In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Justice Department lawyers revealed that Google has refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year for the records, which include a request for 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.
The Mountain View-based search and advertising giant opposes releasing the information on a variety of grounds, saying it would violate the privacy rights of its users and reveal company trade secrets, according to court documents.
Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel for Google, said the company will fight the government’s effort “vigorously.”
“Google is not a party to this lawsuit, and the demand for the information is overreaching,” Wong said.
The case worries privacy advocates, given the vast amount of information Google and other search engines know about their users.
The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court.
(below: How to avoid Google’s tracking)
Tip from Good Morning Silicon Valley
If you don’t regularly anonymize your Google cookie and purge your personalized search history, now might be a good time to start (then again, in this day and age, why bother?). The Department of Justice on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order Google to comply with a subpoena issued last year for search records stored in its databases. The DOJ argues that the information it has requested, which includes one million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from a one-week period, is essential to its upcoming defense of the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act (think of the children!)
