Google won a big victory yesterday when a federal judge ruled against the government in its demand that Google turn over a sample of search queries by Google users. The Department of Justice had originally demanded that Google turn-over billions of search queries and URLs found by search queries, a request later scaled back to a sample of 50,000 URLs and 5,000 search queries.
The Justice Deparment had subpoenaed Google (and other search providers) for this data in order to conduct research to support the now-defunct Child Online Protection Act.
In his decision, U.S. District Judge James Ware ruled that although the search engine giant must turn over the sample of URLs requested by the Justice Deparment, it does not have to hand over the search terms. In the complex decision, Judge Ware said the government could create an impression of privacy violation if it forced Google to reveal actual search terms used in queries.
The expectation of privacy by some Google users may not be reasonable, but may nonetheless have an appreciable impact on the way in which Google is perceived, and consequently the frequency with which users use Google. Such an expectation does not rise to the level of an absolute privilege, but does indicate that there is a potential burden as to Google’s loss of goodwill if Google is forced to disclose search queries to the Government.
Moreoever, the court found that the DOJ might not end its demands with only a small sample of search queries, opening up the prospect that Google would have to submit even more data and in the process jeopardize its own trade secrets.
[T]his court is concerned that a narrow sample of Google’s proprietary index and query log, while in itself not likely to lead to the disclosure of confidential information, may act as the thin blade of the wedge in exposing Google to potential disclosure of its confidential commercial information.
More importantly, however, the court determined that the Justice Deparment could not demonstrate why it needs both a sample of URLs found in searching and a sample of search query terms. Given the seemingly duplicative request, the court found that
[T]he marginal burden of loss of trust by Google’s users based on Google’s disclosure of its users’ search queries to the Government outweighs the duplicative disclosure’s likely benefit to the Government’s study.
Google is clearly ecstatic about the decision and proud of its solitary efforts to fight the government’s overly broad demands (AOL, Yahoo and MSN gave the government what it asked for — presumably these Internet titans have lost some degree of user trust by just automatically caving to the feds). On the official Google blog, Associate General Counsel Nicole Wong wrote
We will always be subject to government subpoenas, but the fact that the judge sent a clear message about privacy is reassuring. What his ruling means is that neither the government nor anyone else has carte blanche when demanding data from Internet companies. When a party resists an overbroad subpoena, our legal process can be an effective check on such demands and be a protector of our users.
Cynthia Brumfield at 12:10 AM|Comments(0)
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