14 DAY TRIAL // This past weekend it was revealed that a man was arrested for owning child pornography images, following a tip from Google.
How did this come to be? Well, the company, as you may know, scans emails to better target advertising. The process is done after the message is sent, when it reaches the destination and when it is stored in the cloud.
If you have a Gmail account, you automatically accept this, since the company put it in writing in its Terms and Services, although it wasn’t exactly a secret that Google was scanning email contents even before the change.
Now, when you think about this, you shouldn’t imagine that someone leafs through the millions of emails, reads them, checks out the attachments and signals the authorities when you do something bad. The company has an automated system set in place, where keywords pop up and are then gathered up to create a sort of profile which includes the things you like.
The same goes for images that are attached to these emails going through Google’s servers. We all know that Google has a pretty advanced technology at hand to recognize photographs. You have surely tested it out when you asked Google to look for a certain image for you and it displayed similar pictures. One of its most awesome features, however, is the ability to tell you who an individual is based on said pictures. This, of course, works better for celebrities who are everywhere anyway, but even so, it’s a powerful piece of tech.
That being said, many have wondered following the news whether or not Google was right to take such steps. After all, the man’s emails were private and he alone should have had access to their content, which makes this a matter of privacy.
But for Google, it seems that child safety is more important than privacy. Furthermore, Google has never hidden the fact that it has been working towards eradicating child pornography. The company has been doing this for the past eight years and has even been forced to do it by the British authorities, in the hopes that this kind of sick content could never be found online.
Google has a whole department working to see this through, and the amount of content they must go through every day cannot be easy to stomach.
“We can do a lot to ensure it’s not available online—and that when people try to share this disgusting content they are caught and prosecuted,” said Jacquelline Fuller, director of Google Giving, in a blog post published a while back.
And that’s exactly what Google is doing here – trying to make the world safer for the children living in it and to make sure that those responsible for abusing them are put behind bars.
While the measure was controversial due to the fact that Google basically went through the man’s emails, even the biggest defenders of online privacy should be able to appreciate the results of Google’s meddling.
The topic, however, is part of a larger discussion about whether or not Google should be put in charge of policing the Internet. Some 90 percent of Internet users use Search and there are millions upon millions of people using its other services, including Gmail, which gives the company plenty of room to keep an eye on things.
Google has shown numerous times over that it does not enjoy the role, however. While fighting against child abuse is a topic that Google has chosen to actively participate in, the company has been reluctant to step in when it came to several other problems, including online piracy (even though Hollywood would like nothing more and is constantly unhappy with how Google handles millions of DMCAs).
The Internet giant surely has the power to keep an eye on the Internet, at least in a manner, but it really doesn’t want to because moral values are different across the world, and so are people’s preferences. We are all different and Google wants to make sure we all get whatever content we desire, not because it condones whatever we choose, but because the Internet must be free as much as possible.
When it comes to child pornography, however, Google draws the line and so should the entire world, alongside everything that’s related to child abuse. Although this is a thorny subject because of the privacy aspect, it’s a good thing Google tipped off the police after finding the abusive content in the man's email.