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Feds Reduce Data Demands on Google at HearingAt a March 14 hearing on the Department of Justice subpoena of randomly selected web records held in search-engine firm Google’s databases, attorneys for the government disclosed that they would only ask for 50,000 websites and 5,000 search terms—instead of the 1 million sites and one week’s worth of searches originally requested. Lawyers for Google conceded that the reduced demand was less of a burden to comply with, the San Jose Mercury News reported March 15.In his 21-page ruling on the suit March 17, Judge James Ware of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California only required Google to turn over the web addresses, not the search terms. He wrote that he was balancing the government's need to gather data against Google's expectation that it could operate without undue interference or fear that its trade secrets would be revealed. “The expectation of privacy by some Google users may not be reasonable,” the ruling stated, “but may nonetheless have an appreciable impact on the way in which Google is perceived, and consequently the frequency with which users use Google.” Ware also ordered the government to reimburse Google for the time and expense required to reply, the Los Angeles Times reported March 18. Although the DOJ says it doesn’t need personal information now, University of Connecticut Law Professor Paul Schiff Berman told the Associated Press March 13, a government victory could encourage more invasive requests in the future. “The erosion of privacy tends to happen incrementally,” he said. “While no one intrusion might seem that big, over the course of the next decade or two, you might end up in a place as a society where you never thought you would be.” The Mercury News said the DOJ intends to use the data for a study designed to determine how often web users encounter adult material in routine searches and whether filtering software effectively keeps such websites away from children. Posted March 17, 2006; revised March 22, 2006. |
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