Justice Department Subpoenas Reach Far Beyond Google

[seafan]

Justice Department Subpoenas Reach Far Beyond Google

By Thomas Claburn

Mar 29, 2006 06:00 PM

In its effort to uphold the 1998 Child Online Protection Act (COPA), the U.S. Department of Justice is leaving no stone unturned. Its widely reported issuance of subpoenas to Internet search companies AOL, MSN, Google, and Yahoo is just the tip of the iceberg: The government has demanded information from at least 34 Internet service providers, search companies, and security software firms.
Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by InformationWeek, the Department of Justice disclosed that it has issued subpoenas to a broad range of companies, including AT&T, Comcast Cable, Cox Communications, EarthLink, LookSmart, SBC Communications (then separate from AT&T), Symantec, and Verizon.

Asked which companies objected to, or sought to limit, these subpoenas, Department of Justice spokesperson Charles Miller declined to comment, citing that the litigation was ongoing. He also declined to comment on the utility of the information gathered by the government.
The documents presented to InformationWeek reveal that some companies did object to the government's demands.

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The subpoenas were issued between June and September 2005.

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The full list of companies subpoenaed by the Department of Justice includes: 711Net (Mayberry USA), American Family Online, AOL, AT&T, Authentium, BellSouth, Cablevision, Charter Communications, Comcast Cable Company, Computer Associates, ContentWatch, Cox Communications, EarthLink, Google, Internet4Families, LookSmart, McAfee, MSN, Qwest, RuleSpace, S4F (Advance Internet Management), SafeBrowse, SBC Communications, Secure Computing Corp., Security Software Systems, SoftForYou, Solid Oak Software, SurfControl, Symantec, Time Warner, Tucows (Mayberry USA), United Online, Verizon, and Yahoo.
The subpoenas directed at security software companies asked for a substantial amount of information, including any and all documents that fall into 29 separate categories, including the kinds of content filtering products or services offered, the number of customers using those products or services, how users configure their filters, how filters get updated, R&D spending on such products, the methodology used to generate blacklisted or filtered sites, and pretty much any data gathered that relates to the use of filters.

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"What they are doing, from our perspective, is engaging in a massive fishing expedition in an attempt to find some shred of evidence that they think can change a result they didn't like, which is that COPA violates the First Amendment," says Aden Fine, an attorney for the ACLU.
While the government's demands for information from Internet search engines have privacy implications for individuals, its interest in corporate information raises questions about the rights of businesses.
Stephen Ryan, a partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips in Washington D.C., considers the scope of the government's discovery efforts unusual. "I'm not surprised that the Google piece looks like the tip of an iceberg," he says. "But it is sort of surprising that they're using their authority this broadly."

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Jude says the Department of Justice asked for proprietary information about his company's content filtering software. Despite assurances that the information would remain confidential, he says he refused that particular demand, fearing it might be revealed by a Freedom of Information Act request.
Jude contends that the government's efforts to prop up COPA are misguided. "It's a waste of time," he says, noting that he testified before the COPA Commission about the prevalence of explicit material online in August 2000. The problem, he says, is that U.S. legislation has no teeth because half of the Web servers with explicit content are located in other countries.
If COPA were to be reinstated, Jude suggests that the Department of Justice would have to turn ISPs into content police in order to deal with offshore offenders.

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http://informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=184401156

[Flabbergasted]

1. Well this fits in well. Its all the info they need to filter everything

that they would rather people not see....

[seafan]

3. I think this is the REAL reason the DOJ wants all this information.

Especially the proprietary company info about the filtering mechanisms.

DOJ wants to learn how to censor the goll-danged net, once and for all.

What really gets my goat is the excuse of *cracking down on child porn* to serve it up to the population as their justification for these massive information sweeps.

We can and must stop this. I swear, these people think they are kings of the world.



It's nothing but more false choices they spoon feed to people:

How can *anyone* be against fighting terrorists? (So you won't mind if we illegally wiretap your communications and spy on your gatherings.)


And now it's.... How can *anyone* be against cracking down on child pornography? (So you won't mind if we filter anything on the net that *we think ought to be blocked*. That means that rabble of progressive/liberal web sites, heh, heh.)


Once again, the take-home message with these people is watch what they do, NOT what they say.

[Dunvegan]

2. What they're doing is using the heinous nature of child pornography as...

...a "gateway device."

After everyone is "how-could-you-be-against-stopping-child-porn'd" to death, protest against inquiries will be sufficently squelched to open the door for any next phase the .gov wants.

There are equally as effective ways of stopping child porn that do not require these particular slippery slope measures.

[Ian David]

4. No, this was never about child pornography. They're after REGULAR porn

The law isn't about protecting children from being in porn. The law was about protecting them from seeing porn.

[Nothing Without Hope]

5. K & R - this needs to be fully exposed n/t