Google Stands up to Bush Administration
posted 20th January 2006 in Homeland Insecurity, Liberty, Media by Peregrin Wood
Good for Google!
The Internet giant, best known for its super-efficient search engine, has been asked to turn over its private records to the Bush White House, and refused. The Bush Administration first made the request last summer, but Google has been able to fend off the attempt to spy on your surfing habits – so far.
What was the Bush Administration’s excuse for this unreasonable search and seizure? Was the Bush White House trying to protect Americans from terrorist attacks? From Iraqi jihadists? From some other dastardly plot hatched by evildoers?
No. The Bush White House just wanted information about what kind of porn Americans are looking at, and how much it is they’re looking at. The White House wrote to Google that handing over huge amounts of information about Americans’ private web searching habits “would assist the government in its efforts to understand the behavior of current web users [and] to estimate how often web users encounter harmful-to-minors material in the course of their searches.”
In other words, George W. Bush and Alberto Gonzales thought they had the right to pry into the private lives of Americans, and spy on their activities online, because they were curious about sexy pictures. What, did Bush want to know where he could find girl on girl shoe fetish anime?
News flash to George W. Bush: Pornography is legal in the United States. It’s an expression of free speech. The President of the United States does not have the legal authority to invade the private lives of Americans just in order to find out what kind of pictures they’re looking at, or what kind of stories they’re reading.
There was no crime committed. There was no terrorist threat. There was definitely was no search warrant. Yet, George W. Bush tried to spy on your Google web searches in order to pursue some kind of sexually twisted aspect of the right wing agenda.
This was an attempt to spy on you through Google, to establish a Total Information Awareness system without your knowledge. If the House and Senate don’t investigate this abuse of presidential power, I’m going to be sick. Warning: I’m fairly sure that I’m going to be sick.
The worst part of the story is that, even though Google did the right thing, other Internet search engine companies did the wrong thing. They gave in to the Bush demands for your private information without protest.
Yahoo! cooperated with Bush’s effort to spy on you. MSN refuses to absolutely confirm that it caved in to the pressure from the White House to share your private information with George W. Bush, but MSN’s PR people admit that the search engine worked “closely with law enforcement officials worldwide to assist them when requested.” Translation: Bill Gates sold you out to a government spying program. It is unknown what other search engines complied or denied.
I cannot possibly express the depth of concern that we all ought to have at learning of this illegal search into our private lives online. If George W. Bush thinks he has the power to gather information into a gigantic government database about Americans’ pornographic reading habits, what does Bush think he does not have the power to spy on us for?
Does George W. Bush really want to protect America’s children? If so, then he should resign. Having a power-mad President who has no respect for the freedoms of American citizens is definitely the number one threat to minors these days.
Thank you, Google, for standing up to the Bush Administrations’s intimidation. I, for one, won’t be doing my searches anywhere else.
Tags: bizarre
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I use Yahoo! Crap!
I’m glad to hear google hasn’t caved yet. Considering all the hub-bub when gmail came out where google said that they reserved the right to keep all emails even if you delete them for there own purposes. That would mean that if google is still doing this and the government did convince them, there is who knows how much information sitting out there for them to peruse.
Believe it or not, I am dang glad they stood up to this request. Personally, I don’t care if an adult wants to view it (child pornography excluded, of course) behind the sanctity of the walls of their home. It’s the their (the homeowner’s) business, not the government’s business.
This really ought to be a nonpartisan issue. Americans have to have the ability to move in the world and communicate with each other without being spied on by the government.
I can’t wait to hear Alberto Gonzales try to explain how the resolution authorizing war in Afghanistan gave the Bush administration the legal power to spy on people’s porn viewing.
To Hell with empeachment! Tar and Feather the weasel and ride him out of town on a rail! We could say that we’re just reviving a fine old American Tradition…Naw …as fun as it would be, let’stake the moral high ground and empeach him…dammit….
