Google’s Role In Woodland Child Pornography Arrest Raises Privacy Concerns

Re:Google’s Role In Woodland Child Pornography Arrest Raises... by kanamekun on Sunday November 24, 2013 @02:14PM (#6790651)

According to US law, any online service provider that receives actual knowledge that child porn exists on their services is required by law to report it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children... or face a fine of $150k for a first offense, or $300k for subsequent offenses:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2258A

To my knowledge, Google wasn't required to check its hosted files for specific image hashes: "Nothing in this section shall be construed to require an electronic communication service provider or a remote computing service provider to— (1) monitor any user, subscriber, or customer of that provider; (2) monitor the content of any communication of any person described in paragraph (1); or (3) affirmatively seek facts or circumstances described in sections (a) and (b)."

But once they did, they were required to report the results. Any privacy concerns are waived as an "[exception] for disclosure of communications" as part of 18 USC § 2702: "Voluntary disclosure of customer communications or records". http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2702

It's not surprising that Google is affirmatively scanning its servers for child porn, as they have a long history of providing assistance to NCMEC:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/building-software-too...

http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2012/01/crowdsourcing...

"$1 Million from Google to Fight Child Sexual Exploitation Received by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children" http://www.missingkids.com/news/page/4898

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Re:Google’s Role In Woodland Child Pornography Arrest Raises... by mtgx on Sunday November 24, 2013 @02:31PM (#6790730)

The question is what else are they scanning for, to give to the FBI/police.

I remember Facebook announced a while ago that it would scan its Facebook chat for "criminal activity", to give the info to the police.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57471570-93/facebook-scans-...

Where is the line drawn? And will we know where it's drawn? Stuff like this makes me trust "cloud computing" less and less. I hope Google and others realize this, before it's too late (for them) to change course.

I can take a guess where this is going, though, if NSA's actions are any indication - there won't be a line anymore, if they (government/corporations) are left alone to continue with stuff like this. Every single crime, no matter how small and insignificant, will be reported to the police, thanks to the mass surveillance capabilities of the alliance between NSA/government and corporations. After all, when "safety" is the ultimate goal, above all else, that outcome is all but inevitable.

It's already started:

http://falkvinge.net/2013/11/24/nsa-mass-surveillance-has-al...

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Re:Google’s Role In Woodland Child Pornography Arrest Raises... by alfiejohn_ on Sunday November 24, 2013 @03:31PM (#6790981)

This isn't where the line was crossed. Far from it. Even though eavesdropping on the everyday citizen is a pretty damning thing to do, in their eyes it isn't illegal so they can't understand why everyone is complaining.

The line was crossed a long time ago when the Law was treated as an opinion. This cultivated a "let's see what we can get away with" attitude which is now starting to unfold before the world stage.

For more info, see:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Yoo

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