Google Censors Abu Ghraib Images [updated]

Mihg writes "Try searching Google Images for abu ghraib, lynndie england, or Lynndie's boyfriend charles graner and note how you don't get any pictures of US soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners of war. Now try it with some of their competitors, like AltaVista, Lycos, or Yahoo!. Google used to be able to find them, as is discussed in this AnandTech forum thread." I'm guessing that this is another case of our administration confusing "National Security" with "Politically Undesirable". Update: 11/07 20:18 GMT by P : Google has a reasonable explanation.

Comments

You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

If that were the case, why would they show up in other American search engines? Ever consider that Google is a business and has the right to choose what they want to include themselves?

Re:You're guessing?

[Izago909]

If google now relies on self censorship to promote their company image, then they can kiss their #1 ranked ass goodbye.

Re:You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

They've always edited their index and they say it all over the place. The have the right to choose what they want and what they don't want showing up in their search engine. That's why people that sue them over being exluded or ranked poorly don't have a case.

And guess what... sometimes Google's index gets screwed up! One time, Google excluded THEMSELVES from their index!

Re:You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that your statement implies that free speech and accurate reporting have no place in a capitalist society.

You do understand the implications of what you are saying right?

Re:You're guessing?

[Ayaress]

I'd say things are a bit closer to what the article says than you think, but you're on the right track - google gives in to almost any pressure in a heartbeat. Google's always been perfectly willing to throw up the "This search has items removed which may be in violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act" things in results. I've been getting them more and more often on various things. If you get creative with your search terms, you can come up with a lot of different messages about why some results were omitted from a search. I've never seen any of that on other search engines.

Re:You're guessing?

[SiliconJesus]

They generally rely on google rankings (their proprietary code) in order to do this effectively.

If someone googlebombed them (google search for "Litigious Bastards"), I would assume it is possible to unrank images just as it is possible to unrank webpages.

Re:You're guessing?

[SiliconJesus]

Google is playing the game safer than most of the internet (/. included), which is probably a smarter move that just claiming "I have no control over the content" when in reality they do (as proven by /.'s removal of posts in the past due to litigation from Microsoft).

Re:You're guessing?

[aacool]

If you don't know already, you can track most takedown notices at http://www.chillingeffects.org/. A search for google there brings back a lot of results.

An interesting case is booble.com - sent a takedown notice by google and now reopened as tauntedbytatas.com

Re:You're guessing?

[dogfart]

And as a business they are still subject to political pressure. What the government can't block overtly, they can get their surrogates in the private sector to block with a little "persuasion". Thus the government can make it very difficult for the public to find images (or other information) that is unfavorable to the government. The net result is the same, without all the nastiness associated with direct government censorship.

Yes, I know that the average Slashdot reader can find these images elsewhere. The average just-barely-computer-literate AOL user doesn't know this, doesn't want to make the effort, or just assumes if Google doesn't have it then there is something wrong with having these images available.

Re:You're guessing?

[MarkByers]

I haven't heard of any method of making a page disappear from the rankings completely, only of methods of giving pages artificaially high rankings. I doubt that this is due to any form of 'googlebomb'. However I am surprised that Google would do this.

Perhaps they wanted to make a statement about the issue and instead of writing a strongly worded letter to the governement, decided to censor the pages, which creates a lot of commotion and brings more people to talk about it. It made us start talking about it. It certainly is not going to directly increase their profit (unless they were bribed?).

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now.

Re:You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

The have the right to choose what they want and what they don't want showing up in their search engine.

Yes, but if they start getting a reputation for filtering certain subjects, some people are going to start switching to other search engines. I don't think anyone said they don't have a right, only that its not a good idea.

Re:You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google tries to remove some sites that make use of certain spamming techniques. In theory, it might be possible to make it look like you're spamming for someone else's site and thus get them removed.

Re:You're guessing?

[h4rm0ny]

Google is playing the game safer than most of the internet

The implication of what you've just said is that it would be risky for Google to help people find this information. And the implication of THAT is that if you criticise the Government you're going to get stomped.

The number of people who read the parent post and didn't think there was something inherantly flawed in the reasoning shows how generally accepted this viewpoint is.

And of course, they may well be right, but how far has society fallen if they are?

Re:You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Claiming the Bush administration is responsible = claiming they're forced to do this, and thus lack the right to dictate what they want in their results.

Re:You're guessing?

[sepluv]

Yes, but that example is not really GoogleBombing as such as TSG did not intitiate it (obviously) so no one is trying to get an unfair advantage. On the contrary, it just means that WWW authors are using link text as it was intended by W3C & al, to describe that linked to, and that is how most WWW users who know TSG would describe them.

Re:You're guessing?

[eatmadust]

this this might explain a lot.
Especially the Floyd/Mark Kvamme and Bush relationship could explain why those images were removed.

Re:You're guessing?

[afd8856]

What is that browser that you're talking about? And no, censorship is not to be allowed under any circumstance. Google is not a private company anymore, but a public one and their existence depends on their public. So they owe to their clients (the public) unfiltered and uncensored results.

Re:You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google has been doing this for years. It didn't hurt their ranking when they removed kiddie porn images from the google image search years ago. I don't see how this will hurt their ranking now. This is a very old company policy that has been in effect since they first started their image search tool.

Re:You're guessing?

[Secret Agent X23]

I doubt it, personally. It is a reliable and accurate web browser - A lot of people won't mind that it censors certain searches. The public won't give up better search results just becasue of a small amount of censorship.

What searches constitute "certain searches"? If it's censoring results, are the results really better? If Google is known to censor some searches, you can never be sure whether they're censoring your search, can you? This is just the issue that gets publicized.

Now, mind you, I don't see a problem with Google "filtering" (a word I'd prefer in this instance) the results in certain searches. It's their web site to run as they please. But as someone else already noted, I'm not certain it makes good business sense.

Re:You're guessing?

[cynic10508]

If that were the case, why would they show up in other American search engines? Ever consider that Google is a business and has the right to choose what they want to include themselves?

Oh, no. You must be mistaken. If it's has a sense of politics and people don't like it then it's obviously Bush at work. That good ol' boy sure gets around, doesn't he? All I know is it must've been a direct order from the Oval Office that caused my oppressive speeding ticket last week...

Re:You're guessing?

[HangingChad]

And of course, they may well be right, but how far has society fallen if they are?

I think by now the answer to that question is glaringly obvious.

Re:You're guessing?

[TheRaven64]

It seems to only be the US version of google that censored. Performing the same search on google.co.uk (for example) reveals no censorship.

Re:You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm done with google. time to either look for an uncensored search engine, or create one! :)

Re:You're guessing?

[SirChive]

By the same logic the old men who rule China have a "right" to only allow their people a highly censored view of the outside world. Hey, they own the power so they can do what they want, right?

But I don't think that is how we want to view public media in this country. Businesses do not have complete freedom to censor and exclude simply because they own the media. We knew that Google manipulated their index in order to make money but it's a very different if they doing it to forward a certain political viewpoint.

