The Dying Fourth Ammendment

According to this Washington Post article, the Bush administration has issued subpoenas to Google, Yahoo, and other search engines requesting a copy of their search logs. Google is fighting the subpoena in court, but the other search engines compiled. So is the Bush administration fighting terrorism? Organized crime? Espionage? Unfortunately, the answer is not any of the above. The administration wants the traffic so it can analyze ways to restore anti-porn laws that have been struck down by the courts as unconstitutional. I don't see what constitutional basis the government has for being able to force Google to provide the information.

The search logs of a major search engine like Google are a major treasure trove of information. Not only do they contain the search terms, but they contain the IP address of the requesting machine, possibly the browser identification string, and can be used to identify patterns of search requests by an individual. The government could identify people who have searched for "Howard Dean", "ACLU", or "Guantanamo". Does anyone remember Nixon's "Enemies List"? Also, search terms don't include the context they were made in. A search term like "child porn" might indicate a pedophile, or it might have been used by a psychology grad student researching ways to fight online porn. And while most user IP addresses are dynamic, the originating ISP may have records. It would only be a matter of time before the government subpoenas them too.

If Google can be forced to provide its search records without the government showing probable cause, then there is no reason the government can't force everyone in the United States to provide all of their computer records to the government. After all, someone in the United States must have used their computer to commit a crime.