Google Bomb

Now here's a smokebomb:

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 19 - The Justice Department has asked a federal judge to compel Google, the Internet search giant, to turn over records on millions of its users' search queries as part of the government's effort to uphold an online pornography law.

Google has been refusing the request since a subpoena was first issued last August, even as three of its competitors agreed to provide information, according to court documents made public this week. Google asserts that the request is unnecessary, overly broad, would be onerous to comply with, would jeopardize its trade secrets and could expose identifying information about its users.

The dispute with Google comes as the government is moving aggressively on several fronts to obtain data on Internet activity to achieve its law enforcement goals, from domestic security to the prosecution of online crime. Under the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, for example, the Justice Department has demanded records on library patrons' Internet use.

Those efforts have encountered resistance on privacy grounds.

The government's move in the Google case, however, is different in its aims. Rather than seeking data on individuals, it says it is trying to establish a profile of Internet use that will help it defend the Child Online Protection Act, a 1998 law that would impose tough criminal penalties on individuals whose Web sites carried material deemed harmful to minors...

Certainly some small fraction of what's found for the Feds would go towards quasi legitimate law enforcement. If it didn't all get eventually thrown out of court as unconstitutional anyway. But you can't believe this motivation any more than you can believe that Osama bin Laden's honestly offering a truce.

Most of what's known about the motivations of the criminals running our governmnet these days is found by Googling their own tracks in the internet. The main$tream media certainly isn't talking. When an occasional journalist gets fed up with the corporatist crap, that journalist is quickly silenced.

How to find out where your worst critics are getting their material, and who your worst critics are? Find out who's looking for damaging information and rifle through their searches, of course.