The U.S. Justice Department has asked all U.S. search engine companies for data
on pornography searches to support a Federal case involving Internet
porn filter blocking. Google has refused to comply.
Has the U.S. government gone far outside reasonable bounds in asking Google to produce data on searches?
The answer to this question can be recognized easily by asking "What subject the U.S. government was asking for data about?" Pornography data for a Federal child pornography case.
When the government has wildly overstepped reasonable bounds it always appeals for public approval and support by using as a subterfuge: a subject that the public finds revolting (child porn.)
This is bad; really bad.
On the face of it nothing could be a more effective restraint on learning, intelligence, healthy democratic dialog and technological vigor than the fear that an individual's research could become subject to courtroom investigation. Individual research outside of the realm of porn is what is being threatened by the U.S. Justice Department.
Now we have only one logical step to examine. In step one, the government is consciously trying to do something anathema to Americans, in the second step in this process we get a modern version of the Catholic Church Inquisition What is missing between step one and step two?
The missing step is demanding from Google (forget Yahoo, MSN and
other minor players which have already acceded to the U.S. government)
that generic data about searches be turned into names of the individual searchers.
We have already seen that the FISA restrictions, which is a perfect parallel to this, required prior proof of terrorist or espionage activities to obtain specific individually named search warrants was ignored by the Administrative branch. The exact same logic will most certainly be applied to Google Internet searches. That will move us from step one, general data sweep to step two individual names.
I think the drop in Google share prices came from people all over
the world realizing that the U.S. government is on a binge of
megalomaniacal proportions. I just changed sides and want immediate
restrain on my government.
We already have a problem that many people in the world believe the U.S. shouldn't play the major controlling role in the Internet. The Justice Department just made the case for every nation to demand their own control of the Internet.
Some U.S. government bureaucrats are out of control and the people involved in this debacle are fools. Stop them now.