San Francisco – The Justice Department has asked a federal judge to compel Google, the Internet search giant, to turn over records on millions of its users’ search queries as part of the government’s effort to uphold an online-pornography law.
Google has been refusing the request since a subpoena was first issued in August, even as three of its competitors agreed to comply, according to court documents made public this week. Google asserts that the request is unnecessary and overly broad, would be onerous to comply with, would jeopardize its trade secrets and could expose identifying information about its users.
The dispute with Google comes as the government is moving aggressively on several fronts to obtain data on Internet activity to achieve its law-enforcement goals, from domestic security to the prosecution of online crime. Under the anti-terrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, for example, the Justice Department has demanded records on library patrons’ Internet use.
Those efforts have encountered resistance on privacy grounds.
The government’s move in the Google case, however, is different in its aims. Rather than seeking data on individuals, it says it is trying to establish a profile of Internet use that will help it defend the Child Online Protection Act, a 1998 law that would impose tough criminal penalties on individuals whose websites carry material deemed harmful to minors.
The law has faced repeated legal challenges. Two years ago, the Supreme Court upheld an injunction blocking its enforcement, returning the case to a district court for further examination of Internet-filtering technology that might be an alternative in achieving the law’s aims.
The government’s motion to compel Google’s compliance was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., near Google’s headquarters.
In addition to records of a week’s worth of search queries, which could amount to billions of search terms, the Google subpoena seeks a random list of a million Web addresses in its index.
Charles Miller, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said Thursday that three Google competitors in Internet-search technology – America Online, Yahoo and MSN, Microsoft’s online service – had complied with subpoenas in the case.
Miller declined to say exactly how the data would be used, but according to the government’s legal filings, it would help estimate the prevalence of online material that could be deemed harmful to minors and the effectiveness of filtering software in blocking it.
Opponents of the pornography law contend that such software could protect minors effectively enough to make the law unnecessary.
The government’s motion calls for Google to comply with its subpoena within 21 days of court approval.
Although the government has modified its demands in talks with Google since last year, Google made it clear Thursday that it would continue to fight.
“Google is not a party to this lawsuit, and their demand for information overreaches,” said Nicole Wong, the company’s associate general counsel, referring to government lawyers.
Critics of the effort to subpoena Google say the immediate issue is not pornography or privacy but whether the government has established its need for the information.
“The government’s attitude, apparently, is that it’s entitled to information without justification,” said Aden Fine, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which has led the fight against the 1998 pornography law. “Like everyone else in litigation, they need to justify their request for information.”