Secret Requests For Search Records Through Patriot Act Ruled Unconstitutional

A US district court judge has ruled that it is unconstitutional for the US
government to send secret letters demanding search records from search engines.
A provision of the Patriot Act has allowed for such letters to be sent to search
engines, ISPs and others by the Federal Bureau Of Investigation — and made it
illegal for companies getting such FBI demands to even reveal the requests at
all in general. Today’s ruling found that violated free speech rights.

Judge deals blow to
Patriot Act from News.com and

Judge fails to see patriotic side of FBI gags on Net service providers from
Good Morning Silicon Valley have good rundowns on the decision, which is
expected to be appealed. It’s not clear whether companies that received such
demands can now reveal them or if they must wait until the case works through
higher courts.

Have search companies even received such demands? We don’t know, because the
law would have prevented them from saying so. Indeed, one of my favorite part of
John Battelle’s The
Search is when he covers the Patriot Act and how it applies to search
engines. He asks Google’s Sergey Brin in 2005 about the Patriot Act and Google’s
stance on it. Sergey replies that he hadn’t read it but after hearing the issues
thinks "concerns are overstated" and adds:

There has never been an incident that I am aware of where any search
company, or Google for that matter, has somehow divulged information about a
searcher.

John then notes to Sergey that any case like this under the Patriot Act
wouldn’t come to light because of the secrecy provisions. That got Sergey to say
that he felt the act became a "problem," then Google would change its policy.

Google famously stood up to the US Justice Department’s demands for some
pretty anonymous search data back in 2006, so I suspect that if Google had been
getting a lot of Patriot Act requests, they’ve have been noisy about it despite
the law. But then again, if the law finally and fully changes, we won’t have to
wonder about requests to the major search engines.

By the way, I’d embed the quote from John’s book with Google’s handy new
quote embedding tool that we covered today in
Google Book Search Adds
My Library, Popular Passages, Embedded Quotes & More. Unfortunately, his
publisher doesn’t allow the book in Google Book Search (I can’t find his post
about this, but John himself wishes it were there). However, you can see the
actual page itself (page 202) over at Amazon. Use

this link.

About The Author

Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, MarTech Today and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.