MR. MARC FISHERFrom WAMU 88.5, at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your community with the world. I'm Marc Fisher sitting in for Kojo. Coming up this Tech Tuesday, two heavy hitters in the tech world found themselves in the hot seat last week. Google defended itself in Senate antirust hearings. It's accused of rigging its search results in favor of its own services and products.

MR. MARC FISHERAs Google was trying to reclaim its reputation as a benevolent force on the Web, Yahoo! publicly apologized for blocking emails relating to an anti-corporate protest in New York City. According to the company, those emails got caught in a spam filter. As users of the Internet, most of us assume a basic openness that our content, no matter what it is, gets sent or posted, and that a Web search gives us relevant results, not biased ones.

MR. MARC FISHERBut in fact, there are few regulations to guide or to punish Internet companies if they do choose to behave badly or in their own interests. That may soon change. But in the meantime, it's a case of user beware when it comes to the web.

MR. MARC FISHERJoining us to discuss this: Justine Tunney's founder of the website OccupyWallSt, Emma Llanso, policy counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology and Declan McCullagh, chief political correspondent for CNETnews. And we'll start with Justine Tunney in New York, founder of the website OccupyWallSt.

MR. MARC FISHERAnd you have been busy with promoting these protests and, along the way, have realized that the word that you were trying to get out by email is not exactly getting out. Is that right?

MS. JUSTINE TUNNEYThat's correct.

FISHERAnd so how -- what was being blocked, and how did this come to your attention?

TUNNEYThis came to my attention through some Internet users who were paying attention to this, and they were trying to send emails about our website to let their friends know about OccupyWallSt and what's happening with corporate greed and corruption. And they soon discovered that Yahoo! was just completely blocking any emails relating to us.

FISHERAnd so was it your sense that this was something that Yahoo! as a company was doing, or that individuals were complaining that this was spam or that this was material they didn't want?

TUNNEYWell, one problem with this is it's really quite impossible for us to have a completely rational discussion because Yahoo! is not transparent about their email policies. So all we can really do is guess. Now, what Yahoo! has done -- he way I see it is there are two possible options. They seem to be pointing the finger at us, accusing us of being spammers.

TUNNEYI don't know why they're doing that because I've checked over 100 spam block lists. And we don't appear on any of them with our mail server. When companies are accused of spamming, normally, there are proper channels that Internet companies are supposed to follow. We have our information list from public databases that they can use to report abuse.

TUNNEYYahoo! did not do this. This means, in my opinion, that Yahoo! is either incompetent as an email provider, or they're censoring legitimate political content.

FISHERAnd so when you were sending out these emails, are you sending them to people who are already subscribed to one cause or another that you're familiar with? Or are you just sending them out randomly the way a commercial spammer might?

TUNNEYWe personally do not do any email marketing. Others may do it on our behalf. And that's not something we can control.

FISHEROkay. So have you had direct contact with Yahoo!?

TUNNEYYahoo! has not directly contacted us. When word came out about the censorship, many people on the Internet raised a huge, like, fuss in the media about this. And Yahoo! quickly responded through Twitter.

FISHEROkay. And, speaking of Twitter, I gather you've had some difficulties with Twitter as well. There's been some accusations that Twitter was blocking OccupyWallSt from trending as the protest was getting underway. Is there evidence that you were indeed trending, and this was not reflected by Twitter?

TUNNEYPeople have suspected Yahoo!, as well as several other Internet companies I'd rather not name at this time. We're still collecting evidence, and I assure you that we take censorship of our political message against Wall Street very seriously.

FISHERWhat makes you think that it's censorship rather than, as you've suggested earlier, perhaps incompetence or simply some of the recipients saying, you know, I don't want to get this stuff, and I'm calling this spam, even if Yahoo! doesn't?

TUNNEYWell, one of the reasons I suspect that it might be political censorship is, look at the mass media blackout, look at other things. Our message is very threatening to the powers that the 1 percent holds over the 99 percent of this population. It's very -- it's a very real possibility that they do not want the message, the dialogue we are having to get out to the public, and it would not surprise me one bit if they were taking extra legal measures to do this.

FISHERDeclan McCullagh, chief political correspondent for CNETnews, how much of this rings true to you? I mean, obviously, when Justine Tunney talks about a media blackout, that clearly doesn't exist. I've been reading about these protests all over the place. But does the bit about censorship ring true to you in any way?

MR. DECLAN MCCULLAGHNot really. And here's why. I've been on the Internet since 1988, so I'm approaching old-timer status. And, over the decades, I've seen lots and lots of companies and individuals and groups say, oh, we've been censored, we've been filtered because of our political content or because of the content of our message.

