U.S. Court Likely Will Force Google To Turn Over Data

[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Mark Boslet mark.boslet@dowjones.com]
Google likely will have to turn over search data to government lawyers making a case for a child-pornography law, but a much smaller amount than originally requested, a federal judge said. U.S. District Judge James Ware said he is inclined to require the company to respond to a Justice Department subpoena seeking the text of search queries and randomly selected Web addresses from Google's index of Internet sites. During a hearing in San Jose, the judge said he was persuaded partly by the government's willingness to seek only 50,000 randomly selected addresses and 5,000 search queries instead of the one million addresses and millions of search queries initially sought. The government filed suit in January seeking the information after Google resisted complying with an August subpoena. "What I've been trying to balance is the interest society has in the litigation with the interest of a private company," Judge Ware said. The government hopes to use the information to defend its Child Online Protection Act, a law designed to shield minors from sexually explicit materials on the Internet. The Supreme Court blocked implementation of the act and returned the case to district court in Pennsylvania, where the Bush administration is battling claims from the American Civil Liberties Union that it violates the Constitution's First Amendment right to free speech.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114235949450997932.html?mod=todays_us_ma...
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* U.S. Limits Demands on Google
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/15/technology/15google.html

* Judge Orders Google To Give Up Some Data
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/14/AR200603...