Google拉美国政府上法庭

The Justice Department wants Google to provide a week's worth of search records, saying it needs the data to help it better police cyberspace.

But Google complains that complying with the request would compromise its business and the privacy of its users.

Similar requests were made of other net firms such as Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL.

Head to head

Lawyers for the Department of Justice and Google presented their arguments in San Jose on Tuesday, after which US District Judge James Ware said he expected to issue a written ruling "very quickly".

The case has focused attention on the issue of personal information held by internet companies.

The US government is seeking to defend the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, which has been blocked by the Supreme Court because of legal challenges over how it is enforced.

It wants the data from the search engines to prove how easy it is to stumble over porn on the net.

If it can prove this, the result might be onerous regulation for many websites.

Officials said they had tried to generate the same information using the Internet Archive website but did not get the results they wanted.

The BBC's North America business correspondent Guto Harri says Google's refusal was based on three main arguments.

Firstly, Google says it does not want to do the government's work for it, and secondly it says that it wants to protect its product. Thirdly, Google wants to show users that the company is serious about protecting their privacy.

Google誓言要保护用户隐私

因拒绝向美国司法部提供用户使用搜索引擎记录资料，搜索引擎巨头Google将与美国司法部对博公堂。

此前，美国司法部向Google索要其全部用户在任意一周内的搜索记录，以帮助完善警局网络系统，但Google拒绝了这一要求。

Google公司表示，美国司法部的这一要求会导致公司机密和用户隐私外泄。

除Google外，微软、雅虎和美国在线等大型网络公司都已接受了美国司法部的要求。

事出有因

美国政府索要用户搜索记录，是希望通过这些信息来确定搜索引擎被用于查找色情网站的次数，并以此为依据要求美国最高法院批准一项被废弃的儿童网络保护法案再度生效。

此外，美国司法部还希望通过网络公司提供的数据，证明在网络上搜索色情资料并不困难。

但互联网业内人士担心，一旦这些预测得到了证明，美国政府就会针对网站运营制定出一系列严格规定。

美国司法部官员表示，司法部是在无法通过网络档案文件搜集到相关信息之后，才向商业网络公司索取数据的。

声明立场

Google公司表示，该公司拒绝向美国司法部提供用户搜索记录的原因有三：

第一，Google没有义务替政府部门完成它们自身该做的工作；

第二，Google希望能够保护该公司的产品和服务；

第三，Google认为，保护用户隐私是极其重要的。

美国司法部和Google公司的律师表示，此案将于周二(14日)在美国加州联邦法庭开始审理。