For Google to censor something as important as this is truely abhorrent. If we can't trust that a Google search will be free of a political agenda then it's worthless.

Re:You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, no. That's not how public companies work. They owe their investors maximum profit. If they (and their investors) feel that self-censorship will improve their image and make more money, then that's what they should do.

Re:You're guessing?

[kantai]

I like how the website links Google to the Bush Administration through an investment company. Very clever!

Re:You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

You believe that they did this on their own? Or did the current administration have a say in this.

Re:You're guessing?

[wertarbyte]

So they owe to their clients (the public) unfiltered and uncensored results.

You are not the client. You are the product. Clients are the people that place ads via google.

Re:You're guessing?

[kantai]

It doesn't imply that at all. Google isn't preventing people from posting images on the internet. It is simply not displaying them. Those are not the same things.

Here's an analogy. An art gallery displays art work that it will sell, and the money will go to the artist. An artist has a picture that the art gallery deems offensive. The gallery decides not to display it. There is nothing wrong there. The artist is not denied his free speech or artistic beliefs.

Re:You're guessing?

[SirTalon42]

Google Image search isn't the media.

Re:You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a very old company policy that has been in effect since they first started their image search tool.

What is the policy? Just telling us it's very old is worthless. What is it?

Re:You're guessing?

[ScrewMaster]

Well, the free speech protections in the Constitution don't apply to private organizations (a lot of Slashdot posts seem unclear on that point) so Google is certainly free to censor its results any way it cares to, and any other individual or private organization can threaten Google any way it wants to under the DMCA. What that may due to Google's success as a commercial entity is another story, and how Google responds to such pressure is up to it. However, if the government is involved at any level in determining what search results Google can or cannot return, then I'd say the First Amendment is involved here in a big way. I mean, services like Google are what the First Amendment is all about, even if the Founders wouldn't have known a search engine from a sailboat.

Re:You're guessing?

[Madcapjack]

I'll quote from Google's own website regarding romoval of pages from its search results:

"Google views the quality of its search results as an extremely important priority. Therefore, Google stops indexing the pages on your site only at the request of the webmaster who is responsible for those pages or as required by law. This policy is necessary to ensure that pages are not inappropriately removed from our index. Since Google is committed to providing thorough and unbiased search results for our users, we cannot participate in the practice of censoring information on the world wide web." source

Re:You're guessing?

[paganizer]

Then don't use it.
If enough people don't use it, they will probably change the way they do things.
I had a similar rant happen to me about one of the websites I run; I just sort of check in on things every once in a while, and if I see something that really bugs me has been posted, i'll delete it. If you don't like me editing the things I don't like from my system, don't use it.
go away.
find something you like better.
It's what made america great.

Re:You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is that China is a dicatorship. People in China don't have the right to choose a new government. You have the right to use any one of a number of search engines.

If we can't trust that a Slashdot story will be free of a political agenda then it's worthless.

Re:You're guessing?

[Siniset]

I think your analogy is slightly off. According to the statistics i was able to find google has 29% of the search engine market. Thus, it would be like an the largest art gallery in the world, with a full 29% of the population who go to their art gallery deciding not to show something that a large percentage of the population has stated is important to them.

You're right, when it's a private company censoring, it's not an issue of free speech, but that doesn't mean that people shouldn't be up in arms about it. A small art gallery deciding not to show some artwork is very different than what is happening here, simply due to scale.

Re:You're guessing?

[weisen]

Yes, of course Google has a right, as a company, to set their own policy. It's just that people have presumed that they were getting the best results for their search and they'll stop presuming that about Google if it becomes an arm of the right-wing government.

Now, the more interesting thing is the fact that there are, in fact, other nations on the planet. So, follow the downfall of the US:

government lies ->
government alters the media and information sources to support their lies ->
top engineering and science talent stop flocking to the US from elsewhere ->
top engineering and science talent flee the US for elsewhere ->
number of engineering and science innovations created within the country drops ->
military superiority drops as we end up needing to buy technological advances from other countries and do so at their whim ->

Shall I continue?

Step #3 is well underway.

(Background: I'm an American patriot. I grew up in and was educated about the history of a very different country than the one in which I currently reside. Unlike the current administration, I do not think that the system of government that was, quite carefully at times, built over the past 228+ years was such a mistake that we can, without careful thought, overturn all of its checks and balances (see: limits on how much media one company can own, separation of chuch and state, etc.)

Re:You're guessing?

[bfree]

Microsoft attempted to get /. to remove posts and failed. The C.O.S. succeeded but got something much better in return here! The C.O.S. seemingly had /. legally by the DMCA so /. responded as best it could, MS made a bit of a mess of things (like inaccuracies in their initial email takedown request) so as far as I could tell MS just went away.

Re:You're guessing?

[SiliconJesus]

It could *POSSIBLY* be that the uncensored images are slightly disturbing or pornographic. Turn the censor off and they come right up (thanks to Cyberdyne for pointing that out in my /. Journal).

Re:You're guessing?

[empaler]

Media.

Messages that are distributed through the technologies, principally text in books, study guides and computer networks; sound in audio-tapes and broadcast: pictures in videotapes and broadcast; text, sound and/or pictures in a teleconference.

Re:You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

there is a difference between editing content/their index for results based on providing better service, and doing it based on the content is "objectionable"

i still say google can do what they like with their database, but i do not personally agree with them on this decision.

this is not a quality of service issue, they are choosing to not show the obvisiousley relevant results for those keywords. also they say they do not agree with censorship, which is what this comes down to. those people that want to sue google over being excluded have no case because the decision was made on the basis of providing relevant information. they are now in a weaker position now that they choose to not display results based on content.

in the end it is their database and they can do what they want with it. but as a user of it, i dont like it and if it continues, they will lose their users because they are not trying to provide the best service.

Re:You're guessing?

[empaler]

Because as we all know, anyone wanting to see for themselves what the US military does to other people are no better than pedophiles.

Re:You're guessing?

[mrchaotica]

I agree -- somehow I doubt that Abu Gharib is a DMCA violation (well, considering Ashcroft, you never know...), so the issue here is that Google isn't censoring their results just because they feel like it or have some moral objection to it. Just the opposite -- they have a moral objection to censorship!

So, if they don't want to do it (which they have stated), then why are they doing it? The only possible reason is that they're being coerced, which is exactly what the Constitution is supposed to prevent.

You don't have to say anything, but nobody can stop you if you want to -- except that somebody is stopping Google.

Re:You're guessing?

[grover_99]

It's not only the US version. The Australian version google.com.au is censored as well. Are you sure there were images of tortured Iraqi's displayed?

Re:You're guessing?

[caseydk]

This sounds like your emphacising the strengths of an open market-based system.

I'm glad someone besides me has taken some basic econ....

Re:You're guessing?

