Datamunchers
More ISPs and tech companys were subpoenaed by the government in their COPA (Child Online Protection Act) fishing expedition than was previously thought. Information Week used the Freedom of Information Act to look at additional documents from the Justice Department related to the Google fishing episode last month. If you remember, the DOJ had gone after Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and Google. Google had declined to share historical search records (on the basis of trade secrets) although apparently the other companies had rolled over. Justice had been looking for evidence to strengthen their claims that COPA should be upheld.
Two weeks ago, in a California court, Google was backed up, mostly. They had to turn over a limited set of websites, no search terms.
The answer to the FOIA request is disturbing. The DOJ went after 34 companies including some of the biggest like AT&T, Comcast, Cox, Earthlink and Verizon. They also went after tech companies that make and enforce content filtering software.
I'm bothered by this for several reasons. Primarily, as a taxpayer, I'm offended that they spent public money trying to prop up a program that the majority of Americans don't want and that was struck down by the courts anyway. Like prayer in school, COPA-like executive fiats is an unwanted extension of a bureaucrat's personal view of morality into my life.
So now we know that the government is perfectly capable of going after big service company's customer records for any old excuse, not just for "national security" reasons.
So what else have they gone after? Have they requested hidden details of encryption from companies like Microsoft? Do they secretly look at Google logs? How about caching--if I were them, I'd go after Akamai--there's a goldmine in looking at dumpster-diving through network caches.
The solution is twofold: push back the government through judicial and legislative means and educate companies about the need for data purging.
The bottom line is that the more data that these companies keep, the more that lawyers (public and private) are going to go after them.
Posted on March 31, 2006