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Clandestine FBI Google Tap Yields Somewhat Embarrassing Results
by Mark on 1/19/2006 (0) 
 | | "Okay, ONE pic. I don't want to come out of this looking like an idiot!" | | WASHINGTON - Mountain View-based Google has recently refused to comply with a White House subpoena first issued last summer, prompting U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales this week to ask a federal judge in San Jose for an order to hand over the requested records.
The government wants a list of all requests entered into Google's search engine during an unspecified single week, a breakdown that could conceivably span tens of millions of queries. In addition, it seeks 1 million randomly selected Web addresses from various Google databases.
Unknown to millions of unwary browsers, the FBI had already taken "samplings" of Google search queries in 2004, and the results were "somewhat embarrassing" according to FBI specialist Sid Farkas.
"We did this in an attempt to root out terrorists primarily, and what we found was that 95 percent of all Google queries that we sampled included the keywords 'tits', 'ass', 'blow job', 'blowjob', and 'snowballing'. A lesser, tiny minority referred to searches for online pharmacies, American Idol, free term papers, and at least one request for pipe bomb fabrication. With the exception of the pipe bomb, I'd say we allocated about 10,000 agent hours on porn and plagiarism. It was a lugubrious, time consuming effort, not to mention a bit embarrassing, to say the least."
IP analysis of random samples of Google queries by the FBI traced several especially bawdy requests to "the 3rd floor of our downtown Chicago office, and the entire floor of the House of Representatives, congressional page dormatories included."
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