A Freedom of Search Issue
LET ME SAY THIS RIGHT AWAY: I don’t want kids to see Internet porn.
To that extent, I’m in line with the U.S. Department of Justice, which wants to revive a law enacted but never enforced to keep kids away from adult Web content. But the means the DOJ lawyers want to use (penalizing Web operators if kids access their raunchy sites) are unconstitutional, and the tactics they want to employ (subpoenaing Web indexes and search logs from Yahoo!, Google, MSN and AOL) will put a damper on the free access to information and should be stopped.
Google’s refusal to comply with the government’s subpoena has brought to light a fact that many users may not have appreciated fully: Their search activities are stored and recorded by the big search engines using cookies and other data compilation methods. In fact, a January phone survey by the Ponemon Institute, a data and privacy management group, found that 77% of Google users don’t realize the search engines keep any record of their searches.
And as the engines expand their features beyond text search
