Google rejects Justice Dept. bid for search info

By Eric Auchard

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc. on Friday formally
rejected the U.S. Justice Department’s subpoena of data from
the Web search leader, arguing the demand violated the privacy
of users’ Web searches and its own trade secrets.

Responding to a motion by U.S. Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales, Google also said in a filing in U.S. District Court
for the Northern District of California the government demand
to disclose Web search data was impractical.

The Bush administration is seeking to compel Google to hand
over Web search data as part of a bid by the Justice Department
to appeal a 2004 Supreme Court injunction of a law to penalize
Web site operators who allow children to view pornography.

Google is going it alone in opposing the U.S. government
request. Rivals Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. are among the
companies that have complied with the Justice Department demand
for data to be used to make its case.

Google’s lawyers said the company shares the government’s
concern with materials harmful to minors but argued that the
request for its data was irrelevant. They offered a series of
technical arguments why this data was not useful.

The Mountain View, California-based company said that
complying with the U.S. government’s request for “untold
millions of search queries” would put an undue burden on the
company, including a “week of engineer time to complete.”

“Algorithms regularly change. The identical search query
submitted today may yield a different result than the identical
search conducted yesterday,” attorneys from Perkins Coie LLP,
the company’s external legal counsel, argue in the filing.

Complying with the Justice Department request would also
force Google to reveal how its Web search technology works —
something it jealously guards as a trade secret, the company
argued. It refuses to disclose even the total number of
searches conducted each day.

Google’s resistance contrasts with a deal the company has
struck with the Chinese government to censor some searches on a
new site in China, a move that has drawn sharp criticism from
members of the U.S. Congress and human rights activists.

“Google users trust that when they enter a search query
into a Google search box … that Google will keep private
whatever information users communicate absent a compelling
reason,” attorneys for Google said in the filing.

The legal spat also comes amid heightened sensitivity to
privacy issues by the company as it recently began offering a
new version of its Google Desktop service that vacuums up data
stored on user PCs and makes it accessible on the users’ other
computers. For customers who consent to the service, copies of
their data are stored on Google’s central computers.

Privacy activists have rallied to the defense of Google for
fighting the U.S. government request while some conservative
and religious organizations have criticized the company for
failing to help the government combat child pornography.

The American Civil Liberties Union, with other civil rights
groups, bookstores and alternative media outlets filed a friend
of the court brief on behalf of Google.

The hearing on the Justice Department motion to compel
Google to divulge the search data is scheduled to take place on
March 13 in San Jose before U.S. District Judge James Ware.

“The government must show that this request is the most
relevant way to accomplish its goal,” said Perry Aftab, an
attorney, privacy activist and executive director of
WiredSafety.org, a popular online child safety site.

“Why would Google or anyone else turn over data that might
create further risks for their customers? The public policy
gains don’t outweigh the risks,” she said.