MR. DECLAN MCCULLAGHAnd when you look at this, you -- and look at and actually delve into the details -- and we don't have Yahoo! here, so we don't -- we can't delve into the details right here. But you end up finding that there are legitimate explanations. Yahoo! is generally not in the business of censoring groups. In fact, they're in the businesses of providing free email services and free Web hosting services and free chat services, so people can actually communicate.

MR. DECLAN MCCULLAGHThey're in the communications business, not the censorship business. And so I'm at a loss to see why we -- and Justine jumps immediately to this is censorship as opposed to maybe there's a misconfigured spam filter or maybe we chose -- maybe Justine chose a Web host or email service that is on a blacklist or maybe has been viewed as a spammy type of service before. It's really fact-specific here.

FISHERAnd, Emma Llanso, policy counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, have you seen cases where a major provider, such as Yahoo!, has evidently intentionally blocked traffic because of its content?

MS. EMMA LLANSONot -- I mean, because of its content, that's a tough question to parse. There -- many online service providers do a lot of this kind of spam filtering and filtering against sites that propagate malware. So there's a lot of this going on, but, you know, spam is a big issue for both for users who are annoyed by receiving it and also by -- for the networks who are transmitting communications because it's just a huge burden on the network.

MS. EMMA LLANSOSo -- I mean, the idea of an email provider, you know, filtering out spam messages, it's something that every major email provider does. And it's unfortunate that, you know, OccupyWallSt got caught up in this, particularly as you're trying to organize a political protest. Getting out a timely message to lots of people is very important.

MS. EMMA LLANSOIt sounds like something about how people were sending out this message or, as Declan was saying, you know, where the site was hosted, tripped something in Yahoo!'s filters, and an automated process started blocking these emails. Once -- the important thing in these kinds of automated processes is for there to be, you know, a clear way for users to appeal this sort of automatic decision for the operator of OccupyWallSt.org to contact Yahoo! and say we found out this is going on.

MS. EMMA LLANSOWe're clearly not a spam site. You shouldn't be blocking us. I -- it sounds like, you know, once Yahoo! heard about this, either from the organizers themselves or through the human cry on Twitter and on various blogs and things, they were able to look at the site and get it out of the -- have it stopped being filtered.

MS. EMMA LLANSOBut it's really important for various online service providers, like Yahoo!, like any, you know, major content provider, to give their users an idea of how they can appeal these kinds of decisions.

FISHERAnd then, I guess, to not just to apologize but to resolve the issue quickly, in this case apparently Yahoo! took 24 hours to resolve the issue after issuing the public apology. You can join our conversation by calling 1-800-433-8850. Do you expect Google and other search results to be completely unbiased by advertising or other company interests?

FISHERDo you think Internet companies, whether email or other service providers, should be allowed to block content or emails? And have you ever looked into your email provider's policies? Give us a call, 1-800-433-8850. Or email us at kojo, K-O-J-O, @wamu.org. You can also tweet us on this Tech Tuesday, @kojoshow. Use the hashtag Tech Tuesday.

FISHERAnd I should note that we did ask Yahoo! for some comment or explanation of what happened with the Wall Street -- OccupyWallSt protest, and they did not respond to our request. Declan McCullagh, are there cases where -- obviously, as you said earlier, the motive that these companies have is to make money, therefore they want traffic against which they can sell advertising.

FISHERAnd is it generally fair to assume that they want traffic no matter what it is? Or are there kinds of content that make them nervous, or that they think are not good for their business?

MCCULLAGHThat's an interesting point. And it came up, was one of the first questions that Google's Eric Schmidt was asked at the hearing before the Senate antitrust panel last week. And he was accused of maximizing profits. And he said, well, actually, Google is a different company. We do what's best for our users, even if that doesn't necessarily mean we maximize profits, a little bit of Craigslist maybe.

MCCULLAGHThere's -- and so, do companies make decisions about what kind of content they will host? Yes, in some cases. The law makes that decision for them. Child pornography, obscenity, these are things that companies are not legally allowed to host. There is a 1996 federal law, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, that, in general, makes companies not responsible for what their users post.

MCCULLAGHAnd so if you're Yahoo! and you're running a discussion board, or you're Google or Microsoft and you're running one, or Craigslist, you're not liable if someone posts something defamatory on there, et cetera. So, in general, companies do make some content decisions within the bounds of what they are allowed to do by the law.

