GO GOOGLE!

For being the only search engine to stand up to the feds! This great blog by Russell Shaw from The Huffington Post breaks it down with a finger-snap!

For a government that - as proven by Osama's latest threats - can't penetrate Al-Queda, and can't penetrate international methamphetamine smuggling rings that are tearing your town apart with their poison - well, this government seems to care quite a bit about another kind of well, "penetration."

The news hit today that Federal prosecutors defending the 1998 Child Online Protection Act have asked Google,Yahoo!, Microsoft and America Online to each hand over the results of one million recent "random" search queries as well as one million "random" Internet addresses accessible through each company's Internet search site.

Prosecutors say this is being done to prove that the Act- being challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union- is "more effective than filtering software in protecting minors from exposure to harmful materials on the Internet." These prosecutors hope to learn from these records how frequently Web users of all ages encouter pornography, and whether pornographic websites found in these searches could be blocked by filtering software.
To their credit, Google has said they would fight the motion. The others have given in.

I don't think it is a very noble moment when an 11-year-old girl, perhaps feeling her first sexual urges, decides to find something on the Internet that would enable her to indulge herself. Yet I have to ask myself, if she goes to Google and types in, say, "boys" and "hard" (choose your own word here), and is able to get to websites that literally show her what she is looking for, then who am I to make that decision if I am not her parent or legal guardian?

I should have equipped her to not want to make that decision, not employ electronic surveillance to thwart her if she does, even out of nothing but natural curiousity.

Or if a 9 year-old boy goes to Yahoo! and types in, say, "dirty babes" into a search engine, and then plays with himself to a display of a picture of a skanky 'ho doing the nasty with a dildo, then what is so wrong with that it requires the Feds to step in?


READ THE REST: HUFFINGTONPOST