Google to divulge some data, protects Privacy

A federal judge on Friday rebuffed the Bush Administration’s demand for a list of people’s search requests, considered a sensitive information by provacy lawyers but asked Google to give the administration a peek into its search engine.

In his 21-page ruling, U.S. District Judge James Ware told Google to provide the U.S. Justice Department with the addresses of 50,000 randomly selected Web sites indexed by its search engine by April 3.

The government plans to use the data for a study in another case in Pennsylvania, where the Bush administration is trying to revive a law meant to shield children from online pornography.

In a 21-page ruling that has implications for the privacy of Internet users, Judge Ware said privacy considerations led him to deny part of the Justice Department’s request.

"We will always be subject to government subpoenas, but the fact that the judge sent a clear message about privacy is reassuring," Google lawyer Nicole Wong wrote on the company’s Web site Friday night.

"What his ruling means is that neither the government nor anyone else has carte blanche when demanding data from Internet companies."

"The expectation of privacy by some Google users may not be reasonable," Judge Ware wrote, "but may nonetheless have an appreciable impact on the way in which Google is perceived, and consequently the frequency with which users use Google."

In his decision, the judge wrote of the "three vital interests" that needed to be weighed in the case: national interest, proprietary business information and privacy concerns.

"This court is particularly concerned any time enforcement of a subpoena imposes an economic burden on a nonparty," he wrote in a filing made late Friday.

The judge found that given Google’s importance in the Web search business, the government would need at least some data.