Much has been reported since yesterday about the Bush Administration’s efforts to obtain search information from Google in connection with litigation involving the Child Online Protection Act (COPA). Unfortunately, some of that information has been wrong.
Case in point: This morning before work I was watching, as I sometimes do, Fox & Friends on Fox News Channel. Frequent Fox commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano, a former New Jersey trial court judge who is generally well spoken, was co-hosting along with a blond co-host who will remain nameless only because I don’t remember her name.
This co-host was quite vocal in her outrage over Google’s refusal to voluntarily comply with the government’s request and kept saying that Google was protecting people who were accessing or attempting to access child pornography. The problem is that the information that is being requested from Google does not concern child pornography and the case its being requested for has nothing to child pornography. COPA is a law that attempted to censor perfectly legal speech under the guise of “protecting the children.” In trying to obtain search information from Google and other search engines, the government is attempting to prove that the law is more effective than software filters in preventing children from seeing inappropriate images or web sites.
Throughout their conversation, Napolitano, who arguably should know better, did nothing to correct his co-host and seemed to even agree with her at times. This was distressing only because, during other appearances I’ve found him to be a generally good legal commentator.
The same thing was happening during a local radio talk show I was listening to on the way back from Court this morning. Callers kept bringing up child pornography in connection with the Google subpoena even though the two issues are totally unrelated. Fortunately, in this case, the host corrected them, though I’m not sure it did any good.
Linked with today’s Beltway Traffic Jam
Technorati Tags: Fox News, Google, Google Subpoena,Internet Freedom, Privacy
