Looking for searchers

The U.S. Justice department is serving search engine providers with subpoenas to obtain user search records. So far, Yahoo and Microsoft have complied ..Google refuses. Government officials say they are only interested in detecting Internet ‘trends’ ..like what are the most frequently searched sites for Britney Spears ..or porn. If this is the case, they should be ‘contracting’ with Google for this type of information rather than serving them with ‘subpoenas’. That’s the way business is usually done between the U.S. government and private companies ..like Gallup for instance ..when they want demographic information. This would allow the search engine companies to provide the ‘trend’ information they are looking for without giving them the raw ‘query’ data that would violate privacy. It sounds to me like the Justice department is overstepping it’s bounds when they claim that the ‘Patriot Act’ entitles them to private industry records of this magnitude ..without an ongoing criminal investigation.