Pensieri di un lunatico minore

Thinkpol 101

Everyone I know uses Google to search the Internet. Many of us use them for managing mail, and others for discussion groups and other information. As such, an article in the San Jose Mercury News comes as further evidence of the authoritarian police state that our current administration is attempting to set up:

The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order Google to turn over a broad range of material from its closely guarded databases.

The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law was meant to punish online pornography sites that make their content accessible to minors. The government contends it needs the Google data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches.

Now, if all they really wanted was to know how often it shows up in searches, one could probably use publically available information—such as the Google Zeitgeist and a 5 line script to get a list of search results. So, either they’re even more stupid than I can even imagine—a distinct possibility in this group of rejects—or they really want a lot more information than they should. Also, the law was struck down 2 years ago as unconstitutional, and I don’t see why we’re out there burning thousands, if not millions, of dollars of taxpayer and private money to fight this. The Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected the assinine notion of “save the children” as a justification to censor the entire world.

In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Justice Department lawyers revealed that Google has refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year for the records, which include a request for 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.

Google gave them the correct answer. This is private information, and there is no ongoing case against any of us that use Google. Instead, this is fishing expedition. Randomly cleansed data would be just as valuable.

The Mountain View-based search and advertising giant opposes releasing the information on a variety of grounds, saying it would violate the privacy rights of its users and reveal company trade secrets, according to court documents.

It’s also just the wrong thing to do. Bravo Google.

The government indicated that other, unspecified search engines have agreed to release the information, but not Google.

Let me say this to the rest of you all… f!ck you and the horse you rode in on. There is no valid reason to comply with this—and I mean ethically and morally, not legally—and it simply sets a precedent that is another step on the road to a fully dystopic police state. It might be the jack-off fantasy of some thugs in the political world, but I think George Orwell would tell you, if he could, that “save the children” is a prime example of goodthink.

We are witnessing, more vividly than I can remember, the oppressive imposition of totalitarianism, wrapped—as it always is—in the “need” to “protect us” from “them.” The primary thing that we, the American people, need protection from, is the mendacious, greed-filled polithugs who pretend to care about anything but their own power and wealth. It is high time that people stop rolling over for the jack-booted thugs of power.

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.—Benjamin Franklin

Pay attention as those things we claim to “hold dear” are erroded, trampled, pissed on, and otherwise defiled in the search for power.