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Dissecting Localized Google Censorship
carpe_noctem writes "Linuxsecurity.com has a link to a rather interesting story regarding Google's use of localized censorship. While not much information is given from the political side of why Google might be censoring information likely to annoy certain governments, it certainly isn't the first time Google has come under fire for censoring results on account of external pressures. Makes one wonder how many pages get filtered out around the world."
Not a government. Who cares if they choose to censor things in order to make their business stronger/more profitable? If they don't censor it, they'll get locked out of those countries or censored by a third party, which is even less likely to be accurate. Fight government censorship, that's the real problem.
Certainly Google is a private company that can do as it damn well pleases. Yet it operates an international scope with several countries having their own laws on censorship that they feel must be obeyed for whatever reason. As long as the government tells people about the censorship, there's less of an argument than when a government claims to respect free speech outright then decieves its own people in practice. Note the author's example of stormfront.org, a site that would test the boundaries between free speech and incitive speech.
Here in the US we have faced the same problem when Klan or other sites tried to get attention. If there are public decency laws are in place, how is it possible to both follow those laws (regardless of whether we think those laws are just or not) and provide free content? Should a whole country or region get a different search engine result based on its laws? In short, yes. To try and espouse American ideals to the planet doesn't work as the recent UN vote clearly shows. We don't have to agree with them, but they have a right to speak and vote regardless of what we think. Google has a responsibility as a multinational company to obey the laws of the countries it operates in, and given the legal right of people to sue internet companies according to the laws of their own country (Australia has a case like this), they damn well better learn what rules they need to play by.
It is somewhat loathsome that censorship be brought about, especially because the same rights used by the hatemongers to spread their intellectual bile is the same one I use to post here in disagreeance with their thoughts and, occasionally, the politics of the world at large. And anyone in the United States should also be guarding every right they have with vigilance given the blatant thirst for power of our current regime and their willingness to intrude on our rights and lives in the name of "security". Again, we should protect our rights here in the US and ensure that Google does the same by following the laws of other countries.
May the question of free speech and its legality in the face of "terrorism" never turn into a possible threat against the 1st amendment here in the US, lest we have to resort to the 2nd amendment to defend both...
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
are you sure? should i sell all my property, buy an assault rifle, to take up arms against my local government and it's censoring of %P [where %P is being censored locally? ]? or perhaps it's the mindset that allows for widespread agreement with the government [especially in a democracy such as Canada] when it censors? i mean, who would stay in power longer, a 'democratic' government with support of a public who supports censorship, or a 'democratic' government without? perhaps my problem [that the mindset/frame of reference/set of memes in the society which we are discoursing about is outdated, innefficient, pro-censorship, dogmatic, irrational, sadistic, and just plain evil?]
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
There come times when things are no as longer black and white as you would like them to be.
Google's role in society is no longer one of profit, it has become the navigator for millions of people to access free information. With great power comes great responsiblity.
Therefore, as human beings, those who run google have moral and ethical obligations to protect the free flow of information.
It may be legal for them to censor, but it is wrong as it damages the exchange of ideas which promote thought and freedom.
Fight censorship on all fronts.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
on an offtopic side-note about localized censorship, consider textbooks for high-schools. i used to have a neighbor who edited textbooks for a living. to my surprise, most history textbooks come with a basic core, and then about 30% of the material varies from state-to-state, mostly due to political or religious beliefs. this type of silent localized censorship is even more nefarious than Google, i think, especially when occuring in the US.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
The fact that a city successfully lobbied Google to remove a humor page from its index just because it appeared in a search for their city name is just sad. Granted, Google can do whatever the heck it wants with its own data; it's just bad mojo to censor something that was (supposedly) obviously satire. The interesting part in all this is that, having chosen to censor its index, one wonders if Google can remain a "common carrier" (for lack of a better term). I recall (but cannot for the life of me find the link) a case where an ISP was held liable for some objectionable newsgroups they carried because of their history of censoring groups they did not approve of. IIRC, the judge made it a point to say the ISP would not have been liable had they not censored other groups in the past. By chosing to censor information, they lost the right to hide behind a veil of "we're just a conduit".
Again, this comment would be much more informative if I could find the URL for that damn story ;)
Sinepaw.org: Grape Winos
I think that these issues are important. Google is probably the most significant reference work in the world. It's made very fundamental changes in the ways people do research. news.google.com is already one of my main news sites -- I use it all the time.
So I think that these issues are very important.
