I followed up Maureen Dowd's item in the NYT and found that Google Maps misdirects anybody who uses Google Maps to look at the US Naval Observatory in Washington DC. If you know where it should be, and find your way back there by panning west or south from wherever you were misdirected to, the image of the USNO is fuzzed over. Which shows a lot about who the real president is.

If Google is showing that kind of cooperation with the Bushistas, one can only imagine who happy they will be to turn over all of your search information to the Homeland Security guys.

Everyone should Google "Bush Asshole". Maybe he'll get the message.

It is unclear at this point -- and probably "proprietary" in Google's view -- whether Google can/does capture and retain all of the search results of every "person" (merely the requesting IP address?) using their search engine. I have way less of a problem with the government simply amassing aggregate statistics (e.g., # of search requests for "kiddieporn.com" etc.) than them getting a full transcript of every individual's Google search transactions, if it's even possible. The latter would seem to violate constitutional privacy, and it would be an economic death blow to Google were they to comply.

Other search engines receiving subpoenas must have rolled over on this: see p.6 of the Government's motion to compell Google at http://news.findlaw.com/nytimes/docs/google/gonzgoog11806m6.html

Early in your article you say

"Why wasn't the usual Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court procedure adequate? And if it wasn't adequate, why didn't the Bush administration ask Congress for specific statutory authority to do whatever it was that the FISC procedure wouldn't have allowed?"

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Tom Daschle say a couple of weeks ago that when the post 9/11 law was about to be passed, Mr. Bush asked for the specific statutory authority, i.e. the right to use unwarranted surveillance, and Mr. Daschle told him "no"?

This administration is going to do whatever it wants to do, despite being told "no" either by dissenting officials or by the majority of US citizens. I expect this situation to be no different. They will get what they want, legality be damned.

from Al Gore speech , Mon.

Fifth, any telecommunications company that has provided the government with access to private information concerning the communications of Americans without a proper warrant should immediately cease and desist their complicity in this apparently illegal invasion of the privacy of American citizens.

Freedom of communication is an essential prerequisite for the restoration of the health of our democracy.

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Text_of_Gore_speech_0116.html

Since google is apparently collaborating with

our so-called president to the point co-breaking

the law on his behalf, and censoring map information, one has to ask: is there a way to

deprive google of its revenue stream until google

stops being evil?

Here is an idea, use non-profit search engines.

Google makes money selling ad-space to advertisers

based on how many people visit google. There are

alternatives. There is a search engine I read about which is based in Norway. It is called

All The Web. Its locator is....

http://www.alltheweb.com

Try it and see if it works for you.

Well, it's hard to say, but let's not underestimate or joke about this. Everyone (in the know) has been worried about whether or not Google will "be evil" with all its data. Don't underestimate what people can predict with their data either --- your voting preference is a cinch, for example. But this story points out that it's not just about anything google does to guarantee its own ethics. Unless the courts and the company can stand up to an onslaught from the government, then Google doesn't get the final say on who sees your data. And if Google ever go bankrupt, anyone can buy their data as an asset. They have got to figure out how to permanently anonymize it when they collect it, or it has got to go.

Jaibe

It's appears that it wasn't just Google that got the request -- it's actually the only search engine that had a problem with it. MSN, AOL, and Yahoo all said yes and handed over the logs. Here's more on it at BoingBoing:

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/19/_doj_search_requests.html

And the original article/research:

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060119-060352

The act of 1998 is actually the Child Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, correct? I've seen it labeled COPA all over since this news came out. Compliance with the act usually has more to do with age verification measures and not collecting marketing, demographic, or personal information on children. Auditing sites that provide content to children with login accounts and opt-in emails is what the act typically justifies.

As anyone who has ever googled anything which could be misinterpreted as even remotely searching for porn knows, no one HAS to search for porn anything--it invades you. I remember trying to locate Papa Johns pizza website to order a pizza, and typed in a variation of their website by accident. I was immediately sent to a porn site, and for weeks on end they invaded my privacy. I cannot imagine anyone having to google for porn.

I think there is something a lot more sinister here than merely casting a net for pornography--otherwise, why not merely ask google for number of responses to their trigger words for porn instead of requesting the entire week's worth of searches?

So now Bush's Justice Department is invading our privacy in an attempt to resurrect a law that's already been overturned by the Supreme Court. With that kind of flimsy justification and given the number of laws that the Supreme Court has overturned, this administration could come up with virtually any rationale you could possibly imagine to invade our privacy. (Certainly "abortion" searches come to mind!) This is especially disturbing since Google apparently keeps records of every search in a way that can be traceable to individuals, Google's "cookies" don't expire until 2038 and heaven only knows how long they keep all of this information in their databases. (Google's cookie places a unique ID number on your hard disk. Anytime you land on a Google page, you get a Google cookie unless you already have one. That's how they read and record your unique ID number!) One would have to think that ALL of the other search engines (Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves, etc.) may very well do exactly the same thing. It seems to me there's two issues here.

(1) Privacy statements and disclosures notwithstanding, do these search engine companies have the right to gather and maintain this kind of information and what, if anything, would prompt or cause them to divulge it. (If one can believe NPR, they said this morning that Yahoo has already complied with the DOJ's subpoena for a week's worth of their search engine records so I guess we know what Yahoo's criteria is.); and

(2) Does any government agency (Federal, state or local) have the right to access that information? If so, under what circumstances? Would they require a subpoena? a warrant? a nicely worded polite request?

Internet Explorer and Firefox both provide fairly simple and flexible ways to block cookies from all sites or just selected sites. (Opera's privacy options are not nearly as robust.) I think everyone would be wise to take advantage of whatever privacy measures your browser of choice offers! (And if it doesn't offer enough, start using another browser.) I, for one, have configured all 3 of the browsers I use to block all search engine-related cookies ... one of these fine days, when I'm in a really good mood, I'm going to delete every one of my cookies (or maybe just rename the directory!), configure Firefox to block ALL sites and then see just how tolerable or intolerable my browsing (and shopping) becomes. Of course, with the prospect of 3 more years of King George, maybe I'll just wrap my PC in duct tape ... I'm sure that'll keep all the bad stuff away.