Tuesday, February 26, 2008

EFF Files Lawsuit For Records of Contacts Between Former DoJ Official and Google

Via The EFF.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit against the Department of Justice (DOJ) today, demanding information about communications between the DOJ's former top privacy official and Google, the official's current employer.

Jane C. Horvath was named the DOJ's first Chief Privacy and Civil Liberties Officer in February of 2006. At that time, Google was fighting a massive DOJ subpoena asking for the text of every query entered into the search engine over a one-week period. The DOJ request -- part of a court battle over the constitutionality of a law regulating adult materials on the Internet -- ignited a national debate about Internet privacy.

The DOJ later scaled back its request, and a judge eventually allowed access to only 5000 random Google search queries. In a subsequent news article, Horvath was publicly critical of the DOJ's initial subpoena, saying she had privacy concerns about the massive request for information. Horvath's new job as Google's Senior Privacy Counsel was announced in August of 2007.

More here.

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