Searching through searches: New laws may soon govern the use of data mined from Internet searches
U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Ware on March 17 ordered Internet search behemoth Google Inc. to comply with parts of a U.S. Department of Justice subpoena of search records. The judge directed Google to provide 50,000 Web addresses randomly selected from its index to Justice by April 3. But Ware's balanced ruling said the search engine need not share a list of actual search terms entered by Google users, as Justice had requested.
It's likely, says Stephanie Cole, a partner in the Buffalo law firm of Bloom Cole & Shonn LLP, that new laws will be enacted governing the use of data mined from search records. But it's too early to predict whether that legislation will be more or less restrictive than current regulations, and on whose shoulders the burden of protecting user privacy will fall: on the search Web sites; on those, including the federal government, who wish to access individual search records; or on the search-engine users themselves.
"Where these laws are going to fall will depend on the ruling and the public reaction to it," says Cole, who's chair of the Bar Association of Erie County's Intellectual Property, Computer and Entertainment Law Committee.