[Madcapjack]

Is it possible that google simply has not indexed these images yet (considering that they are relatively recent)? I've heard that google images have lower priority than regular indexing.

Re:You're guessing?

[tulax24]

Okay I'm growing tired of this argument. The company owes the maximum utility to their shareholders, money is only one element of the total utility the shareholder recieves from owning the stock. To illustrate this, say you have the choice of buying two stocks, stock A and stock B. Say they are very consistent stocks, and you know you will make a dollar from stock A and 1.05 from stock B. However stock A say is a kitten adoption company and stock B makes death rays. Which stock are you going to buy? Most people will buy stock A, because they value the positive feeling they get from buying stock A over stock B more than the 5 cents. Mistaking profit for utility is a very common mistake that is often passed off as economics.

My other problem is you could use this argument to justify anything and excuse companies of any moral responsibility, ie enron.

Re:You're guessing?

[dgmartin98]

My favorite googlebomb is a search for a "miserable failure".

Re:You're guessing?

[Lonnold]

Sorry Chairman Mao,people in China do have the right to choose a new government, just like every other group of people. Once enough of them get tired of being oppressed, they will 'choose' a new government.

Re:You're guessing?

[niittyniemi]

> It seems to only be the US version of google that censored. Performing
> the same search on google.co.uk (for example) reveals no censorship.

I did a search on google.co.uk and none of the torture pictures show up. But on the first page a picture of happy, smiling Iraqis and American troops cutting a ribbon shows up courtesy of Centcom - I think that picture made me feel more nauseous than the torture pics.

A search for Lynndie England returns nothing.

Google have to come up with a pretty convincing explanation as to why these searches turn up nothing - an explanation that doesn't include censorship or technical incompetence or else I'm off to find me a better search engine.

If as others have suggested that they don't update their picture index for 6 months.....well that's pretty pathetic from the leading search engine if it's the case.

Re:You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the article was posted by CmdrTinFoil.

Re:You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are these pictures real?

Re:You're guessing?

[Zenzilla]

Sorry Saddham Hussein, people in Iraq do have the right to choose a new government, just like every other group of people. Once enough of them get tired of being oppressed, they will 'choose' a new government.

Re:You're guessing?

[Carewolf]

I think you are wrong.

Searching from Denmark, using both danish, american and brittish google shows none of the images.

Re:You're guessing?

[Prophetic_Truth]

I think your analogy is seriously flawed. Google is not a form of government. No one is forcing you to use google. There are other alternatives to google, which ppl in China lack. You even have the right to express your dismay of google right here on /.!

Re:You're guessing?

[SavingPrivateNawak]

Yes exactly, that's why the USA shouldn't have meddled with Iraq's affairs...

Re:You're guessing?

[Phleg]

Chris posted Google's official statement on this. Unfortuantely, it's been pushed back to the second page due to all the conspiracy theorists.

Google's Official Response

Re:You're guessing?

[dgmckay]

Yes, Google is a business. They're successful because we - the owners of the eyeballs they attempt to attract - believe they provide the most relevant search results, queried from as much of the web's content as possible. If they're going to censor results, they should be honest about it and let their customers know that they are doing it. Their customers can then decide whether or not to continue using their service.

Google's been such a great service/product/company that most of us have let them happily in to our lives. We trust their search results. We trust their e-mail service. The worrisome part of stories like this is that with Google's penetration of the market, they're powerful enough to dictate what sites are seen by the majority of people. We know about Abu Ghraib, so if we search for images and don't find them, we know something is up. But what if we search for something we're not as aware of and no results are returned. We may just assume there was nothing there to find.

Let's hope Google's "don't be evil" mission statement wasn't just a trojan horse disguise to sneak in to our lives and slowly become "evil."

Re:You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can take basic spelling next :-)

Re:You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that until now nobody knew that Google was sensoring this kind of news. I don't like this censorship, but if I don't know it's happening, I don't know that I need to use another service.

Re:You're guessing?

[RZ78]

by the same token libraries should stock books they see fit and coutries should treat their citizens they see fit etc. this observation is a bit of stretch, but drives the point home. if google accepts to be a vast source of information and wants to enjoy being accepted by the general public as such,then it should not tailor its data base to be politically correct.but ultimately they are in it for the money and not necessarily a broad source of info for the general public personally ,a long time ago,i noticed that their choice news sources is not without a tilt either. google is a bit overrated and overtrusted by the pulic. the same public that generally thinks it did not happen unless the evening news said so

Re:You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is that people in China and Iraq know they are being opressed, while people in USA still think they are the land of the free.

Re:You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

So if Google was indeed censoring search results, you tell me that it's ok to trust this little blurb of text from Google's own website. That makes sense.

Re:You're guessing?

[SECProto]

Whoops. I didn't mean to say browser, I meant to say search engine. All I can say - It was just my opinion - I'm not really a client, as I'm not paying google for any of its services. As far as I'm concerned, I'll use it as long as it's free and brings up good results for most of my searches.

Re:You're guessing?

[elegie]

I've never seen any of that on other search engines.

If one search engine is extremely popular, it may be more likely to be targeted than others. Also, if the search engine provides very powerful search features or features such as cached copies of pages, etc. it might be noticed. If a search engine complies once with a removal request, some might say that provides incentive to target it again.

Re:You're guessing?

[elegie]

In the case of copyright issues, explicitly mentioning that something was removed is better than silently excluding something from the search results. That also applies to exclusion of search results due to other types of outside influence. This way, people know what is happening and why it is happening.

(as proven by /.'s removal of posts in the past due to litigation from Microsoft).

When did this happen...? Slashdot was asked to remove certain postings but it is not clear as to whether they actually did remove them.

Re:You're guessing?

[fucksl4shd0t]

The death ray, definitely, because death rays are cool. I'd buy even more if the death ray cooked kittens...

Re:You're guessing?

[coolmadsi]

Google gets some of its money and funding from its advertisements, You know where else it gets its funding from? The US Government.

As far as I know, the most banned search term on google are the things the US government doesnt want people to see. Things like Michelangelos David, Hitlers 'Mein Kamph' and some woks by Lenin are filtered through and not found on goolge before things like sex or porn are filtered. This is because the 3 things I just listed are free political thought that the US government doesnt want people to see.

Results 1 - 10 of about 681,000 for mein kampf
Results 1 - 10 of about 36,700 for michelangelo's david
Results 1 - 10 of about 204,000,000 for sex

This is the filter that was used as well:
Use moderate filtering (Filter explicit images only - default behavior)

Re:You're guessing?

[dtfinch]

A google web search for "Abu Ghraib" still has as the #3 match being "The Abu Ghraib Prison Photos". Those are the most graphic of the photos that you wouldn't have seen in the news.

Certain things I think they have to censor in their thumbnail search, because the the thumbnails are coming from their servers. Laws don't always provide for mitigating circumstances. Their defense if they decided to index them would probably require convincing a judge that their image search falls under the protection of freedom of the press.

