Date set for hearing on Google data-sharing

Mercury News
Jan. 28, 2006

A federal judge in San Jose has scheduled a Feb. 27 hearing to examine Google's decision to withhold online search records from the U.S. Justice Department.

The hearing, to be held in U.S. District Court, will be the first in the high-profile case. The Justice Department is seeking to force the Mountain View company to comply with a subpoena seeking 1 million Web site addresses reached from Google and one week of search queries.

In an interview this week with Bloomberg News, Google co-founder Sergey Brin said the Mountain View Internet company will fight the U.S. government for as long as it takes to avoid handing over information on user searches.

``It's our obligation to use the law to the farthest possible means to protect our users' privacy,'' Brin said Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. ``It's just a legal and ethical principle.''

The Justice Department is seeking to use the information to defend the federal Child Online Protection Act, designed to keep children from sexually explicit material on the Internet. The law has been challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union as a violation of free-speech rights in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Yahoo, Microsoft and America Online have already turned over information sought by the government, at least in part.

``I don't think we like the precedent of it, and so we're fighting it,'' Brin said. ``I think we're right.''

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Jan. 20 that the government will continue to press Google to turn over the information. He said the request isn't an invasion of privacy and will help fight Internet pornography.

``We're not asking for any personal information,'' said Charles Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, adding that the department is pressing ahead with its case.

In the Bloomberg interview, Brin also said Google's decision to release a censored search engine in China came after years of consideration.

``This was a decision we reached after a number of years speaking to the human rights groups, and specifically people who really cared about China on human rights,'' Brin said. ``I understand why other people might have other views.''

Google this week said it planned to release a version of its Internet search engine in China that excludes some sites restricted by the Chinese government.