Google v. the U.S. Government: Would You Like Those Alphabetically?

by on January 25, 2006

The battle between Google and the Justice Department has not suffered from a lack of coverage. The short story is that DOJ asked (well, “commanded” actually) that Google and other search engines turn over massive amounts of data regarding searches and websites on their systems, to be used in the government’s defense of the Child Online Protection Act. The legal case will be settled based on subpoena law, on which I’m no expert. On policy grounds, however, I’m with Google–which is defending its customers right to privacy. A loss could diminish the public’s trust that their online activity will be kept confidential, and hurt not only Google but the growth of the the Internet itself.

How broad is the DOJ request? Most of the media coverage has focused on its request for data on all searches made over a one-month period. That’s a lot. But its nothing compared to its original request for data on websites. Here, DOJ requested (and I’m not making this up): “all URLs that are available to be located through a query on your company’s search engine as of July 31, 2005.” Let’s repeat that: “all URLs that are available to be located through a query on your company’s search engine as of July 31, 2005”.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s about everything isn’t it? All websites. DOJ wants a list of all the websites in the world. (Well, all that are on Google anyway, which is pretty close). How many is that? If you search “www” in Google itself, you get 9.2 billion results. Were Google to print out this list, say at 50 per page, it would be 184 million pages long. If you laid these pages end to end, it still wouldn’t be a bigger waste of time.

DOJ has since modified its original request, and is now asking for only a million URLs. That’s a lot less, but still a lot.

I’m not saying all such subpoenas should be rejected. There is a legitimate role for the right to subpoena in the legal system, even subpoenas by the government. But given the stakes here, there should be a stiff burden of proof that what is requested is actually what is needed, and no more. “Give me everything” doesn’t meet that burden.

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James Gattuso / James Gattuso is a Senior Research Fellow in Regulatory Policy in the Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Gattuso also leads the Enterprise and Free Markets Initiative at Heritage, with responsiblity for a range of regulatory and market issues. Prior to joining Heritage, he served as Vice President for Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and also as Vice President for Policy Development with Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE). From 1990 to 1993, he was Deputy Chief of the Office of Plans and Policy at the Federal Communications Commission. From May 1991 to June 1992, he was detailed from the FCC to the office of Vice President Dan Quayle, where he served as Associate Director of the President's Council on Competitiveness. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife Dana, 8 year-old son, Peter (whom he relies upon to operate his VCR), and his four year-old daughter Lindsey (who does the DVD player.) He has no known hobbies, but is not nearly as boring as he seems.

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