Re:You're guessing?

[cammoblammo]

I wonder where it gets it's other money from. The number one result for a search on 'http' will lead to www.microsoft.com. Every other engine leads to sites discussing communication protocols and the like. Go on, try it!

Given that mangled urls in some browsers (FF does this--really can't say about others) will often default to an "I Feel Lucky" search on the first parsable word in the url, MS must get a bit of traffic from this 'quirk.'

I've emailed Google a couple of times about the problem, and I've been promised the team will take my concern into account when reviewing their services.

Riiiiight...

Re:You're guessing?

[superpulpsicle]

It's not a matter of Google sensoring. I am not afraid that a damn pic is not available online. It's the political concept behind it... what else is censored?!

After WWII many Germans learned of the scale of the holocaust. Many couldn't believe they were part of the nazi administration so indirectly. I fear that the Bush administrations are up to a WHOLE LOT MORE. And I don't want to find out 50 years later that half this country in 2004 has voted for a Hitler of a different kind.

Re:You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is another rip off of googol. Google should send a letter to themselves.

Re:You're guessing?

[alakon]

Socially responsible investing is still a negligible percent. The strongest advocates claim up to 11% (but a much much smaller %, they agree, actually go beyond simple screening), even if this is true, it's in long term which doesn't move the stock- I personally believe investors ought to maximize profit (green funds don't really do so well), and then just donate more with the extra gains.

Re:You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

america is great?
no it is NOT.
it just sucks worlds ass

Re:You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

yep.. censorship made the USA what it is today. Of course, there's several ways you can read that...

Re:You're guessing?

[thomn8r]

The 'free market' stuff doesn't work if nobody knows about the censorship. Once the Rovians (or their successors) become more adept at censorship, nobody will know it's happening.

Re:You're guessing?

[timts]

well, bush is reelected, I already saw bush supporters' article on startribune boasting shamelessly how happy they are in this liberal state to have their voice finally.

those religious supporters for bush are just true "believers", I got one nearby, who doesnot know much about world news, domestic news, even less for world history, not even for world war II and all those wars after that, never heard of bush's stupid jokes. what ever, he BELIEVES.

now we have more censorship, will have some more wars during those 4 years, isnt world wonderful?

Re:You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google cache safe? I think they get lots and lot's of letters about this!!!

Re:You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's pathetic. If you look at the search results for 'http' you'll see that ALL of them are useless. maybe because 'http' is a lame search string. Simply adding the word 'protocol' nets a much more useful response. In fact, then the first response is the w3 http protocol page. Yes, I know it's redundant to put 'protocol' after 'http', but you really need to get a life if you're emailing Google about stuff like this.

Re:You're guessing?

[cmdr_beeftaco]

Everyone knows there is a future in death rays. Kittens? Not so much.

Re:You're guessing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess your "basic econ" class didn't cover the chilling effect of technology patents and other government-dictated protections on innovation, eh?

Go beat yourself with a clue-by-four until you realize that we don't have an open market in virtually any field (not even commodities, let alone software dev. and search optimization). Thanks.

Re:You're guessing?

[instarx]

The have the right to choose what they want and what they don't want showing up in their search engine.

I'm not sure it is that simple. If users have an expectation of unbiased search results and Google makes money providing that supposedly unbiased search, then it is not a forgone conclusion that Gooogle is free to bias results in their own self-interest.

Secondly, if Google restricted their search results AT THE REQUEST OF THE GOVERNMENT then that is censorship of the press and would not be constitutional (and it can be argued that Google News is the "press" since it provides a custom-made newspaper to your desktop). However, in this case it would not be Google violating the law, but the government.

That raises an interesting question - It is clear that the government would be violating the law by censoring the press, but if a newspaper cooperated in that censorship would it also be violating the constitution? (RICO statutes and conspiracy come to mind).

Re:You're guessing?

[cammoblammo]

I'm not worried about somebody searching for http. If I was, you'd be right, and I should be modded "-5 Stupid."

I'm more concerned about the fact that if I carelessly (or cluelessly) type

http\\slashdot.org

into a browser---again, I can only test in this on firefox, but I do remember other browsers having a similar behaviour---I will get sent straight to www.microsoft.com. This is simply because an 'I feel Lucky' search for http goes to Microsoft.

Go to their site and have a look. Is there any reason why a search for http should go there? No more than any one else's. So google made a mistake, and they like feedback about that sort of thing.

Or they didn't make a mistake, and they've got a good reason for it. What that reason is I don't know, but if they have a got a good reason, I suspect their definition of good is quite different to mine.

Re:You're guessing?

[Zetra]

So when i get sent to altavista.com its just a freak occurrence, right? (and yes, i use FF)

Re:You're guessing?

[cammoblammo]

What's your default search engine? Google is the standard default, but I don't know about your copy.

Re:You're guessing?

[afd8856]

That is completely wrong to think like that. In an organization there are various stakeholders. I, as a user of one's services, qualify in that view as a client. Google has to "sell" me their services, in order to make money. So I've never paid Google anything in my life, but from a management point of view, I qualify as their client.

Re:You're guessing?

[wertarbyte]

So a cow is the farmers client? Because he feeds his animals?

Lynndie England, naked and petrified!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell yeah! That'd be AWESOME! She's much hotter than Natalie Portman. I love how she poured hot grits down the pants of those prisoners in order to obtain information from them about upcoming terrorist attacks.

Tried it and it's true.

[h4rm0ny]

Well, I've just tried this with each of the listed search engines and it does appear to be correct for the first five pages that Google returns.

That's not good. I don't want a search engine deciding what I have access to. And know doubt this thread will turn into a troll-fest about the American invasion of Iraq and whether people are better off or not under US rule rather than Saddam, but surely neither side of the argument thinks we'll benefit from hiding the truth. That can only benefit those in the US administration.

And you can be sure that this will be picked up by the Arab world and will look bad on the US and Western Europe.

Re:Tried it and it's true.

[aacool]

Google has slackened at its game. Even the text ads are not remotely relevant in many places. For example, my blog has ads for salad & low-carb meals on the front page for no obvious reason.

I find the yahoo search engine delivers more accurate results nowadays. Strange, if they use google.

IMO, it's not that the images are not there, but that Google's spider is sleeping on the job. Damn! Shelob would have a field day!

Metafilter is having a similar discussion (slashdot - where news gets old fast).

Re:Tried it and it's true.

[RobotRunAmok]

And you can be sure that this will be picked up by the Arab world and will look bad on the US and Western Europe.

And if there's one thing we here in the U.S. really, really hate, it's to look bad in the Arab world.

I can just hear the outcry as it trumpets across our waving waves of grain, echoing from our mountains, skimming across from sea to shining sea: "Google is censoring Abu Graib pics! How will we ever recover our prestige?!"

Re:Tried it and it's true.

