Has Flickr Handed Records over to the DoJ? .:. grubbykid.com

Has Flickr Handed Records over to the DoJ?

I'm sure you are aware of how Google is fighting a DoJ attempt to gain search records in order to make a case that online searches revolve around porn. Well, duh. The Web is the sum of all human knowledge, plus porn. Additionally, as Daniel Drezner states, "...DOJ is being unbelievably lazy."

What I'm concerned with, is that Flickr is part of the Yahoo! family which has released info to the government:

The Justice Department asked a federal court this week to force Google to turn over a trove of information on how people use the Internet. A subpoena, first sought over the summer, seeks activity on Google's search engines for a single week, a request that Google says could lead to identifying millions of people and what they were looking at.

The government, which says its request will not result in identifying individual computer users, wants to use the information to resurrect an online pornography law shot down last year by the U.S. Supreme Court. It wants to search Google queries to see how often users inadvertently run across sexual material.

The Internet's rise has raised issues of whether users would be vulnerable to electronic eavesdropping of all kinds, but Google's stand represents the first big public face-off between the world's leading search engine and the government....

Yahoo, which has the second most popular Internet search engine, acknowledged Thursday it has complied with the government on a "limited basis."

I think it goes without saying how bad a precedent this is, especially in light of a photo-sharing site. It is not clear what information from Yahoo! has been turned over, and there is no reason to worry - yet. What Y! needs to do is transparently document what was turned over. And what the DoJ needs to do is not request information from search engines, but as Dan also points out, hire an independent social scientist to conduct research about this topic - because I would like to know also. My sense is that it is harder to find than conventional wisdom states, but infinitely easy if you are looking for it.

I contacted the Flickr people about this, but haven't gotten any response yet. When they do, I will post their responses below.

Comments

sweetchuck says:

The only thing I'd argue is that the internet is the sum of all porn, plus human knowledge.

Aside from that, yeah, I'm hoping that google wins out because the government already has enough information about our lives. And who are they kidding if they think they can stop porn? I'm not sure what these records will help them with, other than learning that LOTS of people look for it.