Blogging from the Highlands of Scotland
'From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step' - Diderot

Saturday 18 March 2006

Google and US Goverment both [seem to] get some of what they want

A US federal judge has denied a US government request that Google Inc hand over a sample of keywords that customers use to search the internet, but requires that the company produces some of the results of such searches. But anyone can produce such results, simply by keying in weird word-combinations into the Google search box, and I'm sure the fertile imaginations of US Homeland Security officials can come up with some good ideas; at the very best, I think this is a Phyrric victory for the US Government - and it shouldn't surprise anyone to know that I got the link to that Wikipedia article via a 'Google' search!

The arguments are arcane, but probably far-reaching. Nicole Wong, Google's associate general counsel is quoted in a company website as saying:


"What his ruling means is that neither the government nor anyone else has carte blanche when demanding data from Internet companies."

- the full comment is available on the Official Google Blog - here.

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