An evident problem

Just yesterday, CBC reported on a wave of flawed child-porn charges based on a list of names which failed to take into account issues such as identity theft and outside access to individual computers:

Irish lawyer Paul Lambert has reviewed some of the Landslide cases. He says because the issue was child pornography, people were not treated as innocent until proven guilty.

"Certain police forces around the world ... would have been told by U.S. authorities, 'These are pedophiles and this is a 100-per-cent pedophile website,' " he said.

Lambert says no one seems to have considered other possibilities in the cases he has reviewed, "things like whether somebody else has access to a computer; things like malicious access to computers, malicious uploading and downloading.

Now, the U.S. government has won the ability to add Google search data to the evidence currently available to it:

Google will have to hand over details of users' internet searches to the United States government after a judge said the company must comply with a federal investigation...

The government argued the information was vital for its bid to restore laws protecting children from online pornography that were struck down by the US Supreme Court...

James Ware, US District Court Judge for northern California, said the case was in essence about the government seeking the search data to test child-safe content filters and though "reticent" to decide on the relevance of the request, was inclined to give the government "some relief".

We'll find out whether appropriate limitations and conditions are put on the use of the data - particularly an assurance that the searches can't be matched up to individual users. But it sounds all too probable that the U.S. has just been handed a license to engage in a witch-hunt on any subject where a user may have searched Google. And given the track record of failing to take into account exculpatory factors, there's far too much reason for concern that more innocent people will get see their lives destroyed based on a single link between an individual computer and a "suspicious" search.

(Via Socialist Swine.)

Update: Blast Furnace Canada Blog draws the same connection.