MCCULLAGHBut, in my experience -- and I'm out here in Silicon Valley, and I spend a lot of time talking to Yahoo! and Google and the other -- these other companies, Facebook, Twitter. And they tend to be pretty committed to free speech. They may not go as far as you might like. But when there's a question of whether to allow this or not, they tend to say, okay, we'll let it happen.

FISHEROkay. Justine Tunney, from OccupyWallSt, are things now resolved with Yahoo!? Is the email moving through as you would want it to?

TUNNEYRight now, it appears that Yahoo! has ceased any censorship. And I also wanted to reiterate the facts that we are not accusing Yahoo! of censoring us. This is entirely impossible to make such a judgment because we are not -- they are not entirely open about how they handle these sorts of issues.

FISHEROkay. But you do have -- you, a couple of times, mentioned censorship. You do have the impression that some censorship is going on?

TUNNEYI believe that's a possibility.

FISHERI see. And how much longer are the protests planned to continue?

TUNNEYRight now, these protests are planned to continue indefinitely. We want this to spread around the country. We want to see people organizing in their local communities against the corruption that we see every day.

FISHEROkay. Well, thanks very much for joining us, Justine Tunney from the website OccupyWallSt. Emma Llanso, Yahoo! says that they didn't intentionally block any emails. But if Yahoo! or Twitter were to choose to block content about a particular website or protest, that's legal for them to do?

LLANSOThat is legal for them to do. Yes, the law that -- excuse me -- the law that Declan was talking about that protects intermediaries, these online service providers that, you know, host content, provide services like email service, basically any of the entities that stand in between two users communicating, they are protected from legal liability for the content that their users post.

LLANSOSo they won't be -- you know, Twitter won't be charged with defamation if I tweet something defamatory about you. But they're also protected from liability for any actions they take to take down or block or filter content. And this allows sites and services to, you know, set terms of service, have content policies that say, you know, we allow a broad range of content, but not hate speech.

LLANSOOr we allow a broad range of content, but not discussion about a particular issue. That is -- they're, you know, allowed to do this under U.S. law and the...

FISHEROkay. Let's go to Myra in Alexandria. Myra, it's your turn.

MYRAYes. I'm a Yahoo! user as far as email is concerned, and they had a message to users that they were "upgrading" their service so that their Internet experience would be more relevant to them. And when I looked at the privacy policy, there were just pages and pages that were going back and forth. And it came down to the fact that they were able to read your email. They were able to follow where you went and track you.

MYRAAnd I was really upset about that. I'm sort of hooked to Yahoo! because I, unfortunately, use their filing system to file the emails that I wanted to save. But I'm thinking of a way of getting out of that because I really -- I do believe that they are censoring because some of the political emails that I get are put in the spam.

FISHEROkay.

MYRAAnd I'm very angry about it.

FISHEROkay. And so you believe that they should essentially just let everything go through, regardless of content?

MYRAYes. And I do resent them tracking what I do. I no longer use Yahoo! as a search engine. But it is clear that they are tracking what comes in my email, just because of the ads that do appear on the site. I get the free Yahoo! service.

FISHERAnd, Declan McCullagh, I mean, as I understand it, every company on the Web tracks what you do. What are they looking for?

MCCULLAGHMore or less. Yes. Well, sorry.

MYRAUndoubtedly, to be able to sell you something, but this is going a little bit over the top in terms of central...

FISHEROkay. All right, let's let Declan give a response. Go ahead.

MCCULLAGHCompanies do keep track of what users are doing to different extents. Yahoo! does reserve the right to read your email because it can't filter out spam and viruses without that. Gmail does the same thing -- Google's email service, that is -- and they also throw pads next to it. And so what I do myself, and what I sometimes recommend people do if they're worried about this, is use one browser for email -- Safari, Chrome, Firefox. You've got lots of options.

MCCULLAGHAnd then stay logged in, and you can use all your custom preferences features. And then use a different browser that does not allow cookies to be set for Web searching and things like that. So one browser has low privacy settings and another browser has high privacy settings, and that's one way to protect yourself if you're worried about this.

MCCULLAGHI mean, the news came out in the last few days that Facebook keeps track of when you go to websites that have that little Facebook icon, like, click here to like. They keep track of you, even if you're not logged in. Well, if you use a different web browser, then you don't have that problem.

FISHEROkay. When we come back, why Google was being grilled by the Senate this past week. That's coming up after a short break on Tech Tuesday. Stay tuned.

FISHERWelcome back. I'm Marc Fisher of The Washington Post, sitting in for Kojo Nnamdi. And we are talking on this Tech Tuesday with Emma Llanso, policy counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, and Declan McCullagh, chief political correspondent for CNET News.

