Google Floats Like A Butterfly : Government Stings Like A Bee

For seven months we have waited and listened for what our office is dubbing the “Digital Patriot’s Act”. The wait is about over before we really get a taste of what will come of the tribulations of Google.

The Government made known to Google over seven months ago that they wanted a sample of billions of URL’s that Google has in it’s index and a full weeks worth of viewers search queries. This is a enormous amount of data that the government originally asked for. Google continued to act in non-compliance saying they were not only protecting their viewers personal information but also their own trade secrets. This act did prolong the inevitable but it also got the peoples attention. After seeing the effect that this was having on the populace the government has renegotiated what data is required from Google. They are now wanting only 50,000 randomly indexed URL’s and 5000 keyword search queries. Which U.S. District Judge James Ware announced March the 14th that Google had to comply with these demands. All costs associated to the removal of this data for governmental use will be reimbursed back to Google.

The government says that they are doing this to help protect our children from porn on the internet. Basically saying that no matter what you are searching for, filters do not pick up everything, and that it is too easy for any child with little knowledge to run into porn on the internet. It is a fact of life that the companies that run these sites spam keywords that have nothing to do with porn just to trap the viewers in a never ending pop up display of flesh and taboo.

This is a good reason to try and stop the spamming abuse of the porn industry but at what cost to the public in general. Freedom of speech anyone? I am completely against the way the porn industry runs their advertising campaigns, but does that give the government the right to see what your searching for and where your interests may lie? My answer isn’t no its HELL NO!! Giving the government the ability to watch our searches will give them evidence to anyone looking to evade taxes with offshore accounts, pirating music, pirating software, personal information if you enter in social security #’s , etc… The internet is practically a lawless nation that is bypassing all the steps to make a good democracy and going straight towards dictatorship by the U.S. government. That says it all right there ,U.S. government, doesn’t the internet and the search queries encompass the whole world? So the U.S. government has a say in what another country is allowed and not allowed to view on the internet? Is there anything we the people can do to protect our private searches?

This is a buzz that will not go away anytime soon. Many people have been captivated and awed on how the Government has pursued Google. The government assures us this is only about the children. "This is not part of a dragnet," argued Joel McElvain, of the U.S. Department of Justice "We will not share this information." They may not share the information but don’t you think they could or would use some of this information and maybe show up at your door because you wanted a copy of the lyrics to Green Day’s newest song?

I know many people talk badly about Google. About their steady decline in relevancy in the last 3 years and about how they like to throw updates at webmasters every month that throws rankings out the window every time life starts looking good. Google is on your side (mostly) They only want a bigger better search engine that can cope with the billions of changing websites out on the net these days. So, remember that when MSN and Yahoo handed over their websites and search queries that Google was the only one that declined the government and said they wanted to protect their viewers.

This will be an ongoing process for the government to regulate the abuse of porn on the internet and it will be interesting on how the U.S. Government will lay down the laws for an almost living (international) creature called the internet.-jmt