I'm a huge google fan, both of the site and the people who run it. I think they're doing their best to sort through these issues. Government rules are a reality that has to be dealt with.
The thing that I think that google could be criticized for, in all of this, is a lack of transparency. I think they should explain, in detail, what they're doing and why, and make some effort to listen to people who disagree with their policies.
I'm not saying that they should open it up to a vote, or that they should do things that aren't in their company's best interests. Just that they should listen, and tell us what they're doing.
Google looms large in the world's conciousness, and it's getting bigger all the time. It would be an overstatement to say that leaving something out of google erases the fact from the world in an orwellian sense. But it does seem to me that leaving stuff out does take a step down that road.
I just wish that goggle indicated they were censoring the results with someting like "230 results removed due to government contols". People should know about censorship it shouldn't be hidden. Perhaps even display the match with a black line through the link (i.e. you can't read the link nor click on it but you are aware of what happened).
I understand that google thinks it has to do this. The US government can be pretty nasty regarding things like facilitating child porn. European governments can be nasty about political / religious viewpoints they don't agree with (though not as bad as the US regarding child porn). Non western governments can be far worse. Frankly I wish google had the guts to fight because I think they would win but the very least they can do is not cover up for the government.
Well, get used to it. Besides marketing filtering, governmental filtering, etc...we have very distored views/search results...
Remember using metacrawler, ask jeeves, etc? Google probably does some 'behind the routers' filtering of their own~
I'm not paranoid, and I know 1984 passed a long time ago; but the #1 motivating force in the universe, $$$, can do anything...why should filtering/controlling how one gets info on the web be above the power of $$$?
*yawn*
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."
google has a filter that will remove porn sites from results. the filter can be disabled. also, different parts of the world have different definitions of what qualifies as porn - hence slightly different results by country.
the search queries used would return thousands of porn sites.
did the researchers have this filter enabled and not know it?
The real problem is that they don't inform the users about the censoring. I've taken a look around Google, and so far without luck in finding the information - mayby they censor what they censor..
If Google openly tells the users what they censor, then the users have a choice - and like in China get more and more aware of the conditions they are living under (ok that was a wee bit idealistic).
I just wonder, why _Google_ thinks what they censor should be kept a secret.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I wonder what sites googles censors from the US?
Can we even find out?
Sigs are dangerous coy things
It is both a value and the greatest risk introduced by the advent of the web, that now fringe ideas can be sought out and the relitively few indeviduals who share these ideas can congregate and cooperate to advance their ideals in a society where those ideas are in the extreme minority. In fact, you can now insulate yourself from reality by seeking out nerws sources and those of similar fringe ideoligies, and limiting your world view, by surrounding yourself with those who share your fringe ideals.
This allows the crackpots who were once spread thinly throughout society, to become a meaningful force within modern social styructures.
Google has positioned itself as one of the few gatekeepers between the majority of internet users, and these fringe ideas. It is neither right nor wrong, that the management of google has deemed certain material, not worthy of delivery to users. Google as a corporation has a mission; to deliver the greatest shareholder value. Google management has decided that in order to deliver the greatest value, they must provide results which the greatest number of users, find acceptable, appealing, or otherwise paletteable. They're in this to make money, not as a public service. That's what the Mozilla Directory Project is for.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
And I don't think removing one page to appease the citizens of one village in the UK is that big of a deal.
Schnapple
Not so much for the google-blacklisting info, but for the embedded link to the following news item...
Vigilantes mistake pediatrician for pedophile and attack home
Im still laughing over this one
I have seen attempts to build an anonymous and network on top of the real internet so people can
surfe without risc of disclosing their identity.
What about making a similar P2P like search engine, which works without central control?
We all keep part of the index on our own computers.
We can then censor what is on our own computers, but
noone can censor the whole network.
I am not so upset that Google is caving in to some of these demands. They cannot afford to fight off rich powerful corporations like the Church of Scientology and Microsoft. Even if these lawsuites are spurrious, they simply can't afford to fight all of them. In that regard, we need legislation to allow the quick and efficient dismissal of bullshit lawsuites like this.
Google should be completely transparent if they remove information. They should create a section called "Censored Sites" and list what sites (in text-format) these nazi's have asked them to not link to, with the threat of a lawsuite to back up. This way, everyone knows what draconian nazi's are forcing Google's hand by threatening them with impeding lawsuites. It should be like a news section, and they should post the following:
(1) Who (what corp., country, business, etc) requested what to be removed.
(2) Their letter requesting such.
(3) What Google decided to do about it.
(4) Why they decided to do such.