[Rand Huck]

If you don't want a search engine to decide what you have access to, you have all the freedom on the Internet to conduct your search elsewhere. Just because Google is one of the most popular search engines doesn't mean you have to use it, and it doesn't mean Google has to provide free access to information.

This isn't the first thing Google's done to limit information. You can never find links to download mp3's, whether they are legal or not, for example.

This is censorship in the same way cable stations censor words out or choose which shows they will show, even though there is no legislation that requires them to. Or in the same way bookstores choose which books they want to carry.

Re:Tried it and it's true.

[Xyrus]

Tried just entering: "torute pictures". One of the first links is "The Memory Hole" with all the Iraqi torture you wanna see.

~X~
"Torture, the American Way."

Re:Tried it and it's true.

[Anonymous Coward]

For example, my blog has ads for salad & low-carb meals on the front page for no obvious reason.

well you're sitting in front of your computer sunday morning, instead of out running. take a look at your waistline. maybe google knows more than you think!!

Re:Tried it and it's true.

[ghum]

with looking for "torute pictures" I get miriads of cakepictures and by the way very hungry

Re:Tried it and it's true.

[allism]

Am I remembering incorrectly, or didn't Yahoo switch to Overture a while back?

Re:Tried it and it's true.

[athakur999]

Yahoo is back to using Google. See this story.

If you look at the search results from Yahoo and Google they have more than just a passing resemblance.

Re:Tried it and it's true.

[raju1kabir]

If you don't want a search engine to decide what you have access to, you have all the freedom on the Internet to conduct your search elsewhere. Just because Google is one of the most popular search engines doesn't mean you have to use it, and it doesn't mean Google has to provide free access to information.

No shit. But the point of this whole discussion, if it proves to be true (and not just an artifact of some equal-opportunity problem at Google) is to give people a heads-up that Google is not the place to conduct a politically-unfiltered search. That's pretty big news, and enough to stop me from using them.

Re:Tried it and it's true.

[Holi]

5 pages????
Abu gharib returns 1 1/2 pages in image search.
Lyndie England returns no results in image search.

So how did you come across the 1st 5 pages. This is about the Image Search function not the Web Search.

Re:Tried it and it's true.

[Cylix]

Um,

You are quite wrong...

I managed to find and download an mp3 in just seconds. Now, this was merely to prove a point and I will delete the song as soon as I'm sure its a legitimate piracy!

Re:Tried it and it's true.

[chrisd]

This is indeed an index aging issue. It sucks and we're sorry it sucks, but it isn't more than that.

Full post here: with a note from Sergey about this

Chris

Re:Tried it and it's true.

[nemexi]

This isn't the first thing Google's done to limit information. You can never find links to download mp3's, whether they are legal or not, for example.

Google Search: intitle:"index of" mp3

Re:Tried it and it's true.

[h4rm0ny]

My first reaction when I read the story was to actually check it for myself as it didn't seem likely. Sadly the idea that it could be indexed from being in the news temporarily and then drop out requiring time to be re-indexed did not occur to me.

It's great to see both that Google keeps in touch with the community; and that it employs people with 4-digit /. ids.

I'll have to occasionally do my image searches on Yahoo until it's fixed though.

Re:Tried it and it's true.

[allism]

The story that you link to is from 2002. IIRC, the switch to Overture happened sometime in the past year or so.

And Yet..

[Rosyna]

... if I do a google image search for "goatse" I get all kinds of nasty results. Certainly those should be blocked as well. They are clearly a threat to national security.

Re:And Yet..

[Anonymous Coward]

> [Goatse is] clearly a threat to national security.

Err, are you saying that there's
A-Hole in our national defense ;-)

Re:And Yet..

[PhotoBoy]

It's a threat to me keeping my lunch down anyway...

Re:And Yet..

[DeathByDuke]

and mental security...

Re:And Yet..

[varslot]

That's a different department: internal affairs.

Re:And Yet..

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, it's a huge hole to national security...

Re:And Yet..

[Tablizer]

... if I do a google image search for "goatse" I get all kinds of nasty results. Certainly those should be blocked as well. They are clearly a threat to national security.

A brave soul you are. That is the kind of research I would rather outsource.

Re:And Yet..

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you know the government is always looking for "black holes" to hide data they want no one to see. I, for one, wouldn't want to see THAT.

Re:And Yet..

[Chiisu]

and my esophagus lining :(

I'm certainly a tinfoil hat wearer but...

[garcia]

I'm guesing that this is another case of our administration confusing "National Security" with "Politically Undesirable".

Then why do the other search engines still carry it? It seems like Google has something confused and not the government.

Re:I'm certainly a tinfoil hat wearer but...

[gl4ss]

because google is a *bend over* and has demonstrated that it's easy for it to switch content retrieved based on where you are...

Re:I'm certainly a tinfoil hat wearer but...

[More Trouble]

Then why do the other search engines still carry it? It seems like Google has something confused and not the government.

If past performance is any indication, I'd suggest "incompetence."

:w

Re:I'm certainly a tinfoil hat wearer but...

[Pros_n_Cons]

Then why do the other search engines still carry it? It seems like Google has something confused and not the government

Amazing isn't it. So desperate to bash the president they can pluck something out of thin air and blame Bush for it.

Re:I'm certainly a tinfoil hat wearer but...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a weird answer. The real reason the other search engines carry it is because they index the Internet -- they're not blaming anybody; they're collecting information.

If anything, the fact that Google does not carry it may mean they are asserting a political preference rather than being fair.

Re:I'm certainly a tinfoil hat wearer but...

[Pros_n_Cons]

Read some of the other posts, other search engines carry it such as yahoo which is based in the Bay Area in California. Google ITSELF has the images just not in the images area which is updated every 6 months apparently. type 'abu ghraib photos' into google and look at the first link if you want images, google isn't censoring the content. Thats the same way you find it on yahoo or anywhere else. this is basically a non story. Just another story trying to troll and make a bush bashing thread talking about how horrible america and its president is. I'm sick of it to be honest. How come we don't talk about the soldiers who were hung upside down on the bridge with their throats slit just weeks before this abu ghraib stuff? How come slashdot didn't do a story this week on that school classroom that was booby trapped with a ton of explosives to the light switch? apparently killing a classroom full of children isn't nearly as bad as making people stand naked.

Re:I'm certainly a tinfoil hat wearer but...

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, time for the clue stick. If we're supposed to be the free world liberating the Iraqis, we have to hold ourselves to much hugher standards than terrorists and dictators. Somehow, our torture isn't nearly as bad as their torture just doesn't cut it.

We all know that captured soldiers and civilians get brutally murdered in Iraq, and we all agree that it's bad, and that we're going to get the people responsible. This doesn't excuse things like Abu Ghraib. The entire justification for the war in Iraq rests on the fact that we have the moral high ground. You don't keep that by torturing people.

