ORDER IN THE COURT
Looks like Google can and is taking a well-deserved victory lap over it's tussle with the DOJ on handing over certain search results. As the company notes on it's official blog:
"Google will not have to hand over any user's search queries to the government. That's what a federal judge ruled today when he decided to drastically limit a subpoena issued to Google by the Department of Justice. (You can read the entire ruling here and the government's original subpoena here.)
The government's original request demanded billions of URLs and two month's worth of users' search queries. Google resisted the subpoena, prompting the judge's order today. In addition to excluding search queries from the subpoena, Judge James Ware also required the government to limit its demand for URLs to 50,000. We will fully comply with the judge's order."
This case was particularly important to Google, even more than for the other GYMAAAE companies. And that's because of Google's ambitious long-term strategy to provide a wide and deep range of network-based services to users worldwide, leveraging it's unique ability to scale such infrastructure.
And this means earning and keeping the mainstream users' trust.
As Google emphasizes this in it's post above:
"...we believe that if the government was permitted to require Google to hand over search queries, that could have undermined confidence that our users have in our ability to keep their information private."
It's going to be an on-going challenge, given the naturally high profile of all things Google, and the normal rights authorities have in investigating criminal and often civil matters.
As an example, Techdirt highlights a separate case today, where a Judge is ordering Google to turn over contents of a user's Gmail account in the context of a criminal investigation by the FTC. That of course is normal, and applicable to any company doing business in the US.
It's important to differentiate the normal, business-as-usual queries, from the precedent-breaking queries like the DOJ inquiry above.
It doesn't help that our legal system offers certain protections to users' computers and data while in their own physical possession (in their homes/offices), and yet doesn't extend some of those protections if that same data resides outside their physical possession on a network somewhere.
And this offers an opportunity for what I'd call "legal arbitrage" by authorities in both criminal and civil cases.
Given the continuing trend of technology constantly leaping ahead of the legal system's ability to catch up, these types of legal arbitrage opportunities will continue to prevail and will need to be fixed with alacrity.
In the meantime, we can congratulate Google in it's victory in this one battle. But let's keep in mind that it's likely going to be a long and protracted war.
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