I commend Google for standing its ground and not releasing its search queries up to the government. AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft quickly released this info without any thought. The government wants these searches so that they can see if porn comes up when searching for some normal word or phrase.
I feel that this is a violation of civil rights even though we are in a time of war. Sure, the government claims that they do not need names, yet they did acknowledge that if they found any suspicious information then they would need to know whose search it was. What if someone was searching about Hamas just to try to further their knowledge about the world around them? Then maybe the government would consider that a suspicious search.
If the government is requesting these searches solely for the sake of seeing how easy it is to unintentionally access porn, then can't they just make up their own searches? THey know what's popular today. Just make a list of popular words/phrases and they could perform the searches on their own.
They also say they want the searches to try to test out their filtering software, but again, they could do that with their own list of made up searches.
I'm glad that Google didn't give in to the government the minute they were asked to release their search queries.
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More importantly... why is the government studying pornography? Despite the potential for addiction, it's a relatively minor issue in the grand scheme of things these days...
Isn't stopping porn a morally good thing? I have so many friends that have been scarred to addictions to pornography. If the federal government were to have a means to limit teenagers access to porn they would greatly help America.
The "federal government" (as you refer to) wasnt created to make sure teenagers shouldnt look at porn. It is the SOLE responibility of the PARENTS, and not the US government. There are locks and parental controls installed in most operating systems and should be used if you're worrind about questionsable content. Stopping "porn" is like trying to stop drinking. If you're referring to addiction, then people need to be more responsible for their own actions and seek help. Whats next, closing Indian reservations because of gambling? How about night clubs, restaurants, and liquor stores because of drinking? Id rather see people stop driving thier SUV's, but hey, thats what "America" is all about. People want to see it... thats why its there.
This isnt about porn this is about the government sticking its nose in places where it does'nt belong and watching what the american people are doing on the internet and violating our rights as a free society. This is just a cover for the real thing.Yeah they'll use it to catch a couple of pervs and then thats it; you wont hear about it for awhile.Anytime they say its for the children its a lie and more of your rights as a American go down the drain.
Stop Porn?!?
That's why the internet was invented!
Sorry to say but the internet was invented to look up information on certain topics to further someones' intelligence not be looking up or at any kind of porn or any thing that refers to it. There should be a law now that any material that gets submitted to go on to the internet should go through the government or an organization that prevents any explicit (pornography) material to be put on the internet for the pleasure of "showing off".
The problem is porn is so abundant in our society, small kids already know what sex is. I didn't know abot it until I had sex ed in the 5th grade. Nowadays we absolutely need it to teach kids the ins and outs and rights and wrongs about such things. Prevention is going to be difficuly, especially with the internet. And because it is global, it's impossible to regulate or censor anything.
If you even turn on the safe filters on searches you still get pornography. THe government can't stop it, the companies can't stop it, the only people who possibly could are the people who make it. But because the American and global populaces have such a rampant appetite for lustual media, that's never going to happen either.
The government's actions are futile, they're not going to catch pedophiles or terrorists on the Net. Terorists and Al Jazeera have sites of their own which they can post anything they want on. REally we live in a scary age, at a stalemate that will probably break not in our favor.
If this were the case, any conspiracy research could be stopped, and we would have 1984 on our hands. violation of civil rights is putting it lightly.
I think google is a good search engine and has a great map feature.