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Sunday, February 26, 2006

DOJ really, REALLY wants to know what you search for on Google
Posted by Jill | 9:38 AM

So I guess that search I did yesterday on "chimpanzee humans share DNA" may end up having the spooks in DC wondering what it's code for after all:

Google Inc.'s concerns that a Bush administration demand to examine millions of its users' Internet search requests would violate privacy rights are unwarranted, the Justice Department said Friday in a court filing.

The 18-page brief argued that because the information provided would not identify or be traceable to specific users, privacy rights would not be violated.

The brief was the Justice Department's reply to arguments filed by Google last week. Google has rebuffed the government's demand to review a week of its search requests.

The department believes that the information will help revive an online child protection law that the Supreme Court has blocked. By showing the wide variety of Web sites that people find through search engines, the government hopes to prove that Internet filters are not strong enough to prevent children from viewing pornography and other inappropriate material online.


And more importantly, they may not be strong enough to prevent adults from getting information on breast cancer and contraception, either.


Do YOU trust the Bush Justice Department when they say that the information won't be traceable to specific users? After all, they've been so honest and straightforward about everything else, right?

How about this:

A controversial counter-terrorism program, which lawmakers halted more than two years ago amid outcries from privacy advocates, was stopped in name only and has quietly continued within the intelligence agency now fending off charges that it has violated the privacy of U.S. citizens.

Research under the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program -- which developed technologies to predict terrorist attacks by mining government databases and the personal records of people in the United States -- was moved from the Pentagon's research-and-development agency to another group, which builds technologies primarily for the National Security Agency, according to documents obtained by National Journal and to intelligence sources familiar with the move. The names of key projects were changed, apparently to conceal their identities, but their funding remained intact, often under the same contracts.

It is no secret that some parts of TIA lived on behind the veil of the classified intelligence budget. However, the projects that moved, their new code names, and the agencies that took them over haven't previously been disclosed. Sources aware of the transfers declined to speak on the record for this story because, they said, the identities of the specific programs are classified.

Two of the most important components of the TIA program were moved to the Advanced Research and Development Activity, housed at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Md., documents and sources confirm. One piece was the Information Awareness Prototype System, the core architecture that tied together numerous information extraction, analysis, and dissemination tools developed under TIA. The prototype system included privacy-protection technologies that may have been discontinued or scaled back following the move to ARDA.


In other words, the Bush Administration is STILL interested in data mining our every move. Because you see, in George W. Bush's topsy-turvy America, Cindy Sheehan is a national security risk. Peace activist Quakers are a national security risk. Little ol' bloggers who point out what this administration does are national security risks. Only countries whose leaders vacationed in Afghanistan with Osama Bin Laden in 1999 aren't security risks.
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