Do You Know What You Googled Today? The Government Wants to Know!

Just as we raised an eyebrow about Google's intentions last May, they might be deserving of some credit in their stand against a Justice Department subpeona. Below are some updates around the Justice Department's attempts to subpoena Google's search records in the name of protecting our children.

As someone who works in the technology field, I sometimes take for granted that people understand the reality of what the government is asking for. If this information were provided by Google, the government would know precisely what words were submitted through a Google search from a particular computer or network. While finding the person/entities who own that computer would require an extra step, it's not uncommon as this is precisely what the Music industry does to sue people who allegedly share music online.

Here's the backstory if you haven't seen it already. But to sum up: The Justice Dept is trying to subpoena Google's records as "part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court."

Here's an update from the NY Times (note that MSN, Yahoo and AOL caved to the subpoena with nary a peep).

Kathryn Hanson, a former telecommunications engineer who lives in Oakland, Calif., was looking at BBC News online last week when she came across an item about a British politician who had resigned over a reported affair with a "rent boy."

It was the first time Ms. Hanson had seen the term, so, in search of a definition, she typed it into Google. As Ms. Hanson scrolled through the results, she saw that several of the sites were available only to people over 18. She suddenly had a frightening thought. Would Google have to inform the government that she was looking for a rent boy - a young male prostitute?

Ms. Hanson, 45, immediately told her boyfriend what she had done. "I told him I'd Googled 'rent boy,' just in case I got whisked off to some Navy prison in the dead of night," she said.

Ms. Hanson's reaction arose from last week's reports that as part of its effort to uphold an online pornography law, the Justice Department had asked a federal judge to compel Google to turn over records on millions of its users' search queries. Google is resisting the request, but three of its competitors - Yahoo, MSN and America Online - have turned over similar information.

Here's some more commentary from the NY Times.

We paid for mostly everything with credit and debit cards. Out of convenience, we embraced technologies meant to track our every move.

There are important distinctions, of course, between government prying and the emerging web of consumer surveillance. But they share a digital universe that facilitates and rewards watching. Spam, spyware and identity theft are only a taste of how exposed we have all willingly become as we enjoy the benefits of the networked world.

If the American public seems a bit confused about the raging debate of security versus civil liberties - Bush/Cheney versus the A.C.L.U. - it may be because the debate itself has been outpaced by technology. In our post-9/11, protowireless world, democracies and free markets are increasingly saturated with prying eyes from governments, corporations and neighbors. For better and worse, free societies are fast entering the world of total surveillance.