Yesterday, I asked Justice Department spokesperson Charles Miller which search companies other than Google the administration sought search data from, back in 2005. Mr. Miller said that in addition to Google — which has refused to provide the requested information — AOL, Yahoo, and MSN were also asked, and those three companies complied. Andrew Weinstein, Vice President of Corporate Communications at America Online, tells Boing Boing:
I saw in your posting that the DOJ is indicating that AOL complied with their subpoena for user search records last fall. That is not accurate.
We did receive a subpoena from the DOJ last fall, but we did not comply with the requests made in that subpoena. Instead, we gave them a list of aggregate and anonymous search terms that did not include any results nor any personally-identifiable information.
That same type of anonymous search data is commonly used by AOL and every other major search engine for features like our "Hot Searches" box and "top searches" features, and there are absolutely no privacy implications with sharing it. (Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Watch has a whole page of all of the public places you can find that same type of data. What People Search For – Most Popular Keywords )
In short, it's not hard to find, and it was not what the DOJ originally requested.
Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan replies,
I'm not buying it! They keep going on about not giving personal info — but they weren't asked for that. They were asked for terms, and they gave terms, so they complied at least partially.
Previously:
DoJ search requests: Google said no; Yahoo, AOL, MSN yes.
DoJ demands user search records from Google