FISHERAnd before the break, we were talking about a caller's concern that Yahoo! and other email providers are reading your emails in an effort to watch out for malware and basically protect the system. And, Emma Llanso, maybe you could talk a little bit about what -- I mean, this does not mean that human beings are reading your emails at all.

LLANSONo. No. Those -- when we talk about read -- an email provider reading or scanning your email, that's really an automated process. They're looking for, you know, links to malware sites, you know, cues for -- that something is spam or looking at sort of context cues for what kinds of ads to serve you. So it's not that -- I mean, email providers process millions and millions of emails a day.

LLANSOThey absolutely just don't have the capacity for a person to sit there and look over, you know, 1,000 emails, let alone all of the emails.

FISHERSo the kinds of precautions that Declan McCullagh was talking about before the break -- using different browsers and setting different privacy settings -- is that an overabundance of caution? Or is there good reason for people to do that?

LLANSONo. I mean, if you -- I think if you're worried about being tracked around the Web, if you're worried about tracking cookies being placed on your browser, just not being sure sort of what companies are collecting what kind of information about you, then what Declan is talking about is, I mean, it's definitely something a more cautious person does than your average Internet user.

LLANSOBut it is a way to kind of remind yourself that, you know, this is -- companies have a fair bit of leeway in terms of what they can and can't do, placing cookies or remembering search history or something.

LLANSOAnd if you remind yourself that you want to put, you know, particular settings, or can Google remember my search terms, what accounts am I logged into in one browser and then have a kind of more freeform browser that you can just feel comfortable doing anything in, then, you know, that's certainly one way users can help protect their own privacy.

FISHERWell, what kinds of disclosure do you think Internet services should provide to you? Do you ever read those forms that you click, accept, on before moving on into a new service on the Web? Our number is 1-800-433-8850. Or you can tweet us, @kojoshow. Use the hashtag Tech Tuesday. And, Declan, last week, we saw Google's chairman Eric Schmidt being grilled by a Senate antitrust panel.

FISHERAnd what are the senators upset about? What is Google accused of?

MCCULLAGHWell, it's -- that was kind of interesting. It's following, in some ways, the Microsoft antitrust case that I covered when I was living in Washington, D.C., and in some ways, it's not. I think Google maybe is a bit more savvy about antitrust than Microsoft was. But, in general, Google is being accused of using its market power in its very profitable search engine to fund other businesses, to fund things like local search that might compete with Yelp.

MCCULLAGHAnd Yelp doesn't like that. And Yelp's co-founder and CEO was there testifying as well. And so it's not clear that these allegations rise to the level of antitrust violations, but this is something that large companies tend to get subjected to once they become large enough. I mean, how many companies the size of Google and Microsoft haven't gone through this, the scrutiny? It's difficult to know what's going to happen.

MCCULLAGHThere are active investigations in Europe. And the FTC is conducting one in terms of Google and whether it's engaged in an anticompetitive behavior. These investigations are being egged on by Google's competitors. I mean, Microsoft, AT&T, Comcast are certainly happy to say, hey, look over there. You might find evidence of alleged wrongdoing.

FISHERBut why is it wrongdoing? Why is it even morally wrong for a company whose purpose is to win eyeballs so that they can sell ads? Why is it wrong for them to kind of cook the book so that they -- their own products show up much more prominently than anyone else's? After all, you're going to their site.

FISHERWhy wouldn't you expect that -- just as you go into Macy's, you see ads for Macy's products, you don't expect to see ads for a competitor's products. Why would you expect that Google would not cook the books?

MCCULLAGHRight. And you go to Safeway or Whole Foods, and there are the store brands. And maybe those are advertised a bit more prominently, and maybe they're even better. I think that's the point that Google's tried to make all along. If you want to go to Yelp, you can certainly go to Yelp. If you -- and -- but if you come to Google, they say, we're going to provide the best user experience because we want -- we're thinking long term.

MCCULLAGHWe're not just doing something short term maybe to boost our profits a tiny bit and then you end up hating us, and you never use us again. We're in this for the long run. We're not your typical company.

MCCULLAGHTheir prospectus when they were going public, what, five years ago, said explicitly this -- and the founders have enough control of the company that I think they can make this stick -- that we're going to try to do what's best for our users, and sometimes we think our product is actually best. And so why can't we put that at the top? And if you don't like that, well, you can go to Bing. I mean, it's just one click away.

MCCULLAGHIt's not like the Microsoft operating system monopoly, which is if you want to switch operating systems, you might have to spend thousands of dollars on new software and learn everything new again. Here, it's just you go to Bing or search.Yahoo!.com.

