The US Government is taking legal action to gain access to Google’s database of website searches in a dispute over internet privacy.
The Bush Administration has asked a federal judge to order Google to hand over the records of all searches for any one-week period, as well as other closely guarded data.
Other search engines are said to have agreed to the request, but Google is fighting the move. The action is part of a government effort to revive an online child pornography law that was repealed two years ago. The Child Online Protection Act would have made it a crime to post material that is deemed to be harmful to minors on the net, but it was challenged by civil liberties groups and was finally blocked by the Supreme Court on the ground that it was unconstitutionally restrictive of free speech. The court gave the Government a second chance to prove that the law’s proposed criminal penalties would work better than internet filters in protecting children.