National Journal’s Drew Clark is looking at the recent spate of Google issues through a different lens. Many folks have suggested that Google is being inconsistent by defending liberty in the U.S. (resisting the Justice Department’s subpoena) while caving to China (installing filters as required by the government there). That’s an oversimplification in many respects and the case that Google is being inconsistent is harder to make than that.
If you want consistency, Clark’s piece shows where it is: The governments of both China and the United States are seeking to censor.
Clark goes into the fundamental problem that makes the subpoena of Google by the Justice Department so concerning: Supreme Court case law holds that people don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy (for Fourth Amendment purposes) in information about them held by third parties. This notion is flat-out wrong. It is falling further and further out of step with reality with the advance of online life.
Law enforcement has put a lot of investment into this backward state of affairs, though. A constitutional sea-change will have to take place before people can be confident of going online without exposing themselves to the government’s prying eyes.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
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