Re:I'm certainly a tinfoil hat wearer but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I find the claims of many conservative americans that they have a moral high ground to invade iraq as funny. Killing thousands and thousands of innocent civilians is moral high ground for them. Really funny. Also another funny thing is these bible toting evangelicals use old testament to justify war and call muslim conservatives terrorists. I don't see any difference between christian fundamentalists and muslim fundamentalists. Both are equally bad.

If these conservatives take away abortion right for their women, it is moral high ground and if muslims ask their women to wear Burkas, it is oppression. A scantly clad women who has no right for her own abortion is equal to Burka clad women without any right. These guys should stop talking about moral high grounds. This is sheer hypocrisy.

Re:I'm certainly a tinfoil hat wearer but...

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, time for the clue stick

Indeed.

we have to hold ourselves to much hugher standards than terrorists and dictators

We are, thats the whole point. Americans including the administration down to generals and soldier in the field were disgraced by this action. Incase you still don't get it I'll spell it out for you. These soldiers were not ordered to do these things they are sick people acting on their own. You want to believe this is all Americans do apparently well it isn't, it was a freak occurance while beheadings are still going on weekly.
We have the "moral highground" for the same reason we do above terrorists. Sure we both kill innocent people the difference is only one of us TARGETS them, the other side attempts to avoid them completly though not always successfull.

Re:I'm certainly a tinfoil hat wearer but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Awareness of faults and criticism of those faults in a system closer to a point when that system claims to listen to criticism is an efficient method to bring that system to that point. That point is democracy and that system is the American government.

Re:I'm certainly a tinfoil hat wearer but...

[Anonymous Coward]

How come we don't talk about the soldiers who were hung upside down on the bridge with their throats slit just weeks before this abu ghraib stuff? How come slashdot didn't do a story this week on that school classroom that was booby trapped with a ton of explosives to the light switch? apparently killing a classroom full of children isn't nearly as bad as making people stand naked.

Actually, if you remember correctly, Americans have murdered a few prisoners as well. No, not nearly as many as the Iraqis and their allies have, but then things might be different if they had invaded this country. I can just picture what would happen when people like the ones at abu ghraib got ahold of some prisoners with no oversite at all. I'm thinking it wouldn't be a whole lot different.

Re:I'm certainly a tinfoil hat wearer but...

[EyeSavant]

apparently killing a classroom full of children isn't nearly as bad as making people stand naked.

Thank you for that sraw man. Blowing up childeren his wrong, torturing people is wrong.

Terrorists do horrible things, that is why we have the moral authority to hunt them down and kill them.

Moral relativism is very very dangerous, are you seariously suggesting that we should not expect americans to behave better than Chechen terrorists?

Re:I'm certainly a tinfoil hat wearer but...

[Anonymous Coward]

If the shoe fits, wear it.

And then go fuck yourself and the election machines you rode in on.

Re:I'm certainly a tinfoil hat wearer but...

[Damek]

"they"?

I think it was just the submitter.

Re:I'm certainly a tinfoil hat wearer but...

[character_assassin]

I'd say there's a difference of degree regarding the means and ends of imposing thier fundamentalist vision upon others. I don't know of many Christian fundamentalists who are calling for violence against non-believers in the name of religion, and I would say that women in Christian fundamentalist lands (like, say, Oklahoma) are much more free than those in Muslim fundamentalist lands (think Saudi Arabia). And before you say it: although the war in Iraq is wrong, it isn't being fought in the name of Christian fundamentalism. Zionism, maybe.

Re:I'm certainly a tinfoil hat wearer but...

[Skuld-Chan]

Amazing isn't it. So desperate to bash the president they can pluck something out of thin air and blame Bush for it.

At least its not somehow clinton's fault.

Re:I'm certainly a tinfoil hat wearer but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't you hear? Because everything ever to happen anywhere at any time is either George W. Bush or Karl Rove's fault.

Re:I'm certainly a tinfoil hat wearer but...

[cicho]

Because if you cleanse Google, you've already covered what percentage of all search engine hits? 80? 80 percent? If it's not on Google, it won't be found my most people.

Re:I'm certainly a tinfoil hat wearer but...

[Alsee]

Right. Goggle flip-floped on returning those results, obviously it's Kerry's fault.

-

Re:I'm certainly a tinfoil hat wearer but...

[Lars T.]

Google ITSELF has the images just not in the images area which is updated every 6 months apparently. type 'abu ghraib photos' into google and look at the first link if you want images, google isn't censoring the content.

Needless to say, I was a little confused. Less than two weeks earlier, I had searched Google Images for Abu Ghraib photos with great success.

If Google isn't censoring, what did happen?

Re:I'm certainly a tinfoil hat wearer but...

[Anonymous Coward]

The exit polls were wrong in 10 states, the election machines were wrong by 500 votes in one state, which side sounds more f***ed up? thats right.. your biast media trying to give kerry the upper hand. Your exit polls were garbage and the people have spoken.
Go cry somewhere else loser

Re:I'm certainly a tinfoil hat wearer but...

[the_womble]

I don't see any difference between christian fundamentalists and muslim fundamentalists

Agreed

If these conservatives take away abortion right for their women, it is moral high ground and if muslims ask their women to wear Burkas, it is oppress

There is a fundamental difference: being scantilly clad does not harm anone, having an abortion harms the baby concerned.

I am largely politically what most Americans would consider liberal (if I was back in Britain I would vote Green or Liberal Democrat), but in fact I am more radial than those parties - take a look one of my old (no longer maintained for lack of time website for some of my views. However I regard abortion as murder, although I regard the critical point as being the development of brain funtion reacing a point where the baby becomes able to be consious of sensations such as pain (the time of which I do not believe is exactly known) rather than conception.

What I find very odd about American politics is the association between Chrisitans and conservatives: while there are Christian conservatives elsewhere, in my experince (Britain and Sri Lanka) Christians tend to be a lot more liberal than average (and can be quite radical if they are influenced by ideas such as liberation theology). The followers of the the American influenced evangelical churches tend to be right wing of course. Why?

Double Standard

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you imagine if China did this?

You would all be talking about the evil commies and evil chinamens who care not for freedom!

Re:Double Standard

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me, but China does censor the Internet... And, they are evil communists (redundant, I know) with such a high regard for freedom that they find it necessary to suppress protests with tank and gunfire.

Re:Double Standard

[Anonymous Coward]

The United States suppresses protests with tank and gun fire too just the US does to people in countries it's conquered not it's own people.

At least...

[The-Bus]

Luckily, everyone can still "Do a Lynndie" to their heart's content.

Re:At least...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are all the pictures i've seen of that blurred? Not that I have a huge desire to see Iraqi dick, but isn't any censorship of news of this sort inherently dangerous?

Re:At least...

[illumin8]

OMG, this is the funniest one:

Some nigerian 419 scammers with bags over their head and a sign that says "Baba Booey Howard Stern's Penis"...

Priceless...

The Abu Ghraib Coloring Book

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/11504468/

A small coloring book of images from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

What do you know about Abu Ghraib? What do you know about coloring books? What do you know about teaching conformity? About desensitization? About media and artist exploitation of suffering for financial gain. This swell coloring book wraps all that and more into nine pages that you can color yourself!

