Weapons of Mass DistractionGoogle says no to US Government

The title of this really should be "US Gov seeks search engine query list to help fuel legislation we don't want," but that is too long. It basically boils down to George and friends trying to get a list of everything Google users searched for within a 1-week period. Apparently MSN and Yahoo have already handed over this information (without personally identifiable information), but Google is holding strong. If things can continue in this manner before we know it high school students will be getting arrested for being terrorists just for searching for information about sparkler bombs or similar things. If the big G complies with this request, the next request will want even more detail, and more, until the Gov is sitting there with some fancy Google backdoor that would allow them to monitor the searches performed by a specific IP address without a needing a court order (just like the recent wire-tap happenings).

Personally I don't think they have any right to know what I'm searching for. I sure as hell don't want search results being used as fuel for a "this country needs better morals, and by god we're going to force them on you, look at this crap you've all been searching for" campaign.

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