(5) The address and e-mail of the offending corporation, so we can let them know what we think.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I just heard on the radio that Saddam Hussein has draped our Statue of Liberty in a green burka and you guys are whining about google filtering their results?
That would be John Ashcroft you were thinking of. It's hard to keep the enemies of freedom straight without a scorecard.
Here in the US, they've even gone so far as to remove the St. Patrick's Day logos from the Google main page.
Outrage!
MjM
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
I haven't noticed any censorship on google yet, but their "customer care" is really annoying and stupid for users from Latvia (http://www.lv/).
Major problem. They redirect any request from latvian subnets to google.lv which in fact is located somewhere outside latvia. The problem here is that almost any Internet user in Latvia use proxy to access foreign hosts. For efficiency, we set our browsers to bypass proxy for *.lv URL's. Obviously, google.lv cannot be reached directly. So we have to turn *.lv exclusion off, visit google.lv for the first time, select "google in english" for google.com, select russian or latvian language, turn exclusion on.
Minor problem. Default language on google.lv is latvian. Problem is that latvian is not the only language in Latvia. Half of us (incl. me) are russians. Some of us even don't understand latvian language. They should guess default language from browser settings.
I've reported these problems to google's support. After four days they replied something like "RTFM".
Those damn religious fundies are a threat to the peace!
As I see it, Google is doing exactly what it should be doing. The company has an obligation to obey laws in each country about what material is and is not legal to view. Not every country has the same views about whether censorship is acceptable, and what things should be censored if it is. Google could get in very serious trouble if it chose to show people things that their governments have decided that they shouldn't have access to. At the same time, Google does seem to be trying hard to do the least damage it can in the process. Specifically, it's not censoring material everywhere just because it's considered objectionable in one place. Americans can still see Holocause denial sites (if they have some bizarre desire to do so), Germans can see Chinese dissident sites, etc.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
The phone company (the one that generally makes the phone books) sells you a service, a phone number. With that phone number comes a listing in the directory (with options to remove yourself, etc). If they start yanking people from the directory, then they're violating their service terms.
Google does not sell domain names. It is not Google's job to index the entire internet. They ban sites which try to spam Google, and it makes Google better. Google is more like an independent phone directory which CHOOSES to list phone numbers.
An easy tell-tale sign that a search engine is dying, is the "commercialization" of the site. Simple test - enter something in the search bar. Press Search. Look over the first ~3-5 results. 90% likely they have something to do with either byuing or selling. Look over to your right - More buy/sell adverts... If you are an avid Google user, you quickly realize that the number of these adverts has grown over the months. Oh and by the way - a private company does not benefit from censoring. On the other hand, if it is threatened and coerced by shady "patriotic" gov't types.... well...
It's sex. They give em sex...oh shoot, my karma!
Those damn religious fundies are a threat to the peace!
First of all George Bush.
He saw some dirty arabs and fired. Too bad it was just some friendly kurds, BBC reporters and his fellow cowboys.
I said bush sucks on my website, next day later its missing from google.
I've left to find myself. If you happen to see me, please, keep me there until I return.
I'm getting all fed up with google. Don't get me wrogn, it's a wonderful search-engine. Every other time I type anything in opera's addressbar, it starts with "g ". It has an ingenious cache, and even a pdf2html conversion!
BUT, I'm tired of reading these never-ending stories about google, googlism, Googling, elgoog, roogle, etc. etc... Has anyone else noticed such "new wave" in slashdot stories?
love slashdot. populate it. use it. abuse it. hate it. kill it. miss it. stop following links, they only kill servers.
Sure! Why not! They did change "French" toast and "French" fries to "Freedom"...
I was wondering when they would cover the Statue of Liberty, since that was a gift from France as well.
hmmm
Google is/may become a monopoly in the search space. As a previous discussion noted, it has entered into our common vocabulary. In such a situation, where do the rights of a private organization end, and that of the public good begin?
For instance, if PacBell (substitute your local phone company here) stops carrying calls over its physical network that use other long distance services, or Microsoft tries putting roadblocks for third party applications on its platform .. umm- scratch the last one.
Google censured one of my pay-for-clicks ads about who/what the anti-christ is for religious reasons.
You can read about it at the bottom of my webpage. The reason given for removing my ad
wasn't a valid one by google's tos/agreement.
I read it pretty closely, and my ad looked like another one that was/is running.
In fact, the second response from google looked vindactive to me. Although they violated their own agreement, I should add that they also didn't attempt to charge my credit card, which I guess means they know they didn't hold up their agreement to let an ad freely run.