FISHERAnd, Emma Llanso, is there, I mean, is this solely users, perhaps, unfairly expecting that Google is going to be this dispassionate provider, more or less like a dictionary or an encyclopedia?

LLANSORight. I do think that users kind of -- can sometimes forget what it is that they're actually getting when they get search results. It's Google presenting you a list of what Google thinks is relevant to you, or Bing saying, this is what Bing thinks is relevant to you. As Declan was saying, you know, Google might think its own services are definitely the most relevant things.

LLANSOBut, in any case, it's all based on, you know, Google's opinion enshrined in the algorithm that you hear talked about, about what is relevant related to a particular search term and, as we move toward more particular -- or more personalization, relevant to a particular user. So, you know, search is inherently biased, just in the sense that it's a series of decisions guiding toward a particular set of results.

LLANSOBut there's no real, you know, platonic ideal of a list of search results to which all search engines should aspire. It's different kinds of search engines coming up with different -- putting different emphasis on different sites and presenting that list.

FISHERSo you don't see an antitrust issue here?

LLANSOThe antitrust issues, I'm not sure -- you know, as Declan says, we'll have to see if there's anything to that.

FISHEROkay. Let's go to Larissa (sp?) in Washington. Larissa, it's your turn.

LARISSAHi. Thank you for taking my call. I would like to say that after 9/11 the United States -- I grew up in the Soviet Union. And the United States reminds me more and more of the Soviet Union. And there was a Russian writer, Yevgeny Zamyatin, who wrote a novel, which is titled "We." And it shows a country of the future. It was written in the '20s.

LARISSAAnd America reminds me of that futuristic country where the government knows everything about everybody. And it's so disappointing.

FISHERWell, what makes you think the government is knowing these -- I mean, we've been talking about these companies, such as Google and Yahoo! that...

LARISSAWell, Google and Yahoo! will give the -- all the information to the government.

FISHERWhy would they do that?

LARISSAAnd besides, you know, we all use credit cards, and they know where we go, what we buy, what we wear, what we read. Everything is well-known.

FISHERWell, I suppose if you grew up in Soviet Union that you might have a government-centric view of the world. But, Declan, do you think that Americans are becoming more concerned about privacy and about whether corporate or governmental authorities are able to collect too much information about them?

MCCULLAGHI think it's reasonable, as the caller said, to also look at government privacy. If the government invades your privacy, you might end up in prison or worse. And if companies invade your privacy, what, you're going to see, Viagra ads or something like that? I mean, it's really -- there's -- it really becomes much more serious when the government does it.

MCCULLAGHAnd, though, in the last 10 years I've been writing a lot about this, for the 9/11 10th year anniversary, for CNET -- you can see the articles at news.com -- and you've seen this expansion of the surveillance state. The Washington Post, your employer, has also done a very good job of looking at how the secret government has expanded. It was a great series.

MCCULLAGHAnd so -- but I would disagree with the caller on one point. And that is that these companies are going to turn over data to the federal government just for the asking. And first, in some cases, it's illegal under federal law for them to do this. But, second, we also have actual court cases in which they fought off the government. Google did that when the Justice Department came to them looking for search results that was litigated in San Jose.

MCCULLAGHLet's see, Yahoo! did this last year when Colorado -- in Colorado when the DOJ went after them. Amazon did this in the Carolinas. Twitter is fighting right now in Alexandria against a DOJ request for information regarding WikiLeaks. And so these -- I'm not saying these companies are perfect. I think they should do a better job of communicating when they're approached by the government, et cetera, et cetera.

MCCULLAGHBut, in general, those four companies and a few others have done -- have actually fought the government when they didn't have to. They could have just quietly complied.

FISHERAnd, Emma, I mean, I saw firsthand just how difficult it is to squeeze any information out of one of these Internet companies when the -- for instance, going to the government when a Facebook had information about a burglar who burglarized my house, and they had the name and address and everything.

FISHERAnd they were unwilling to provide that information to the police without going through a massive legal process that took a month, by which time the burglar was long since gone. So it seems to me that these companies are very resistant, as Declan said, to providing any information to the government. Is the greater threat to people's privacy and well-being from these corporate interests or from the government? Which is more intrusive, really, in our lives?

LLANSOWell, I mean, in terms of the possible consequences, clearly, you know, government requests for information, whether they're in the U.S. or happening in, you know, countries around the world where many of these U.S. companies have a strong presence, those can have significant impacts on people's very freedom, or, if you're, you know, talking about political dissidents around the world, you know, effect on their lives.