Re:The Abu Ghraib Coloring Book

[legirons]

"A small coloring book of images from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq."

I know it's already appeared on slashdot, but this hallowe'en costume was a real w.t.f.?!? moment...

Re:The Abu Ghraib Coloring Book

[Anonymous Coward]

The book is a good idea but the execution (no pun intended) is very lazy.

Re:The Abu Ghraib Coloring Book

[Tablizer]

Please God, don't let them expand into The Goatse Coloring Book.

Re:The Abu Ghraib Coloring Book

[Anonymous Coward]

From the creator:

i agree completely that (reworking the images) would produce a higher quality, more professional result. However the intent (was) more of a hit-and-run in this case, in the tradition of other trashy event-related publications, so in this case I felt justified in cheaping up the images rather than doing it right. But I really do not disagree with (previous comment). The notice of the "art exhibit" in NYC just sent me over the edge.. not the exhibit itself so much (I have not seen it) but the fawning review that stepped all over itself trying to explain to readers that what was on exhibit was "ok" for many twisty turney reasons. So it felt good to just slam my fist down and have this emerge fast and dirty and pissed off.

Great censoring

[hotdot]

Wow, now the united states are getting more like china ...

Freedom

[Lao-Tzu]

You know, freedom goes both ways - you have the right to see these images, but Google has the right to censor their own content.

"It's good to know that I should use Google's competitors to search for this type of thing, in case Google is holding back relevant results." - That statement makes this seem like a bad business decision.

Re:Freedom

[DeltaBlaster]

You know, freedom goes both ways - you have the right to see these images, but Google has the right to censor their own content.

Sure they have the right to, but is it a good idea? Of course not. We have the right.ability to just use another search engine if they are seceretly restricting information. Either way, it's still a pretty crappy thing to do.

Re:Freedom

[julesh]

You know, freedom goes both ways - you have the right to see these images, but Google has the right to censor their own content.

And I have the right to bitch and moan and stop using Google.

Re:Freedom

[vrimj]

Of course Google can censor what they like, but it is approprate to find such instances and call them on it. Censorship calls in to question Googles reliablity as an information provider and thus need to be reported on and highlighted.

I do not think anyone is saying they can't do this, they are only pointing out that as customers of Googles service they find it disturbing

Re:Freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

My issue is that some people, like CmdrTaco, immediately jump to "It must be the government!!! I HATE BUSH!!!" rather than actually investigating. Google's image index is seperate from the main index, and often has issues.

Re:Freedom

[metlin]

It is quite unlikely that Google would do any such thing, especially since everytime that they have done this in the past, they've specifically pointed out that the information has been censored.

For DMCA blocked pages, they explicitly mention so, etc.

Even if they have been asked to censor the results, Google would most certainly mention that fact -- and if they have been asked not to, they need not oblige if other search engines haven't been as well, especially since it would be hurtful to their business.

Re:Freedom

[h4rm0ny]

Sure they have the right to

I'm not decided on this one way or another, but maybe this is worth questioning. It seems to fall lower down, but on the same scale as, a news station that deliberately broadcast false information. That would be wrong, it would lying to people. Deliberately hiding information is a lesser cousin of that.

Now it seems like this may be a non-story in that Google is simply terribly slack about updating it's image database. But were it so and Google were concealing information from us, then that would be doing us harm in the form of keeping us ignorant and they have no right to do that.

If it took effort to bring us each website then perhaps they might have a stronger argument, but rather it takes effort to filter out the unapproved content. They may be privately owned, but so is your fist and there are still legal restrictions on what you can do to people with it. So do they really have that right?

Re:Freedom

[downbad]

we'll probably be seeing a lot more google-bashing articles now, seeing as Slashdot's new partner is Yahoo.

Re:Freedom

[Sanity]

And out come the Google fanboys...

You know, freedom goes both ways - you have the right to see these images, but Google has the right to censor their own content.

The issue is not whether Google has a right to do this, the issue is whether it is right for them to do it.

Re:Freedom

[fbg111]

but Google has the right to censor their own content.

Not when their stated motto is "Do no evil".

Re:Freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

all these posts along the lines of "Google can censor their own content if they want.."

For the last fucking time, it's not their bloody content - they are a search engine, the whole point is OTHER PEOPLE'S CONTENT.

Is this the work of Bush?

[qbzzt]

I'm guesing that this is another case of our administration confusing "National Security" with "Politically Undesirable".

Last time I checked, Google was a private company. It's very easy to fling accusations of censorship in a free society, but don't you think you need something more than "a private company wouldn't provide me the information"?

Bye

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

Google is publically traded and in a position of trust. They're free to edit their results, but such editing should be done in an environment of full disclosure. Instead, they're acting as 1984's Ministry of Truth, making information disappear for a large segment of the population that isn't savvy enough to look for it elsewhere.

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I checked, Google was a private company.

Last time I checked, Google was a public company. As such they are subject to their shareholders.

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone actually contact Google? Did CmdrTaco send them an email asking for comment? No... didn't think so. A couple months ago, Google wasn't listed in Google's index. Yup, the mighty Google had a flaw in their code. It happens. It wasn't some Anti-Google conspiracy within Google trying to remove it from the index.

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[matt_martin]

This is the new Amerika -

Private companies chisel away at all of the freedoms and protections that have been won throughout history. Sheep that we are, we sign them all away with the stroke a pen without even reading the "agreement". (Employment, service agreements, product purchases, money lending, etc)
In some cases all you need to do is "open the packaging" to implicitly agree with their version of the law.

With the media, you don't even sign anything. They just show us whatever they want us to see.

These practices were much more effective now than ever because there is a decreasing degree of competition out there (larger & more powerful companies with increasing power). You have fewer alternatives every day.

And since the trend is international, its hard to say that this is really an "American" pheomenon.
Maybe we're just noticing it first.

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody talks about Bush here. It's the "Do not be evil" turning into "Be politically correct".

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[John Seminal]

Last time I checked, Google was a private company. It's very easy to fling accusations of censorship in a free society, but don't you think you need something more than "a private company wouldn't provide me the information"?

You are missing something. The patriot act gives government all sorts of powers, some of which are illegal for us to know. Think about it, the ACLU sued government to see the whole patriot act, and they were denied. Government can now search your house, without a search warrent, and never tell you. Government can see all your records, bank accounts, library info and never tell you they did it. Before, government needed a warrent and the person knew what government recieved access too. Now there is no informing people they were the subject of an investigation. For all we know, one phone call from Tom Ridge to Google and the information is gone.

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[fireboy1919]

Yeah, so is CNN. But if, for example, CNN failed to cover the 9/11 story as it happened claiming it would affect confidence in our nation, I'd be a bit upset.

