Google sets a double standard

[CrAz3D]

AH, you posted before I editted.

"Its withholding information & so long as the child porn crimes are felonies (which I think they are) Google CEOs could end up in a "federal pound me in the ass" prison"
Theres my editted post.


Tell me what with holding information is if it isn't what Google is doing

[iago]

I don't know what the legal definition of withholding information is.  But it must be unclear enough if they're going to trial over it. 

I repeat: we are in no position to judge it.  We'll see what is decided in the courts, then make a decision.

[CrAz3D]

I don't know what the legal definition of withholding information is.  But it must be unclear enough if they're going to trial over it. 

I repeat: we are in no position to judge it.  We'll see what is decided in the courts, then make a decision.

Uhm, ok, we're not in a position to judge the validity of Google's decision to with-hold information from the government but you can accuse Bush of lying to the American people when it is just as likely, if not more, that everyone was just mis-informed?
How are you able to judge racism in America?
How are you in any position to judge anything to do with America?

[iago]

I don't know what the legal definition of withholding information is.  But it must be unclear enough if they're going to trial over it. 

I repeat: we are in no position to judge it.  We'll see what is decided in the courts, then make a decision.

Uhm, ok, we're not in a position to judge the validity of Google's decision to with-hold information from the government

Why would it be taken to court if it was so obvious?  There has to be a reason, and, as I said, we aren't legal experts.  Do you know the laws about withholding web logs?  I sure don't, and I doubt anybody here does.

but you can accuse Bush of lying to the American people

He has admitted that they used known bad sources for information, and he has put together events that didn't go together (Sept. 11 did NOT involve Iraq! At all!!)

How are you able to judge racism in America?

Huh?

How are you in any position to judge anything to do with America?

Huh?

[CrAz3D]

With holding information is with holding information, period.
Google's basis AFAIK for with holding the information is for privacy, but they aren't the ones with the responsibility to do that...the one being accused of the child porn crime is whom would have to protest the information.


Links that show where Bush says "we tricked you into voting to attack Iraq"?


You said we can't judge China cause of their laws & what not, why are you judging American law?

[iago]

With holding information is with holding information, period.
Google's basis AFAIK for with holding the information is for privacy, but they aren't the ones with the responsibility to do that...the one being accused of the child porn crime is whom would have to protest the information.

Then, as I said, why is it going to court?  It's obviously not as cut and dried as you are makig it out to be, otherwise it would already be resolved. 

Links that show where Bush says "we tricked you into voting to attack Iraq"?

I showed you the resolution which uses known information that was known to be fraudulent at the time.  Find me a link between 9/11 and Iraq.  I assure you, there's nothing.  Why would Saddam Hussein be involved in a religious war, when he has persecuted and killed people of the same religion?

You said we can't judge China cause of their laws & what not, why are you judging American law?

I'm not judging your laws! 

[CrAz3D]

Its going to court because Google is breaking the law.

At the time the information lead people to believe that Iraq was connected to 9/11 terrorists.
Saddam has his own religious type wars, he killed the other religions to keep them quiet.

You're judging our resolutions which are basically the same as laws

[iago]

Its going to court because Google is breaking the law.

I guess it comes down to: does Google have the right to dispute the court order?

At the time the information lead people to believe that Iraq was connected to 9/11 terrorists.
Saddam has his own religious type wars, he killed the other religions to keep them quiet.

What evidence?  This is a conversation for another place, though, it's way off the point. 

You're judging our resolutions which are basically the same as laws

Well, Chinese laws don't involve declaring war on another country.  As soon as it involves war, it's important. 

In any case, Grok corrected me, and I agree with him, that I was incorrect on that point.  I still try not to judge internal laws, unless they're fundamentally stupid (annoying on the Internet?), but a resolution to go to war is quite different.

[Kp]

I've seen Crazed repeatedly (crazily) stating that Google is "with holding" [sic] information to protect child pornographers, yet I've seen no evidence of that in any of the articles I've read about this.  When pornography is mentioned at all, it's in the context of a request by the government to review Google's logs to attempt to determine how often children performing searches come into contact with pornography in the data returned by Google.

Crazed, please link to

• A (reputable) article indicating that the request is about child pornography, not children encountering pornography.
• A copy of the law(s) which you believe Google is violating by challenging this request.
• A dictionary, for your own purposes.  Withholding is one word, not two!

Google is not a government agency, Google is not under persecution by the government, Google has no responsibility or authority to withhold information.

I'll grant you that Google's not part of the government.  I'm not entirely sure they're not being persecuted for refusing to roll over.   Recall that the other major search providers (AOL Time Warner, Microsoft, Yahoo) rolled over and submitted their logs without even announcing it.  Given the supposed purpose of determining the frequency with which pornography is encountered, it's not strictly necessary for all the search providers to comply.  It's only necessary that a statistically meaningful sample comply.

As I understand the law, Google is within its rights to challenge the government's request.  Such challenges often have practical reasons as well, such as the cost of processing all the information into a form consumable by the government.

Although Google has no responsibility to withhold that information, they're certainly making a name for themselves in doing so.  Even at the cost of the lawyers Google's using to fight this, it's probably worth more in PR than they're spending on legal costs.

