

Under court order, Google reveals users' search history 9,000 times a year - FSecurePal
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/10/google_ceo_would_like_to_remin.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nymag%2Fintel+%28Daily+Intelligencer+-+New+York+Magazine%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

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grellas
American law has never taken an absolutist view of privacy rights. For
example, even lawyer confidentiality has exceptions, as for example when a
client tells you he is going to commit a future crime (that is not regarded as
privileged and can be disclosed by the attorney to the authorities).

In the context of lawsuits and court orders, the key to protecting privacy is
to abide by due process concerns. In other words, sometimes otherwise private
information can become subject to discovery through legal processes such as
third-party subpoenas. A holder of that information, such as Google, has no
direct stake in the fight between the parties and will not disclose such
information voluntarily. Nonetheless, court processes permit litigants to use
lawful means to compel disclosure. Notice typically must be given to the
adverse party, who in turn has a right to contest the litigant's right to
obtain the information. A neutral judge will then consider whether the
information ought to be protected when weighing the importance of disclosure
in such a case against any rights of privacy that might be implicated (it is
this process of notice, opportunity to contest, and neutral judicial
evaluation that affords the due process protections). In most such cases,
privacy rights do ultimately trump disclosure but not in all. Thus, when a
court orders that disclosure be made, a litigant is forced to make it and, if
a third party such as Google holds that information, it too is ordered to make
it, though it has no stake in the fight.

Since American law is not absolutist on the privacy issues, and since Google
must comply with lawful court orders, I don't think it can be faulted for
doing so. Also, given the likely _huge_ number of times it finds itself in
this position, I don't think there is anything untoward about a number such as
"9,000 times a year." This is perhaps why Mr. Schmidt made his comment in such
an off-handed way. This is just a routine part of doing business.

I will grant there are _policy_ arguments that could be made to the contrary
but, legally, Google is on sound footing in its handling of privacy issues as
described in the article.

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hugh3
_American law has never taken an absolutist view of privacy rights._

Does any form of law take an absolutist view of privacy rights?

~~~
Semiapies
No government's law takes an absolutist view of any right not belonging to the
government.

The rhetorical purpose of pointing out that American law doesn't take an
absolutist view of the right in question is to imply that someone disagreeing
with the speaker is some sort of "absolutist" lunatic who's out of step with
the law the speaker supports, which is of course sensible.

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ErrantX
The slight fallacy in the article (and in general on this topic) is the
thinking Google are especially unique in receiving these orders.

The truth is any large service provider is getting as many, it's just the
modern version of forced disclosure.

A lot of the Google orders will be civil disclosure. That is mostly because in
criminal cases there is more leeway for seizing the physical machines - which
produces better results (from the perspective of court evidence).

But when you get to the ISP level they will be dealing with all manner of
criminal/civil requests for IP log data.

Just some perspective (I won't comment my opinion on it)

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prosa
Am I the only one who was surprised at how low that number was?

~~~
kenjackson
I actually thought it was pretty high. That's like 25 times per day Google is
sending search information to law enforcement. One thing I do hope is that
they are requiring a judge to sign off on these like wiretaps. I'd worry about
a jealous husband in law enforcement trying to find out what his ex-gf is up
to.

What I find kind of surprising is I've heard of very few cases that have used
this information. They certainly never use it on Law & Order.

~~~
ErrantX
Most of these are likely civil warrants.

And, yes, you would need a judge to sign off on these. Google (more than most
companies) are particularly anal (and rightly so) about disclosures such as
these.

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rmg
One of the reasons I like DuckDuckGo.

~~~
ceejayoz
Assuming the government doesn't quietly get a court order forcing them to log
and keep silent about it, of course.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
I can't see a situation where I could be forced to keep quiet about something
like that. And then there is wikileaks or some equivalent. For the record
though, I have yet to get a court order about anything.

~~~
ceejayoz
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Letter>

> A National Security Letter (NSL) is a form of administrative subpoena used
> by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation and reportedly by other
> U.S. Government Agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency and the
> Department of Defense. It is a demand letter issued to a particular entity
> or organization to turn over various record and data pertaining to
> individuals. They require no probable cause or judicial oversight. They also
> contain a gag order, preventing the recipient of the letter from disclosing
> that the letter was ever issued.

The gag order was later deemed unconstitutional, but that didn't stop them
from issuing 200,000 of them.

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cosmicray
granted Google is the big fish in the search engine pond ... does this imply
that a court order to Google also means that Yahoo, Bing, Altavista, et al,
are also getting a similar court order for the same user ?

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julian37
"He added that Google "rewrites" your search history after a year and a half,
so that it can no longer be tracked, even under a court mandate."

My search history on <http://google.com/history> goes back to January 2007,
which is over three years.

Maybe he meant that history entries older than one and a half years will be
"rewritten" if you manually went and asked Google to remove them (by using the
"Remove Items" function in the history). I wonder how many people are aware of
that function.

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SageRaven
I'm curious if Google has a _voluntary_ reporting system, such as the one
outlined here: [http://cyb3rcrim3.blogspot.com/2010/06/state-action-
and-4th-...](http://cyb3rcrim3.blogspot.com/2010/06/state-action-and-4th-
amendment.html).

AOL apparently uses the semi-secret child porn hash database to proactively
scan content traversing its systems and reports to the authorities when they
get a hit.

I'm sure other large providers do this, and it wouldn't surprise me if Google
was one of them.

~~~
jacquesm
We do this too. To the surprise of some child pornographers.

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pedanticfreak
Considering Google gets 140+ million unique visitors, that's less than 0.0064%
of all users? Color me unimpressed. Now if you told me personal information
was being offered WITHOUT a court order, then I'd be more concerned.

~~~
tomjen3
What exactly are they going to do with their search history? Unless it involve
kiddy porn or something like that?

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Encosia
It's common to see news stories about dumb criminals who were targeted for
more thorough investigation, leading to their eventual conviction, due to
their Internet search history (e.g. "How much antifreeze does it take to kill
an adult" and "how to mask the taste of antifreeze in food")

~~~
jacquesm
I'm just going to have to google that now. I really hope that I won't have
anybody die near me in the near future by drinking anti-freeze because I'll
surely be in the docket defending myself.

~~~
Encosia
Make sure you avoid people like this for a while!
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Turner_(murderer)>

