U. S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has sent a subpoena to Google to compel Google to turn over data in the form of search queries conducted on the Google search engine. So far, Yahoo and MSN have complied with their own separate subpoenas, but Google has refused.
The U. S. Attorney General’s office has issued the subpoena s as part of an investigation involving the Child Online Protection Act (COPA). Google’s main objections have to do with resources required to fulfill the subpoena, privacy issues of searchers and compromising proprietary technology that will be mandatory if the subpoena is to be honored.
This brings to mind whether the U. S. Attorney General’s office presumes the responsibility for filtering adult material from children lie with the search engines or whether the responsibility lay with the parents and guardians (who can also install software to do such filtering)? Or both? The question of the necessity of protecting children is a given and one would have a hard time finding a person who would argue the opposite position.
The bigger questions are the ones of responsibility. Who is responsible are what are the consequences in acting in an irresponsible manner? Google may be balking at these implications along with their previously mentioned objections.
It will be interesting to see how this one plays out as this issue will not be going away any time soon. For the full text, see Google Subpoena
