Monday, January 23, 2006
The Google suit
Happy to see Google fighting the subpoena from AG Gonzales. The subpoena is a magnificently stupid and self-destructive idea for three separate reasons:
1. It gives easy ammunition to those who claim that Bush is Big Brother, spying on everybody's naughtiness to satisfy his personal jollies. Without this, a[relatively] clear case could be made that we are primarily listening to wartime enemies and their helpers.
2. It runs contrary to the administration's stated desire for strict Constitutionalist judges. The Supreme Court's partial overturning of COPPA was in fact a correct and originalist decision. The government isn't supposed to decide what people can read. Freedom of the press means publishers (including web carriers) can make their own decisions about what to publish, and readers (including parents acting on behalf of their children) are supposed to make their own decisions about what to read.
Gonzales wants to reverse that situation, for obvious political purposes: soccer moms want the government to take over the role of supervising their children. This is a profoundly leftist mentality, and a "conservative" admin should not be pushing it. (Yes, I know the religious constituency also wants to spare parents from the burden of controlling their children's reading; that doesn't make it any less a Leftist viewpoint. The Dobsonites actually agree with the Left in many respects, though you'll never get either side to admit it.)
3. The fact that sex is annoyingly and disturbingly pervasive on the Web does not need documentation. Anyone who has been online for more than one minute has received email invitations from sex sites. But even allowing that the data could be useful, any experienced computer user can gather this set of data, or enough data to serve the same purpose, without issuing a subpoena! Try Googling it, for Christ's sake!!!! ¶ 3:51 PM
Happy to see Google fighting the subpoena from AG Gonzales. The subpoena is a magnificently stupid and self-destructive idea for three separate reasons:
1. It gives easy ammunition to those who claim that Bush is Big Brother, spying on everybody's naughtiness to satisfy his personal jollies. Without this, a[relatively] clear case could be made that we are primarily listening to wartime enemies and their helpers.
2. It runs contrary to the administration's stated desire for strict Constitutionalist judges. The Supreme Court's partial overturning of COPPA was in fact a correct and originalist decision. The government isn't supposed to decide what people can read. Freedom of the press means publishers (including web carriers) can make their own decisions about what to publish, and readers (including parents acting on behalf of their children) are supposed to make their own decisions about what to read.
Gonzales wants to reverse that situation, for obvious political purposes: soccer moms want the government to take over the role of supervising their children. This is a profoundly leftist mentality, and a "conservative" admin should not be pushing it. (Yes, I know the religious constituency also wants to spare parents from the burden of controlling their children's reading; that doesn't make it any less a Leftist viewpoint. The Dobsonites actually agree with the Left in many respects, though you'll never get either side to admit it.)
3. The fact that sex is annoyingly and disturbingly pervasive on the Web does not need documentation. Anyone who has been online for more than one minute has received email invitations from sex sites. But even allowing that the data could be useful, any experienced computer user can gather this set of data, or enough data to serve the same purpose, without issuing a subpoena! Try Googling it, for Christ's sake!!!! ¶ 3:51 PM
