The US Department of Justice has hit back at Google over it's refusal to hand over search records. The DoJ claims it needs the search files in order to demonstrate that sites offering pornographic images of children are easy to find - but that is obviously bullshit - they only needs to type 'teen fuck' into google images to prove that.

The Bush administration contends that existing filtering systems do not work and is demanding tougher controls. However an earlier Bill known as the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was thrown out by the courts as being unconstitutional. Few people are convinced that the attempts to get googles search logs have anything to do with porn.

The DoJ has now submitted an eighteen page brief to the court challenging Google's refusal to hand over the information.

Earlier this month Google issued a stern rebuttal to the Do J in papers submitted to the court. In the papers Google asserted that handing over the search logs would compromised the privacy of the millions of visitors that daily use Google's search engine. Furthermore, should Google be forced to comply with the subpoena, its business would be badly damaged through the loss of trust in its ability to maintain confidentiality.

Other search engines including Yahoo!, MSN and AOL have already complied with the DoJ's request for search logs. Which is no surprise but does illustrate that the DoJ's claimed reasons for wanting the search results are completely bogus since the logs from the other big search engines would provide ample evidence of the amount and ease of accessibility to child porn.

All of this is no proof of the Google are the good guys, last month google signed a deal with the chinese government to provide censored search results that exclude sites about democratic struggles or tibet. This move was widely condemned with even the US authorities comparing Google to evil scum like IBM and Ford etc who worked with the Nazi's.