Judge Says He'll Make Google Cough Up Some Info For Feds
from the everybody-else-did-it dept
Well that didn't take long at all. While he still hasn't released his official decision, it sounds like the judge hearing the dispute between the Department of Justice and Google over whether or not Google needs to turn over a random sample of searches and URLs has made up his mind. He's going to split the difference and require Google to turn over some data, though it's not entirely clear how much. Apparently, Google's original effort in basically suggesting the government was clueless wasn't particularly convincing. In court, the company took a somewhat different strategy -- apparently focusing on the fact that Amazon's Alexa now offers open access, so the government researcher can get all the data he needs from there. Even the judge admitted that he was worried the result of this case would force Google to hand over data to researchers involved in all sorts of lawsuits -- and thus, it's expected that he'll have the government compensate Google for the work needed to supply the data. Already, though, the ACLU (which is on the other side from the government in this case) has said that it, too, will need to get data from Google in order to respond to the government's case. While it seems unlikely that any of the data revealed gives up any seriously private info, this does seem to open some worrisome precedent-setting doors that could lead to problems in future cases. Update: A different take on today's events claims that Google and the DoJ had already reached a settlement on handing over the data before today's hearings -- and the hearings were just a facade to make everyone look better.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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did you know.
so im guessing when they see what 12 year old kids are searching to get by forums and xxx passwords and illegal programs cracks etc...
and im sure the most important information will come up pretty quickly.
how many peopel search for the words boobs and beastialty...
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donkey p0rn
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I read they want to use it in a court case in PA but it wouldn't serve as evidence.
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Re:
westin
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Amazing
A decision favoring the government will mean that the government can issue an injunction any time to anyone demanding private information if they think that perons has information might be useful to the administration in advancing the administration's ideological agenda.
Whatever happened to the Fourth Amendment?
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Re: Amazing
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Crazy
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Re: Crazy
When Google said "No, that's not legal" the "no longer of the people, for the people" government enacted legal measures. What, no legal justification before the request (it's about porn), just have a right-wing appointed judge rule in our favor so we can ignore the law.
You should all be very concerned, and become very active, to throw out the criminals occupying the white house.
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is it worth it?
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Re: is it worth it?
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Re: Amazing
It would be understandable if they were to obtain a warrant to obtain info from specific IPs that used google that were suspected of crimes, but this is above and beyond ...
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Goverment
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The Update was very informative.
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They came a knockin'
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SHOW ME JOR PAPERS!!!
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Re: SHOW ME JOR PAPERS!!!
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We need to take back the WEB!!!!!
This may be interesting to some of you:
http://www.anti-dmca.org/
http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/
Join some of these organizations before we are so stifled that we will no longer be able to reverse engineer anything
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Agreed
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Economic Development
The Supreme Court has already taken the position that Cities can expropriate private property to facilitate economic development.
Suppose a mid sized city goes to the credit card issuers and says "We demand to know what people living in our city are buying from outside of our service area. We want the data so we can encourage specialty retailers to locate in our city and thereby foster economic development here."
What happens then?
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