Microsoft defends decision to give up search data

Microsoft is on the defensive over its decision to hand over search data to the government, saying the company would never compromise the privacy of its customers.

On the company’s MSN Search Weblog, Ken Moss, general manager of MSN Web Search, said that Microsoft did not divulge any personal user information when it provided the Department of Justice (DOJ) with data from its search service.

Moss said that the privacy of Microsoft customers is “non-negotiable” and the company aims to continue to protect customer data and information. However, Microsoft thought it best to cooperate with the government’s subpoena, handed down about six months ago, but the company did so in a way so it would not violate customers’ privacy.

“At MSN Search, we have strict guidelines in place to protect the privacy of our customers data, and I think you’ll agree that privacy was fully protected,” Moss said. “We tried to strike the right balance in a very sensitive matter.”

Microsoft and other search engine providers Yahoo and America Online have come under heavy fire from both Internet users and privacy advocates for complying with a U.S. government subpoena of their Internet search records. The DOJ said it needs the information to defend the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which it is trying to revive after it was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court two years ago.

Specifically, Moss said that Microsoft provided data that allows the DOJ to see how frequently some query terms occurred, but does not allow the government to look up an IP (Internet Protocol) address to see what information was queried and cannot look for users who searched for certain terms.

“We produced a random sample of pages from our index and some aggregated query logs that listed queries and how often they occurred,” Moss wrote on the blog Friday. “Absolutely no personal data was involved.”

Search engine leader Google has so far refused to hand over search information to the DOJ, citing several reasons, including concerns about violating its users’ privacy, disclosing trade secrets and facing an undue burden in assembling the demanded information.

Poll results published Tuesday by The Ponemon Institute LLC found that the majority of Internet users are on Google’s side, and a good number would stop using the company’s search engine if it complied with the government.

More than 56% of respondents to a poll of 1,017 adult U.S. residents believe that Google should not hand over information about search queries to the government, according to the institute, which conducts research on corporate governance, data protection and privacy compliance.

About 41% of those who said Google should not provide the data to the DOJ said they would stop using Google’s search engine if the company complied, while 18% said they were not sure what they would do in that case.

Requests for an interview with Moss or other MSN representatives through Microsoft’s public relations firm Waggener Edstrom on Tuesday were denied. Beyond Moss’s blog entry, the only information Microsoft provided on the matter was a written statement submitted by e-mail through a PR representative.

“We take the privacy of our customers very seriously,” the statement read. “We did comply with [the government’s] request for data in regards to helping protect children in a way that ensured we also protected the privacy of our customers.”