If This Doesn't Worry You ...

Let's say you wanted to find out how often a particular topic -- say, pornography -- showed up in online searches, how would you go about determining the answer? Hmm. Tough question. Wait! I know! You could ask a federal judge to order search-engine giant Google to hand over information from its databases and see what other Google users are searching for. Or -- and granted, this is "out of the box" -- you could go on Google yourself, type in some porn-related keywords, and find your answer that way. Well, the Bush Administration is opting for the former. The Bush Justice Department, not satisfied with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling two years ago that struck down an Internet child protection law, wants a federal judge to force Google to respond to a subpoena issued last year...

...which include a request for 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.

That's some fishing expedition. I wonder what the 9/11 angle is? Here, I'll give the Justice Department a head start. True story: Last weekend my wife wanted to find the web site of a local store called Dick's Sporting Goods. She innocently typed in "dicks.com" and guess what popped up? I can't wait for the feds to drop by for a chat and some tea. The good news, according to the San Jose Mercury News, is that Google is having none of it:

Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel for Google, said the company will fight the government's effort "vigorously." "Google is not a party to this lawsuit, and the demand for the information is overreaching," Wong said.

The bad news is that "other, unspecified search engines have agreed to release the information." What that means, of course, is they're selling out their users en masse. And yes, this has implications for companies whose employees use search tools in the workplace. Lest you think I'm just some overreacting blogger, I'll give the last word to Ray Everett-Church, one of our eSecurity Planet columnists and a consultant to Internet companies facing federal subpoenas. He tells the Merc-News:

"This is exactly the kind of case that privacy advocates have long feared. The idea that these massive databases are being thrown open to anyone with a court document is the worst-case scenario."