[CrAz3D]

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - The Justice Department is asking Internet search giant Google to turn over search records in an effort to defend a child pornography law, according to a report published Thursday.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/19/technology/google_suit/?cnn=yes

Child porn involvement is a law.  By protecting the perpetrators Google is aiding the felons.

aid and abet
v. help commit a crime.

http://dictionary.law.com/default2.asp?selected=2377&bold=||||
I suppose Google is even just helping the felons by have child porn even turn up in their searches.

I can see that the Government just wants a sample, but with Google being the largest search engine it is only logical to look at their results as well.

Google's stock dropped $40 the day they announced they wouldn't turn over data.  I bet their stock drops immensely if they lose the lawsuit.

[iago]

The Justice Department is asking Internet search giant Google

They're just asking?  I thought it was a court order?  If they're just asking, then of course Google can turn them down.  I'm more interested in what that law specifically says, though. 

aid and abet
v. help commit a crime.

http://dictionary.law.com/default2.asp?selected=2377&bold=||||
I suppose Google is even just helping the felons by have child porn even turn up in their searches.

I can see that the Government just wants a sample, but with Google being the largest search engine it is only logical to look at their results as well.

"aid and abet" can mean an awful lot of things.  For example, without my eyeglasses I couldn't kill somebody very well since I have extremely bad eyesight.  Does that mean that if I murder somebody, Westwood Optical is aiding and abetting me? 

Google's stock dropped $40 the day they announced they wouldn't turn over data.  I bet their stock drops immensely if they lose the lawsuit.

I would think that it would go up.  At least, I'm thankful that Google is protecting my privacy as best as it can.


I'll repeat this again: It's going to court where it'll be decided by experts in the field of law.  Why don't we wait until they make a decision until WE pass judgements? 

[CrAz3D]

1) http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/01/19/google.recrods.ap/
2) http://criminal.findlaw.com/crimes/a-z/aiding_abetting_accessory.html
3) Well it didn't, it went down
4) You can't seem to stop judging the war on terror, why don't you wait til its over to judge???

[iago]

4) You can't seem to stop judging the war on terror, why don't you wait til its over to judge???

Because that's a totally separate argument.  You can't put two different things I say on this board together, but often they don't go together.  As I've said before, I generally argue the weaker side of an argument. 

The main reason for letting others make decisions about Google?  It doesn't affect me. 

The main reason for being worried about terrorism?  It will very likely affect me. 

[CrAz3D]

4) You can't seem to stop judging the war on terror, why don't you wait til its over to judge???

Because that's a totally separate argument.  You can't put two different things I say on this board together, but often they don't go together.  As I've said before, I generally argue the weaker side of an argument. 

The main reason for letting others make decisions about Google?  It doesn't affect me. 

The main reason for being worried about terrorism?  It will very likely affect me. 

Google is now like the largest Internet company, you're on the Internet, it effects you

[Kp]

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - The Justice Department is asking Internet search giant Google to turn over search records in an effort to defend a child pornography law, according to a report published Thursday.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/19/technology/google_suit/?cnn=yes

Child porn involvement is a law.  By protecting the perpetrators Google is aiding the felons.

OK, you're getting rather annoying.  If you read that article in full, you'll see that they can't even get simple facts like years correct.  The article you linked claims the law was struck down in 1994; everything else I've found says 1998.  If the article can't even get the year correct, I don't have a lot of faith in it to get anything else right either.  Further, if you look at what COPA required, it was not about children involved in pornography.  It was about denying children access to pornography.  Claiming it is a "child pornography law" because it happens to involve pornography and happens to relate to denying children access to the same is a stretch at best.  Incidentally, I got both the year and the better summary from the other article that you linked to!

aid and abet
v. help commit a crime.

http://dictionary.law.com/default2.asp?selected=2377&bold=||||
I suppose Google is even just helping the felons by have child porn even turn up in their searches.

So by refusing to give up information which the government is seeking to try to revive a currently-ruled-unconstitutional law, Google is aiding whom?  As I've stated multiple times, there are no child pornographers involved in this case.  Arguably, Google is giving the operators of pornographic sites a few more days of reprieve from the measures COPA requires, by virtue of delaying the government's attempts to revive the law.  Beyond that, ...?

I can see that the Government just wants a sample, but with Google being the largest search engine it is only logical to look at their results as well.

Sure.  It's also quite possible for Google to return a stripped version of their results which contain only the information the government truly needs for its case.  Based on its requests, all it needs is a list of terms submitted to the engine and a list of what was returned.  It doesn't need dates, times, IP addresses, cookies, user-agents, or any of the other information that typically goes into a web server's log.  Assuming Google's logs are machine parseable, it'd be no more than a couple hours for a decent Unix programmer to whip up something to pull out the fields the government wants.  Google might well do this if they lose the fight to withhold the information entirely.  There are still some privacy implications to yielding up the search terms, but without date/time/address, the implications are much weaker.

Google is now like the largest Internet company, you're on the Internet, it effects you

*affects.  Please, it doesn't take that long to proofread your posts, and it looks much better when you don't make such simple mistakes.  Of course, such simple mistakes pale in comparison to your ability to misread articles that you link us to.