Editorial: Ogling Google’s user records

Monday, Jan. 23, 2006 | 9 a.m.

In an effort to resurrect an online pornography law the U.S. Supreme Court struck down two years ago, the Bush administration has subpoenaed Google Inc. for information about the browsing habits of its search engine users.

Google has refused to turn over the information requested in the subpoena, which was issued last year and seeks a wide range of data, including 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches for any one-week period.

The search engine is so popular and so widely used that its name has become a verb synonymous with looking up a person or topic on the Internet.

Google officials have said the release of random search information violates the privacy of its users.

The federal government wants to document how often pornographic sites pop up during online searches to help revive a 1998 law that was designed to protect children from being exposed to such material when they surfed the Internet. The Child Online Protection Act would have required access codes or other means for adults to register before they viewed such sites. Violators would have faced fines and jail time.

In 2003 the Supreme Court struck down the measure on free-speech grounds and ruled that software filters might offer better protection. The federal government's lawyers, however, want to show that the law is better than software filters. And its lawyers say they need information on Google users' activity to help prove their case.

But given this administration's penchant for unbridled snooping into Americans' private lives, there is good reason for Google officials to refuse. If the federal government's lawyers want to know what pops onto a computer screen when a child types "Barney" into Google's search engine, they can log on and type it in. They should leave private computer user records alone.