LLANSOSo it's -- you know, we're glad to see companies that do have so much information about so many of their users like social networking sites, like Facebook or Google, that has information from so many different services. We're glad to see them sticking by, you know, requiring government to go through the due process requirements for obtaining information and not just cooperating with the government and handing it over whenever government asks.

LLANSOThis can be a challenging issue for companies as they're looking -- as they're operating in various countries. You know, different nations around the world don't have the same kinds of due process protections about government request for information. But, you know, it is for companies to draw the lines at, no, we're not just going to cooperate and hand over. We're going to require some kind of legal process. It's --, you know, it's more comforting.

FISHEROkay. Let's go to Mark in Silver Spring. Mark, it's your turn.

MARKYes. I remember a few years ago there was a program on --- that I was listening to on NPR about how much spam we were all getting. And the service providers -- I mean, I've seen my own -- I have a Google account, and I have a Yahoo! account. And my own spam has gone down tremendously. And the kinds of technologies that they have introduced, from things like auto-filling search results based on what I've done, have made my life better.

MARKAnd they're giving us, essentially, free accounts just so that they can find out what we're interested in and give us more of that. And so, I guess, all of this -- this sounds, like, to me, like a lot of paranoia that's entering into this. And I don't think that these companies are -- have ill intentions at all. They're not really looking -- as far as I can tell, they're looking to provide a service to me and hopefully make a profit.

MARKAnd that's -- you know, that's their right to do so. They've given me a wonderful service.

FISHERDeclan McCullagh, does that strike you as the more typical American attitude toward these companies?

MCCULLAGHI think that's right. I mean, we are more of an entrepreneurial country than, say, Europe. I just got back a few days ago from spending a few weeks in Berlin and Amsterdam. And we aren't as suspicious of large companies. They can certainly be up to some mischief, as we have seen in the financial crisis and in banking.

MCCULLAGHBut in terms of the technology space, I mean, these are companies that are trying to get you to use their products, and they're providing them for free. We can slap more regulations on them. A lot of these have been proposed. Or we can have more laws. We could -- but what happens is that we can make it more expensive to produce the service, and so then you have to start charging.

MCCULLAGHImagine if you were charged for Google or Yahoo! mail, or, worse, you get charged for Google or Bing searches. And this is the argument that some of these companies are starting to make when you have members of Congress say, hey, let's come up with this privacy law. Well, privacy sounds good. But if you actually look at the details, it's a collection -- it's a restriction on data collection and use practices. And, well, someone has to pay for this.

MCCULLAGHIf advertising doesn't, what will? And that's why, I think, the caller's right. In the U.S., we don't have -- we like free services, and we're willing to look at ads to see them. This is what cable television's about, right?

FISHERRight. Well, you can join our conversation about transparency on the Internet and Google and Yahoo! and whether they are indeed evil at 1-800-433-8850, or tweet us @kojoshow with the hash tag Tech Tuesday. You're listening to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show." I'm Marc Fisher, sitting in for Kojo. And we'll continue in a moment. Please stay with us.

FISHERWelcome back. I'm Marc Fisher of The Washington Post, sitting in for Kojo Nnamdi. And we are talking about transparency on the Web and accusations against Google and Yahoo! about their practices with Emma Llanso, policy counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, and Declan McCullagh, chief political correspondent for CNET News, and, Declan, we were talking just before the break.

FISHERAnd every caller, so far, has talked about themselves as the customers of Yahoo! and Google and the like. But isn't that really kind of a misperception that we all have? We are not really the customers, are we? We're the content against which they sell advertising. And the advertisers are their real customers. Isn't that the case?

MCCULLAGHIt's a little of both. There's -- if you look at this in just an economic analysis, I think you have a point. I mean, you produce services, and then the actual money flows into a relationship from the advertisers. But in reality, I think the issue's a bit more nuanced than that.

MCCULLAGHAnd if you focus just on the advertisers without trying to create the best search engine or the best email service or the best local search service or the best social network, then you lose the customers. And so in the short term you're right. In the long term, all of these companies, including Facebook and Twitter, want to have long-term relationships with you. They want their service to be the one you use.

MCCULLAGHAnd so that means a lot of focus on customers as well. If you look at the number of people at these companies that are focused on advertising versus actually improving the service for customers or users, if you prefer, there's no comparison. I mean, look at how many ads you see on Twitter, very few.

FISHERAll right. And, Emma, we have a comment posted on our website from Mike, who says, "Free services are not free. When one uses a so-called free service, one becomes the product that is then sold to advertisers. If you don't want to be the product, don't watch free TV, don't use free e-mail, and don't use free search engines. These companies are in business to make money, and one does not need to aid and abet them. But if you do, understand the trade-off."