This type of censurship worries me, but it isn't anything new. After all, the antichrist tried to burn bibles in the past as well. The printing press and guttenberg bible put an effective stop to it. All things work for the good of those who love God.
http://home.fuse.net/gospel
This is fundamentally wrong. If it is a public tool, it should be paid for by tax dollars and be institutionalized by the government.
The last thing I need is to not be able to find the DeCSS haiku because your government doesn't like it.:)
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Used to be, I could do a keyword search for an ongoing secret government project (no, not Aurora) and get 1/2 pages of hits, most of which had at least some relevant info.
Now, nothing. No matter how flexible the search. Not one. Either the Fedz stepped in and yanked the info (possible, but unlikely for them all to be pulled so close together in time) or Google agreed to suppress the hits.
I'm supposed to believe something about censorship from Seth Finkelstein, the known internet stalker?
I'm sorry, I can't believe things written by the insane. Maybe that makes me special, I don't know.
Timothy, though, you got balls of steel, linking to that site on the homepage.
Posting anonymously because I don't have time to deal with crazy people.
They've even removed St. Patrick's Day logos from Google Ireland.:)
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
http://www.primedius.com
Allows you to view uncensored google pages through their encrypted proxy servers. Anti-blocking technology allows you to bypass censorship!
Please, if you want to troll... do it under your own ID.
While they (any "they) probably can probably get most of them, they probably can't get them all.
On Windows, there's Copernic 2000 What's good for Windows and on the Web?
From a business standpoint, remember that what sold us on google to begin with and why we spread the word about it was that it was unbiased and effective, i.e. likely to come up with what we are looking for whether the subjects liked it or not and regardless of anyone's value judgement on the content. We trusted that this was all automated and done by machines incapable of evaluating whether we should have access to it or not. This gave it major "cool" factor... and we are part of the group who each told a few of our friends.
While Google's technology is continously improving, it's "cool" factor is vanishing rapidly.
While altavista went into the dumper for other reasons (google was "cooler"), the speed with which google replaced altavista speaks to how our perceptions get translated to public action. Not surprising, we're usually the people our non-cyberliterate family / friends / employers ask "How do I find things on the Web?"
While I think we all respect their technology, our concern is with human agencies playing games with the search results we depend on.
If we can't depend on Google for honest results, most of us will go on to something else, and we will probably be taking a large chunk of the user community as a whole with us.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Until they are considered a public service, Google has the right to censor as a private company, just as Disney does. The question we should be asking is, "Is google producing relevant searches and if not, what are our alternatives?"
If they're filtering out Stormfront on the German-language pages and not the English ones, presumably that means any German with enough English skills for Googling will find it.
Considering Germans, *especially* neo-Nazi types, are well aware of the censorship laws, it seems reasonable that they would be Googling in English in the first place, whether for research or for Skinhead Love.
Censoring by language might (weakly) pass as a good-faith effort, but if they really want to comply with German censorship laws they should not allow the Stormfront pages to show up in searches from computers known to be in Germany.
This Like That - fun with words!
I do not want to "flame away" but what's freedom?
Do you really HAVE freedom or
do you FEEL you have freedom?
These days the government(s) try to give you the feeling of freedom and choices and possibilities but if you see it in real life (go out of your house for a bit) you will see your freedom, choices and possibilities are not so common anymore
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
My name is Dr. Grodden. I am a licensed psychiatrist. Seth Finkelstein is my patient. You are enabling his fantasies and delusions of grandeur by responding to him. *Please* help me help Seth get better by not enabling him!
Dr. Robert Grodden, M.D.
And corporations is a way for individuals to run a company with special priveledges. A corporation protects owners of a company from facing many liabilities. And a corporation is granted from the government. In America, that means "we the people" allow a corporation to exist with special priveledges. A company who's owners have special rights that are granted by the government.
Along with those special priviledges should come extra responsibilities. Sure, they aren't the government. But they exist due to the sponsorship of government. And because of that, "we, the people" absolutely should hold them to a higher set of standards than Billy Bob's Beer and Bait Shack down at the corner.
In the case of Google, with such a large impact nationally and internationally, it would not be innappropriate to demand that they inform people of what is being censored and why.
Google is about censoring in a soft way. Their whole business is about censoring. They try to filter out spam with never recovering penalties for domains etc. So what's the big deal by adding some more sites to the blacklist? Ok, it's probably a little questionable but at the end of the day it works out great for me, if they keep child pornography and nazis away from me.