It's got a 'B' in it! (and extra-defensive coding)

In today's IT Blogwatch, we look at Google's privacy spat with the US Government (noting that most people can't spell subpoena). Not to mention an example of defensive programming taken to unnecessary extremes...

Big brother is doing more than watching these days. The US Government wants Google's records subpoenaed as John Packowski explains: "If you don't regularly anonymize your Google cookie and purge your personalized search history, now might be a good time to start (then again, in this day and age, why bother?). The Department of Justice on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order Google  to comply with a subpoena issued last year for search records stored in its databases ... one million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from a one-week period, is essential to its upcoming defense of the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act (think of the children!) Google has so far refused to comply with the subpoena, saying the release of such information would violate the privacy of its users ... Here's hoping the company prevails. The release of such records sets a truly unsettling precedent. And if the government's claim that other, unspecified search engines have already agreed to release similar information proves true, we have already lost our footing on a very slippery, very dangerous slope."

» Xeni Jardin confirms that it's not just Google: "I asked a Justice Department spokesperson which search engines other than Google received requests to provide search records. The answer: Yahoo, AOL, and MSN were also asked to supply search records information, and all complied. Google did not, and that is why the DoJ asked a federal judge on Wednesday to order the company to do so."

» Peter Pollack Arstechnica: "Simply put, Google is an information vacuum cleaner. It crawls web sites and records their content. It records newsgroups, news feeds, books, images, catalogs, and the planet Earth. It also records itself, saving data on user searches in a constant effort to improve its proprietary search technology ... the government believes that information about Google pornography searches will support it's position on reviving COPA, which was struck down in 2004 ... the government's insistence on standing behind this one runs much deeper than the noble desire to protect our children, and even deeper than the privacy issues inherent in releasing specific records ... one of the key concepts in American law is that of stare decisis ... decisions made by a higher court must be upheld by a lower court ... They are being subpoenaed to do nothing more than revive a law that has already been struck down. This sets a relatively low legal standard for the release of confidential records, and if upheld, that standard could be referenced in future legal cases ... Perhaps the government should engage the much more difficult task of writing laws that won't be overturned by the courts, or promoting better parenting so such activity is prevented in the home. Either way, hammer-headed laws and dangerous (lack of) privacy precedents are the wrong answer"

» Andrew Orlowski, El Reg: "It's a fishing expedition, unconnected with any ongoing criminal prosecution ... Google sets its cookies to expire in 2038, and launched products and services which make that cookie personally identifiable with a user, such as GMail, and a 'personalized' search page ... If, as looks likely, the DoJ succeeds, then surfers worldwide will have a US Attorney General who knows a lot more about you, too."

» Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch wrote a book on this subject, it was a blog post but it grew: "Here's a thought. If you want to measure how much porn is showing up in searches, try searching for it yourself rather than issuing privacy alarm sounding subpoenas. It would certainly be more accurate ... Do you know every variation of a term someone might use, that you're going to dig out of the hundreds of millions of searches you'd get? Oh, and be sure you filter out all the automated queries coming in from rank checking tools, while you're add [at] it. They won't skew the data at all, nope. Moreover, since the data is divorced from user info, you have no idea what searches are being done by children or not. In the end, you've asked for a lot of data that's not really going to help you estimate anything at all."

» Arkanes, Slashdot: "Wow, way to ruin the internet ... It's important to remember that the internet is not like the real world, and that 'community standards' [is] a pretty questionable standard to apply to it anyway. Unlike physical locations, you can't be required to pass by a porn site in order to get to somewhere else. If you're looking at porn on the internet, then you're either doing it with full knowledge of your circumstances, someone has subverted your computer, or you're doing foolish image searches. And even if it's the last, I think it's extremely questionable that we need legislation to 'protect' against this. I suspect that the amount of porn 'delivered to children' when those children weren't actively seeking it out is extremely minimal and unlikely to happen enough to damage someone."

Buffer overflow:

• Richi Jennings: Samsung Contact, 2001-2005. RIP.
• Brian Krebs: Oracle Issues a Whopping 82 Patches
• Techdirt: Wikipedia Germany Shut Down
• Matt Marshall: Forrester Magazine R.I.P.?
• John Paczkowski: It's against Google policy to negotiate with terrorists
• Nate Anderson: Following the money: how Subway ads ended up in Counter-Strike
• Vladimir Stojanovski: Blogs as a Strategic CRM Component
• Dennis Crouch: PTO To Hold Town-Hall Meeting on Proposed Changes to Examination Practice
• Michael Santo: Can’t Boot? Try the Free Ultimate Boot CD for Windows
• Techdirt: Shocker -- First WiMAX Equipment Actually Certified
• Dana Blankenhorn: OpenSolaris says it's a success
• Ben Rockwood: Interviewing is Evil
• Martin MC Brown: Ruby and Eclipse
• Martin MC Brown: More on personal power devices
• Alex Scoble: Risks of violating Sarbanes-Oxley with GPL'ed software
• Computerworld TechCast: Mobile and Wireless Technologies
• Brian Garrett: Consolidation in the Wide Area Optimization and Services Market
• Martin McKeay: Yahoo Web Beacons and privacy
• Shark Tank: Just a little friendly advice

And finally... Ask Thrice and Ye Shall Receive -- WTF?

Richi Jennings is an independent technology and marketing consultant, specializing in email, blogging, Linux, and computer security. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. Contact Richi at blogwatch@richi.co.uk. Also contributing to today's post: Judi Dey, our very own Antipodean.