FISHERIs that too reductionist a view?

LLANSOI think that might be. Yes. It's really the case that, you know, online platforms for speech and advertising and our, you know -- our experience of free speech online all really exist in this symbiotic relationship. You know, we have platforms to, you know, run our own blogs or upload video to YouTube or any of the many different ways that we use to communicate with each other online.

LLANSOThey're almost entirely run by private companies, private companies who have options for how to do their business and can either charge their users, which hasn't proved very successful in most areas of online services, or they can use advertising. So, I mean, it is a trade-off, and, I think, it's good for users to be aware that there are at least three parties in their Internet transactions. You know, there's the service provider.

LLANSOThey're entering into, you know, abide in my terms of service with, there's their speech, their content, whatever they want to put up, and then there's the advertiser who's sort of providing the financial underpinning for all of this.

FISHERAnd, given that relationship, which is kind of a traditional one, the commenter talked about free TV. It's essentially the same model. Is it fair to assume that the government will, over time, move more toward the kind of regulation that we've seen in the broadcast arena than the really wide open kind of business that has been permitted on the Internet?

LLANSOWell, not in terms of content regulation on the Internet, I don't think. There was the Supreme Court case in 1997, Reno v. ACLU that established that the Internet is different from broadcasts. The speech online receives full First Amendment protection, and the government is very limited in terms of what it can do to regulate content online.

LLANSOWe have just seen the FCC put out net neutrality regulations, published those draft regulations, now officially published them in the federal register. And those are really aimed at keeping the conduits allowing users to access the Internet, to keep them non-discriminatory.

LLANSOSo they're really targeted at the online access providers, your broadband providers, Verizon and Comcast, making sure that when they provide Internet service to a person, they're providing kind of an open pipe, and the user can decide what it is that they do or what kinds of products, what kind of services, what content they want to see.

LLANSOIt's up to the user, keeping that choice on the user side, and not allowing these, you know, companies that have a huge amount of control over how bits are being transmitted across the Internet from favoring their own content or services.

FISHERLet's go to Dave in Gettysburg, Pa. Dave, you're on the air.

DAVEHey, how are you doing today?

FISHERGreat, thanks.

DAVEAll right. I just wanted to -- I agree with (unintelligible) to some extent other than to when it interferes with news and politics, and especially politics. I'm a YouTube partner, and I have a blogs. I do videos. About two months ago, I did a video just kind of explaining how Google might be a good way to look at a poll result just based on the number of results that you got and how it actually went against what the media says.

DAVEThe differences were pretty startling. Ron Paul actually comes in first place by a long shot. But a month later, I did kind of the same video, and the results were completely different. This is all just very recent. Ron Paul is way back at the pack. Other people changed. And what this was a search of was a search of the last year in everything on the Web.

DAVESo, you know, essentially, I see it as manipulation because your results don't go from hundred of thousands to billions essentially overnight. It just doesn't work that way.

FISHERDeclan McCullagh, does this ring true at all to you?

MCCULLAGHWell, I think that the caller is right to some extent, and that is that Ron Paul does better in polls than some media coverage would suggest. There is -- and so I don't think that he's always been treated fairly. At the same time, if you actually look at the results of, say, the 2008 primaries, I mean, he was getting something like 10 to 15 percent in his best states.

MCCULLAGHAnd so, even among Republican primary voters, Ron Paul supporters have an online presence that's greater than their actual number. And so, maybe -- this is just a speculation. But early in the election season -- early in this election season, that is, you might have had a lot of noise about Ron Paul. And then, as some other candidates entered the race, their supporters made even more noise and made even more blog post entries and discussions online.

MCCULLAGHAnd so then, over time, that one year in the past search shows less Ron Paul appearances because he's kind of getting squeezed out by some of the other candidates. This is just a suspicion, though. I haven't done those searches myself.

FISHERYeah, I would think that if Google were re-jiggering its algorithms to compete, say, with Twitter, that they would very much want whatever was trending in the moment to pop up a lot higher. And then if you checked back into the same search some time later, you wouldn't see those same hot topic kind of results as quickly.

MCCULLAGHI mean, here's one other point. There's -- if you look at the reception that the various candidates got at Google, which became a pilgrimage in the last presidential election, Obama probably did the best. But it was -- Ron Paul's a very close second. Out here, a lot of Google engineers tend to be libertarian-leaning. I wrote a story about the Google engineers who quit their job, went to New Hampshire and campaigned for Ron Paul.

MCCULLAGHSo this fellow has a very strong following inside the Googleplex out here in Mountain View. So, I don't know -- that's not dispositive...

