Thursday, February 23, 2006

Google's Guts

So I hope that most of you know about this: google has denied the US Justice Dept. suponea requesting search queries of its users as well as all of the URLs in google's database. This is super serious turning point in the life of the web, with implications that could last decades. This will probably go to the Supreme Court- hopefully they make the right decision. Good thing that Yahoo! and MSN already turned over their records, as requested...pussies!

Google's Response

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, it's quite admirable that Google complies with Chinese law yet resists US law.

Jesse said...

Fair enough, and I have to say I'm disappointed also...however, being devils advocate;

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/01/google-in-china.html

is what google has to say. I think they're disappointed in themselves, but are thinking with a utilitarianism philosophy, which most public businesses do. Remember, google is a public company looking to make money, and like all companies they do crappy things to make money.

I guess I'm just glad that they are trying to stop crappy things from happening here, even though our government, as usual, is trying to do crappy things. I guess it makes me happy to think that we still have enough rights left to have a company stand up and say no, and that I can write on this blog saying so.

uncnoun said...

This has nothing to do with china. Google position is based in the fact that the government demand is unlawful.

The government should change the law and then demand the information. I really hope they won't change it.

Anonymous said...

It has everything to do with what is right and wrong.You can't have one set of values for one country and another for others..

uncnoun said...

Google MUST comply with the law on each country they do business.

In the US, they don't have any problem on giving information about queries when there's an actual crime committed by a user or IP address.
But they don't do the same when government is asking for random data to see if there's a crime because Google finds it illegal demand.
Until the court decides if the demand is legal or not, or the government changes the law to surely make it legal, Google don't have the obligation to give the data.

In the China case, they have laws that make Google filter their results but I'm sure that Google won't give anything to Chinese government unless they are legally forced by Chinese laws as they do in the US and the US laws.

Anonymous said...

The pathetic Nazi goons and butchers in the Nurenburg trials after WW-II used the same excuse "we were only following orders".

Fast forward to Google, Yahoo, etc. "we were complying with lawful orders"

Watch the video of the Feb. 15, 2006 House of Representatives Hearing to hear representatives from Yahoo and Google echoing Nurenburg with their following "lawful orders" justifications:

Watch Hearing Video

Jesse said...

Ok, um ya, wow....I think that's taking it a little far. Censorship does not equal genocide.

Anonymous said...

it all deals with the government wanting info on the people...the more they have...the better they can spy...screw the china situation, its the bush regime