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Google is refusing to hand over information on queries submitted to, and websites available on, through the Internet giant's servers, despite being subpoenaed by the US Government.

The company says the Justice Department's requests are overreaching and that complying would jeopardise its users' privacy.

Although no identifying information is being sought, Google is concerned that the data requested may well contain personally identifiable information.

The US authorities served a subpoena on Google in a bid to gather evidence for the defence of a suit filed against it by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) over the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) law.

According to reports, rivals Yahoo! and AOL have already capitulated to the Justice Department's request. The ACLU also says that Microsoft, too, has complied with

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the demands.

The suit, originally filed in 1998 and having swung back and forth in the intervening years between district, appeals and Supreme courts, alleges that COPA violates the First Amendment.

But the DoJ wants to prove that content filtering isn't enough to prevent minors stumbling across inappropriate sites - hence its bid to gather evidence as to whether such content is turning up on search engines.

It wants legal requirements that publishers of such material make it intentionally difficult for minors to access such content, potentially at the cost of the privacy of adult users and at a high financial cost to the publishers themselves.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has welcomed Google's resistance but also notes that this highlights the vast quantities of information gathered by search engines including IP addresses, cookies and account information.

'The only way Google can reasonably protect the privacy of its users from such legal demands now and in the future is to stop collecting so much information about its users, delete information that it does collect as soon as possible, and take real steps to minimize how much of the information it collects is traceable back to individual Google users,' said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. 'If Google continues to gather and keep so much information about its users, government and private attorneys will continue to try and get it.'