Google attacks "cavalier" Justice Department

Google lashed out at the US Justice Department on Friday, saying that a high-profile request for a list of a week's worth of search terms must not be granted because it would disclose trade secrets and violate the privacy rights of its users.

In a strongly worded legal brief filed with a federal judge in San Jose, California, the search company accused prosecutors of a "cavalier attitude", saying they were "uninformed" about how search engines work and the importance of protecting Google's confidential information from disclosure.

This response came after the Justice Department last month asked a judge to force Google to hand over a random sample of one million web pages from its index, along with copies of a week's worth of search terms to aid in the Bush administration's defence of an internet pornography law. That information is supposed to be used to highlight flaws in web filtering technology during a trial this autumn.

The Justice Department subpoena would normally have been a routine matter, and AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo! voluntarily complied with similar requests. But Google's resistance sparked a furore over privacy, with senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, asking the Justice Department for details, and a bill appearing in the House of Representatives that would require websites to delete information about visitors.

The brief said: "The privacy of Google users matters, and Google has promised to disclose information to the government only as required by law. The privacy and anonymity of the service are major factors in the attraction of users - that is, users trust Google to do right by their personal information."

Google's opposition raised eyebrows last month after it stood up to the US government but capitulated to censorship demands from China's ruling Communist Party. At a hearing this week, politicians said they were "sickened" that Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! chose to censor their search results for Chinese users.

Another reason for objecting to the subpoena, Google said in its brief authored by Lisa Delehunt and Al Gidari at the law firm of Perkins Coie, is that government lawyers might share the information with the FBI for criminal prosecution - say, of people who typed in search terms like "marijuana cultivation".

A protective order does say that only Justice Department attorneys "who have a need" for the information may receive it. But a department spokesman told Newsweek last month: "I'm assuming that if something raised alarms, we would hand it over to the proper [authorities]."

A Justice Department spokesman told silicon.com sister site, CNET News.com, on Friday: "This is all part of a civil action, and so consequently it's strictly to get the information we specifically requested. As regards that material, that is what it is being used for and that is all."

CNET News.com's Anne Broache and Greg Sandoval contributed to this report

Declan McCullagh writes for CNET News.com