Peter Griffin: Big Brother wants to track your cybersteps

Projected up against the wall of Google's reception area at its Mountain View, California, headquarters are random search queries typed into the world's most popular search engine.

Obscene and offensive ones are naturally screened out. Google wouldn't want clients subjected to a string of X-rated search terms as they sit waiting for their meeting slot.

Nor does Google want the United States Government to see what its millions of users are seeking. The internet giant stands apart from the other big search engine providers - Yahoo, AOL and MSN - in resisting Justice Department attempts to obtain a list of a million random web addresses accessed by search engine users and a week's worth of search queries.

Why does the Government want it? To boost its case that internet pornography is too easily accessible to children and therefore that the Child Online Protection Act is needed. Passed in 1998, the act stipulated that credit card or age verification should be required to gain access to adult websites. That provision was thrown out by the Supreme Court because of a First Amendment violation.

Are children left unsupervised on computers able to easily access pornography? The answer is yes, and the efficiency of search engines such as Google only makes it easier. Filtering software and the vigilance of parents, teachers and caregivers is the only real guard against kids being exposed to online smut.

But the Justice Department subpoena request has sparked a deeper debate about online privacy.

Many see the handing over of search results as the beginning of a worrying trend where internet providers furnish the Government with a growing pile of information about our digital activities.

It's a touchy subject in the US, where indignant citizens are smarting from the revelation that the Bush Administration has been wire-tapping international phone calls without seeking the required court consents first.

But allowing the Government to peer at a string of search queries entered into Google, Yahoo or Ask Jeeves really isn't as worrying as being given access to information trawled from email accounts. Even anonymous keyword results pulled from millions of email accounts would give a deep insight into what the masses are thinking and doing. It's not out of the question that, down the line, governments may seek such information for reasons that are "in the national interest".

Will the Government next subpoena Google to supply a list of locations people are looking at via Google Earth, the free satellite mapping service? Or will it ask for transcripts of Google Talk messenger conversations? Just because the data don't identify anyone in particular doesn't mean that's not whittling away our privacy.

We have to assume that everything we do on the internet is being monitored, logged, cross-referenced and categorised for the eyes of corporations and government departments anyway.

Google has to fight the subpoena because trust in the company to protect our privacy is integral to its US$132 billion market capitalisation and profitability, not to mention its very existence.

But there's another reason for its opposition. Google knows what internet providers will only admit off the record - that pornography accounts for a sizable chunk of web traffic. Google's search-based advertising business, which generated revenue of US$3.64 billion last year, makes this fact even more sensitive.

Research company Nielsen//NetRatings says that in December, porn websites attracted 38 million unique visitors, or a quarter of all web surfers. As the biggest search engine, accounting for up to 60 per cent of search engine queries, Google fields a lot of porn queries and therefore derives revenue from porn advertisers.

If it becomes obvious to the Government just how big the internet porn advertising market is, it may move to curtail it, something that would dent Google's search-based advertising business.

If you have nothing to hide when you use the internet, you have nothing to fear. Nevertheless, any encroachment on privacy needs to be zealously examined and perhaps resisted, even when the case for such encroachments seems valid.