Google is rebuffing the Bush administration's demand for a peek at what millions of people have been looking up on the internet's leading search engine — a request that underscores the potential for online databases to become tools for government surveillance.
Google has refused to comply with a White House subpoena first issued last summer, prompting U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales this week to ask a federal judge in San Jose, California for an order to hand over the requested records.
The government wants a list of all requests entered into Google's search engine during an unspecified single week — a breakdown that could conceivably span tens of millions of queries. In addition, it seeks 1 million randomly selected web addresses from various Google databases.
In court papers that the San Jose Mercury News reported on after seeing them Wednesday, the Bush administration depicts the information as vital in its effort to restore online child protection laws that have been struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Yahoo, which runs the internet's second-most used search engine, confirmed Thursday that it had complied with a similar government subpoena.
