Poll

To revive Internet child protection law, US Dept. of Justice asked Google for all search strings over a one-week period (without any info on who entered it), to see how often porn shows up in the results. Google refused, citing privacy concerns. Your opinion: [175 votes total] Google should provide the search strings to help child protection on the internet (75) 43% Google should refuse - user privacy is more important (90) 51% Don't care (10) 6%

Comments

TerraByte
If the DoJ only wants information on what is searched, like the number of times a particular search string was used, I don't see a problem. If they want any information that might identify a particular user, that's different. The DoJ should have to get a warrant for that particular user. Casting a net over all internet users to find any criminal, however well intentioned, is improper.
I'd also question why Google is (correctly, IMHO) digging in their heels with DoJ but cooperating with China (improperly, IMHO) on censoring searches to order to access the lucrative Chinese market.

Jeff Ullman, Terrorism vs porn
If the question were whether Google should cooperate with anti-terrorism searches, I would be more sympathetic to the US govt. point of view. Terrorism is a new form of warfare, and we need to respond to it accordingly. The rules of war are different from the rules under which we combat crime such as child pornography. Soldiers in war can shoot someone if they think that person is an enemy soldier. Police cannot shoot someone because they think that person is a pornographer, or bank robber, or even murderer. Similarly, we need to make a distinction between privacy violations in the cause of antiterrorism, and privacy violations in pursuit of ordinary criminals.

Alex, Tradeoff
First of all, I don't care if my children come across porn on the internet. When I was a child, I was actively looking for porn in magazines and I'm not aware of any damage I sustained.
Of course children need to be protected from crime. Since most crimes against children are committed within family homes by family members, the most effective kind of surveillance would be to install CCTV in every bedroom.