TMCnet News
Google hits back at federal search(New Scientist Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)NEED information? Where better to turn than Google? Or so the US Department of Justice thought when it asked Google to hand over the records of a week's worth of online searches. The department wants the data to help demonstrate the need for the Child Online Protection Act by showing how easily children can stumble on pornography sites. It argues that it needs the data to understand web user behaviour. Google refused, so the justice department last week asked a federal court to force it to hand over details of web addresses and stored search terms. Google says it will fight the subpoena. But Lee Tien, an attorney for the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, says: "If you don't want to get subpoenas for other people's data, then don't hang onto it." |