News In Brief 19 January 2006

Google To Fight DOJ On Record Search Subpeona

Will Comply If Bush Releases Abramoff and Energy Meeting Records; Also Wants Rights To Digitize Case

Did You Mean: Turn over all our records?

The Departmen of Justice, and the Bush Administration, filed papers yesterday, in U.S. District Court in San Jose, demanding that Google comply with subpeona issued last year, and turn over search records, to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches.

The records the DOJ is seeking contains over 1-million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.

Google has refused to comply to the subpeona, citing privacy rights and trade secrets.

The government is seeking to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law was drawn up to fine, punish and potentially shut down online pornography sites that make their content accessible to minors.

Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel for Google, said the company will fight the government's effort ``vigorously.''

Wong went further, offering a comprise to the Bush Administration. Evoking one of Google's corporate principles of "don't be evil", Google would be willing to produce the records, "as soon as the White House releases the log of Jack Abramoff's visits, and the notes from Vice President Cheney's secret energy meetings".

Additionally, having learned their lesson with book publishers, Google is seeking, upfront, to get the rights from the Federal Court, to digitize the proceedings

Google is the country's most popular search engine, netting nearly 50% of all searches conducted in the U.S.

The DOJ has not decided what their next move will be and the White House has offered no comment on Google's comprise request.

"You'll probably see," says Sonny Earl, editor of a Supreme Court newsletter that monitors the court's activities, 'OMIB" ('The Original Men In Black'), "the Bush people add the Google people to the NSA's list of phones to tap and moniter. They'll look to get information that they can use to either squeeze, or smear, Google."