FISHERRight.

MCCULLAGH...but it provides a bit of a hint about what's happening.

FISHERInteresting. Emma Llanso, we have an e-mail from Bonnie in Manassas, who says the corporations have already turned over information to the government, that telecom providers turned over information to the Bush administration after 9/11. She quotes a story from USA Today saying that the National Security Agency made clear that it was willing to pay for the cooperation, and that AT&T, among other companies, agreed to help the NSA.

FISHERAre you seeing -- was that specific to the moments after 9/11? Or is it part of a larger pattern?

LLANSOWell, I mean, the -- you know, the Patriot Act being passed right after 9/11 definitely has concerning provisions in there about when the government can just make a demand without having to go through a process to get information from communications providers.

LLANSOAnd, you know, that's something that every so often Patriot comes up for reauthorization, and there's activity to try to reform that and get those kinds of provisions out that have not yet been successful. Then there's -- we also have the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which puts some other limits on what the government can and can't do in terms of getting access to communications of yours that are stored in, you know, electronic and digital media.

LLANSOBut that law was passed almost 25 years ago and hasn't been updated since. So, you know, there are definitely -- we could use a lot of legal reform in terms of setting out current, contemporary baselines for what kind of access government does have to your communications.

FISHERAnd stepping back again to those Google hearings from last week, typically, when you have hearings like that, they are followed in fairly quick order by some call for additional regulation. Do you see that in the offing? Is this a first step toward tighter regulation around those kinds of content questions?

LLANSOI mean, I haven't heard of any particular bills coming up on the Hill about Google search or the search kind of question specifically. I think it would be a difficult type of bill to draft because it's not clear what exactly the government would be reviewing. Would they be...

FISHERWhat problem they're trying to fix.

LLANSORight, right. Would they be digging into Google's algorithm, analyzing it to make sure it was fair against some kind of standard that itself could run into First Amendment issues of the government deciding what's a fair set of search results versus an unfair set?

FISHERBefore we run out of time, I want to get back to Declan and talk about some work you did last spring when you analyzed the changes that Google made to its algorithm. And one major difference you found is that the results are much more localized now. What impact does that have on the kinds of transparency issues that we've been talking about?

MCCULLAGHRight. Google treats the details of its algorithm as kind of a secret sauce or secret recipe, like the formula for Coca-Cola. And the reason they do that is not because they want to keep the rest of us guessing, but because spammers and other people want to game the system and therefore decrease the quality of your search results, would take advantage of this.

MCCULLAGHAnd so they have a lot of, what they call, signals, which could be the quality of the webpage, how many people link to it, how long it's been around. And what happened is that they're always tweaking their algorithm, right? I mean, this is why they have tens of thousands of engineers there. But they made a big change in spring, April of this year, and they called it the Panda Algorithm Change.

MCCULLAGHOr that's at least what it became to be called. And they didn't roll it out right away around the world. It was the U.S. first and then other websites, on the Google.co.uk and so on. So it was this way you could kind of do an AB test, a method you couldn't usually use. And so I did that test with tens of thousands of search results, and I did find that localization played a very big role.

MCCULLAGHIf you do searches in Palo Alto, Calif. on adventure, you'll see the local city website showing, hey, here's local adventure travel opportunities, and you just won't see that somewhere else. And so local is a big one. They also tried to sort of demote lower quality content. People might get paid 10 cents an article, and the quality is not nearly as good as what you might find at more curated sites.

MCCULLAGHAnd so it's an interesting process. But it's something that they keep close to the chest. They didn't want to talk to me very much about this.

FISHERAnd very quickly, Emma Llanso, given that results are localized like this and therefore different depending on where you are and way different for every single user, is it then even possible to spot whatever bias there might be in a search result?

LLANSORight. Again, we're back to the point where, you know, one person's bias is another person's relevant search.

FISHERRight.

LLANSOIt's, you know, certainly biased against you as a resident of Washington, D.C. versus Washington State, what kinds of results you get. And if that, you know, the service that Google is providing, this kind of tailored personally relevant service, then users should just be aware that that's what they're getting, and they're not getting some kind of completely neutral listing of websites that may not actually exist.

FISHERWell, once again, the bottom line appears to be buyer beware or user beware 'cause we're not paying for anything since these are all free products. Well, thanks very much, my guests, Emma Llanso, policy counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, and Declan McCullagh, chief political correspondent for CNET News.

FISHEREarlier in the hour we spoke with Justine Tunney, founder of the website OccupyWallSt. I'm Marc Fisher sitting on "The Kojo Nnamdi Show." Thanks very much for listening.