Just the actual context of their search, a list of addresses that can be searched.

If they were only to send what sites they have archived, it woulden't take so long. It'd probably cut their work down by a couple terabytes

Well I have read about this search engine issue in a computer magazin this month. And their opinion, which I strongly support, is that Google has done the right thing. On the other hand Yahoo and the other search engines made the wrong choice. First of all because users really do care about their privacy and some day some US institution may want to check everyones emails for whatever reason. If Yahoo will just complie everytime someone wants something regarding users privacy, users will be encouraged to use another search engine.

BTW.... I also read in that magazine that last month Yahoo helped officials from China arrest a jurnalist that wanted to release something bad about the guvernament (don't remember what). And that case was related to the email service of Yahoo.

Anyway, even if what Yahoo, MSN and AOL did was bad there should be a line to which freedom of speech extends. Full freedomn (even in general) is not good... There should be laws that define what is on the both sides of this line.... in other words what is good and what is bad

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Ok... my opinion is that google should not give the records.... its there records! Thats like Trap 17 going everyone hand over you stats and logs! WTF... No way, my site my records. I want to protect the privacy of my company and well that child pornography is a load of horse crap. They want the records to see other things and get some inside information from Google.... like business trends, people, national security stuff.... the NSA ( ) I think has something to do with this. There going to steal the records before they give them up!