[...] I read just yesterday about how the Bush government has been demanding that search engines like Yahoo, MSN and Google turn over their databases of private information about what web sites Americans have been looking for and visiting. Apparently, President Bush decided that he needed to know what kinds of pornography Americans are looking at. Yahoo and MSN are said to have caved in to Bush’s demands, while Google did the right thing and said no to Bush. [...]
Hang on gang, we still have a couple of years of this nonsense left! Let’s see how far toward fascism he can take us with his dominant Repugnant party in Congress (and now the stacked court too) to back him up (or go along through intimidation and threat of being made to look bad by the media and right wing groups). We better make some BIG changes in Congress (no small order) this fall to let the remaining government know that they’re next if they don’t shape up. This can only be accomplished by turning a LOT of those (supposed) 51% to start thinking for themselves, reacting to the change in the quality of life here through King George’s actions over the past 6 years, and actually getting these couch potatoes to get off their collective asses and DO something (like vote the bums out)!
Googling Past the Graveyard
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: January 21, 2006
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/01/21/opinion/21dowd.html
If you want to know why the Grim Peeper is willing to turn this country into a police state to take his version of democracy to other countries, just do a Google search under “antiterrorism,” “government snooping,” “overreaching” and “fruitcake.”
Leads only here.
You’re right, Archimerged. Maureen Dowd’s suggested search does lead only to this web site. I wonder what the search leads to on the Yahoo or MSN engines? To the office of Attorney General Alberty Gonzales?
The Bush Administration appears to be made of overreaching antiterrorism fruitcakes engaged in government snooping against the American people, so maybe that’s an accurate hit.
[...] Gonzales needs to acknowledge his conflict of interest in this matter, and hand it over to a special counsel who is not politically dependent upon President Bush or the national Republican Party, and needs to do so soon. With the George W. Bush declaring that he intends to keep spying against Americans without asking for any search warrant or FISA court approval to do so, time is of the essence. As we see with the parallel spy scandal of the Bush White House’s program to spy on Americans who use online search engines such as Yahoo and MSN shows, huge numbers of American citizens are having their liberty taken away from them. [...]
[...] Or so it seemed until this Saturday morning, when we read what Maureen Dowd had written in her column. The subject was the growing scandal of the attempt to snatch Google’s gigantic database of user information by President Bush and Attorney General Gonzales. Google did the right thing and stiffarmed the President of the United States, keeping Bush from spying on your online activity. [...]
[...] The New York Times reports (I kid you not) that people are becoming afraid to use search engines, now that they know Bush administration spooks have been looking over their shoulders: Kathryn Hanson, a former telecommunications engineer who lives in Oakland, Calif., was looking at BBC News online last week when she came across an item about a British politician who had resigned over a reported affair with a “rent boy.” [...]
sta. if theynd tall don,t give in to government.they are trying to bring a police state onto usif that happens. the usa will fall just like germany did. voet all republicans out this fall. tell the pres. or king george to kiss your ass. inever voted for him because he is a liar and the truth is not in him. he,s a wolf in sheeps clothing but he,l stand before god one day just like everyone else. bush, rove rummy cheeny are like a barrel of snakes.
I may not know alot,because of my age… but I do know the difference between unconstitutional and American. Everyday Americans give up their essential liberty for some safety, but as Benjamin Franklin once said “Those who give up essential liberty for some temperary safety, deserve niether safety nor liberty” and that is the truth. Bush thinks that he has done the right thing for the people, but he sort of forgot to do one thing and that is to think and care about what the people think of what he has done! In case he hasn’t noticed, Amendment 1/4/5 of the Bill of Rights basicly state that every single thing that he has done in the last 4 years IS WRONG. I too feel sick to my stomach thinking about the desturbing things that our Nation’s leader has been doing. Some people may call me a communist, but regardless of what they say… I know who I am and what I stand for. And I stand for L-I-B-E-R-T-Y!!!