Google victory is a victory for users everywhere

[yesthattom]

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/03/judge-tells-doj-no-on-search-queries.html

What his ruling means is that neither the government nor anyone else has carte blanche when demanding data from Internet companies. When a party resists an overbroad subpoena, our legal process can be an effective check on such demands and be a protector of our users."

Comments

[qnetter]

I'm a little concerned by some of the language:

While privacy was not the most significant legal issue in this case (because the government wasn't asking for personally identifiable information), privacy was perhaps the most significant to our users. As we noted in our briefing to the court, we believe that if the government was permitted to require Google to hand over search queries, that could have undermined confidence that our users have in our ability to keep their information private.

So there wasn't actually a privacy issue at stake at all, only a "slippery slope fallacy" argument and the notion that Google could look like a privacy hero on this if they resisted even though there was no privacy issue. It's not about privacy -- it's about *Google users' confidence in Google.*

Considering that the real privacy risk comes from the information Google keeps to do targeted advertising -- an issue too complex for the average "so what, I get 2GB+ and don't have to pay anything" user to understand -- it seems more than a little self-serving to me.

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

AWRIGHT!!

Thanks for the heads-up.

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

I think it may be helpful to remember that Google, while trying to run an ethical business, is still a business. It is not the EFF or the ACLU. I'm not sure what self-serving means in this context - that they fought the subpoena because they thought that violating users' privacy was not a good way to do business, rather than simply because it was wrong? It's wrong and it's a bad way to do business, so why isn't the important thing what they accomplished?

[qnetter]

No -- there is no actual issue of violating users' privacy at hand, and they said so. There is an issue of *being* *perceived* as violating users' privacy. They've bolstered their perception as a company that "does good" on the privacy issue -- which I find laughable because of how much unnecessary private info their business is built on -- without actually having any impact on real privacy.

The fact is that all they accomplished was the opportunity to not do a lot of work and a chance to be seen as a privacy here -- no actual accomplishment in shoring up our privacy at all. That's what I mean by self-serving.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

They didn't say there was no actual privacy issue. If someone searched for, say, "BD/SM shops within 6 miles of 1313 Mockingbird Lane, Anytown, USA" then people living at 1313 Mockingbird Lane might have cause for concern.

[qnetter]

While privacy was not the most significant legal issue in this case (because the government wasn't asking for personally identifiable information), privacy was perhaps the most significant to our users.

And, of course, they could omit anything they felt to have any personally identifiable information in composing the set of queries they supplied.

There's still a much bigger threat to privacy, I think, in Google's building their business based on stockpiling and analyzing personal information. I'm at least as concerned about commerical entities having this information as I am about government entities.

[holzman.livejournal.com]

"not the most significant legal issue" != "not an issue"

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

Yes, Google having the info is problematic. But that's not the topic at hand.

Google wouldn't be likely to go to the expense (nor would it even be possible) to figure out every way that the government might come up with of mining the data to identify individuals. And "not the most significant issue" simply is not the same as "not an issue."