In Case About Google's Secrets, Yours Are Safe - New York Times

In Case About Google's Secrets, Yours Are Safe - New York Times

The Justice Department went to court last week to try to force Google, by far the world's largest Internet search engine, to turn over an entire week's worth of searches. The move, which Google is fighting, has alarmed its users, enraged privacy advocates, changed some people's Internet search habits and set off a debate about how much privacy one can expect on the Web.

But the case itself, according to people involved in it and scholars who are following it, has almost nothing to do with privacy. It will turn, instead, on serious but relatively routine questions about trade secrets and civil procedure.

The privacy debate prompted by the case may thus be an instance of the right answer to the wrong question. As recently demonstrated by disclosures of surveillance by the National Security Agency and secret inquiries under the USA Patriot Act, the government is aggressively collecting information to combat terror. BU*SH*IT

And even in ordinary criminal prosecutions and in civil lawsuits, Internet companies including Google routinely turn over authentically private information in response to focused warrants and subpoenas from prosecutors and litigants.

But "this particular subpoena does not raise serious privacy issues," said Timothy Wu, a law professor at Columbia. "These records are completely disconnected. They're just strings of words."

In its only extended discussion of its reasons for fighting the subpoena, a Google lawyer told the Justice Department in October that complying would be bad for business.

"Google objects," the lawyer, Ashok Ramani, wrote, "because to comply with the request could endanger its crown-jewel trade secrets."

"Google's acceding to the request would suggest that it is willing to reveal information about those who use its services," he wrote. "This is not a perception that Google can accept."

The problem with the subpoena, Mr. Fine said, is more general. "This is another instance of government overreaching," he said.