While Google refused to comply with the United States government’s request for search data last August, Microsoft, Yahoo, and America Online admitted Friday they provided some data to the Justice Department.
A Yahoo spokesperson said the portal firm provided data that the company’s executives believe did not violate the company’s privacy guidelines.
An AOL spokesperson said the portal firm gave the DOJ a "generic list of aggregate and anonymous search terms." A Microsoft representative also said the company provided data on search terms without any information about the customers doing the searches.
With mountains of sensitive search and email information in the possession of search portal firms, concerns have been raised in the past by privacy and civil liberties organizations over the stewardship of that information provided by firms such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL.
All the firms have the capacity of linking the IP address of individual computers to a list of material viewed by that computer's operator. If the person also has an email account through the portal, that, too, could be linked. If abused, such data could provide a detailed profile into the private worlds of people using the search engines. Each company has privacy policies intended to block such abuse.
The idea that government might gain access to such data raises the specter of Big Brother. The latest controversy follows reports earlier this month that the White House, with the help of a contractor using cookies, was keeping track of what pages people visited on its web site (see White House Crumbles a Cookie).
Consumer watchdog firms believe the legality of the government’s request hinges in part on whether the search firms’ customers identities are protected.
"We don’t have a problem if the data is generic," said Richard Holober, executive director of Consumer Federation of California, which is based in San Mateo. "If they shield the personal identities of the people doing the searches, then we don’t have a problem with that. There could be a valid purpose to the government’s request. Finding out what young children are being exposed to doesn’t trouble me, but attaching names to this is an invasion of individual privacy."
According to Mr. Holober, there is precedent for the granting of this type of data for research purposes in other industries.
"We run into this in the scientific community. Researchers complain that without that kind of information their jobs will be difficult if not impossible," said Mr. Holober. "You have competing interests that can be harmonized. This happens in the medical community, where information is made available, but the individual patient’s identity is shielded."
Shares of Google rose $0.45 to $436.90 in recent trading, while shares of Yahoo rose $0.18 to $34.51, and shares of America Online’s parent company, Time Warner, fell $0.10 to $17.40 in recent trading.
Not Just Privacy
While the personal privacy issues take clear precedence in a case like this, Mark Cooper, director of research at the Consumer Federation of America, a consumer advocacy group based in Washington D.C., believes there are business issues that must concern the portal firms.
"This is an interesting and worthwhile fight by Google," he said. "The interpretation of the law is very loose in the current administration, and Google’s business is dependent upon people being willing to go on the web and look for stuff. Google’s business thrives on the free flow of information, and eavesdropping is liable to put a chill on people using the Internet. That is not in Google’s best long-term interests."
According to papers filed on Wednesday in federal court in San Jose, U.S. Department of Justice attorneys said that Google refused to comply with a subpoena for a wide range of search information. That information included a request for 1 million random web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period (see Uncle Sam Wants Google’s Data).
The government is hoping to gain information to help resuscitate the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, which has been challenged legally. The law, which is designed to shield minors from objectionable material online, has been challenged on the grounds that it infringes on the public’s free speech guarantees.
The law would require adults to use access codes or other ways of registering before they could see objectionable material online, and it would have punished violators with fines up to $50,000 or jail time.
The government was hoping to use the search information to build a case for the law.
"Google has a privacy policy," said Mr. Cooper. "The public has to have confidence in them. They felt that the request violated their policy. Google has a tremendous burden on them. They have a huge stake in preserving the public’s trust that they are not going to abuse the information or allow anyone else to commit the abuse."