Google, like CNN, is a news source. It's integrity is based upon its ability to report what it has found without bias. Granted, CNN hasn't got a lot of integrity left in this area, but I'd expect that if something REALLY major happens, they'd report it to me.

In my mind, previously, google had a lot of integrity: I think they've been doing accurate search stuff without bias for a long time. They seem a bit less moral now. Let's hope they don't end up selling all their morals.

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[theantix]

Guess what? When a private company feels like it has to deny access to information that is inconvenient to the government, the difference is minimal. The fact is that these images used to be among the top returned by google and yet now they mysteriously do not exist anymore. We also know that Google willingly censors the net for China, apparently they are all too willing to do it on behalf of Bush's new "I have political capital an intend to spend it" America.

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[Morosoph]

So you think that you should never criticise a private company because it's private?

It seems to be a strange position. Google is so ubiquitous that surely people should at least know that it's liable to censor images, and an article like this one means that many will be that much more alert to the possibility. Customers need to be able to make informed choices, and in this case there is flagged a strong possibility of censorship. Or incompetence in that their engine really should have picked these up.

Either way, it's valuable information. People know that Google is less likely to be able to find images that they wish to locate, and this is the kind of feedback that consumers need to be able to make rational decisions.

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[DAldredge]

Please provide a link to the details of the ACLU lawsuit you are talking about.

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[ichthus]

*cought* bullshit *cough*

Proof please. Anyone who wants to know exactly what the Patriot Act entails can find out.

Fed agents still need a warrAnt to search your house. Difference now is that CIA can pass info on a suspect to the FBI. The FBI then goes to a Federal judge to get a warrAnt to search the suspect's home.

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Exactly. Ultimately all functions of the government will be replaced by private enterprise. When this happens we'll lose all of our freedoms. Constitution? What constitution? It only serves to limit the powers of government. But there are no such checks on the power of corporations. And everyone will live in denial. Censorship? How can there be censorship, there's no government to do it. It'll be called self-censorship instead and will be accepted by everyone.

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[belmolis]

The so-called Patriot Act is bad, but it isn't a secret. Here's a link to the complete text. Here's another. The ACLU didn't sue to see the complete Act. We (I'm not directly involved, but I'm proud to be a card-carrying member) sued to oppose certain actions under the act. The Act makes it illegal to disclose that some actions have been taken, e.g. that a search has taken place. That's why even mentioning the actions at issue was arguably illegal and a risk for the ACLU. Here's the ACLU press release.

The ACLU also took action, initially in the form of a Freedom of Information Act request, to find out how the government has been using the Act. Here's a link to the ACLU's press releases on the initial FOIA request and subsequent activity. The ACLU has all sorts of information about the "Patriot Act" here.

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[John Seminal]

Please provide a link to the details of the ACLU lawsuit you are talking about.

I will do more than that. Since many are saying it is BS that government can search without a warrent, here is something from http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID =12126&c=207

without a warrant and without probable cause, the FBI now has the power to access your most private medical records, your library records, and your student records... and can prevent anyone from telling you it was done.

I have seen law experts give the example that the FBI can go to your bank, demand to see all information about you, then order the bank to never reveal the government was there.

from http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/10/15/ramasastry.patri ot.act/

A national security letter is a piece of paper signed by an FBI agent, compelling disclosure of documents -- such as credit reports, bank records, and telephone/Internet billing and transaction records. Unlike in the case of a warrant, no court reviews or approves security letters; an agent issues them directly.

No individualized suspicion of the person whose records are being sought is required. No foreign government or agent needs to be involved. The FBI does not have to show a judge a compelling need for the records. Nor is there any way set forth by which the recipient could fight the letter. Indeed, to the contrary, receiving a security letter, by law, must be kept secret.

Here is another, from the New York Times, talking about how the FBI is now stopping congress from talking. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/20/politics/20class ify.html

People are puzzled and, frankly, worried, because the effect here is to quash Congressional oversight. We don't even know what we can't talk about.

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[back_pages]

I'm also curious about the details. I did 5 minutes of Googling (got irony? want some?) and came up with this which sort of could be interpreted (incorrectly, I think) as the parent poster has. Rather than keeping the PATRIOT act secret, it appears that lawsuits regarding the PATRIOT act are kept secret - however these lawsuits would establish case law which further defines the PATRIOT act, and if that case law is secret, then important limitations of the PATRIOT act are kept secret.

I'm not lawyer, though, and don't know the procedures around gag-ordered lawsuits. I don't know if the court's decision would be made public or not - but in some fantasy country where freedom and the Constitution matter, I'm sure it would all be public.

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[arivanov]

Proof that it is the US government and not Google doing it voluntarily. 'cause that is possible. It may in fact be a wise idea considering that Joseph Wissarionowich Bush now has 4 more years to deploy his chapter 58 3-person tribunals for the protection of fatherland.

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is two ways to control information for a government. The first one is using force. This is the way China do it. The second one is using morality. It's using words like "evil" or "unamerican". This is the way the US do it.

In countries like China, governments make you shut up. In countries like the US, it's your neighbour (who's stupid enough to believe is his governemnt's rhetoric) who make you shut up.

Free Speech in the US is mostly an illusion.

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[no soup for you]

What people are calling bullshit on is that you said that the law was a secret. You said that the ACLU sued the government to get access to the entire law. That is categorically false, you as well as anyone in the world, can read the law in its entirety.

The law's effects might be exempt from informing you of when events happen. But the law itself is open for you to view.

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[SirChive]

The most frightening thing about all this is that almost all of the politicians who passed this law just got reelected.

Americans have surrendered their freedoms without so much as a whimper. Try explaining the realities of the "Patriot Act" to people. Only one in ten would be willing to listen for more than 2 minutes. And only about half or less of those would really care.

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[2nd Post!]

But Google ISN'T a news source. They are at best an aggregator, at worst an index.

Their integrity as an aggregator or index may be reduced by this, but news source? Maybe in a year when they've decided to enter into the 'information modeling' field, but right now their only fault is not being as good a search engine as the competition.

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[fireboy1919]

They are surely more than an index because they do so much intelligent filtering.

As to your other comment, how much of news is based upon summarizing what someone else already said? Most of it, I think. Considering that, most news sources are aggregators, and I think I'd be willing to claim that all aggregators are news sources.

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut the fuck up.

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[kingkrap]

Maybe there is an answer in this article.

{
Without a Doubt By RON SUSKIND

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
}

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

That's why we have regulatory agencies. But of course this evil FCC is evilly regulating this so-called "spectrum", so government regulation is bad.

Use the government to your advantage, people.

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[NotoriousQ]

This is what the free market is for. People will flock to the companies that give have less censorship, and other companies can not do anything to stop those. Hence the market drive toward more freedom.

The main issue is the free market. You have to make sure that monopolies of ANY form do not exist. This would include power companies, phone, cable, etc. Monopolies form a sort of the private government, and IMHO must be treated in the same way.

Example: do you know that your ISP can read your email legally. But some ISP have in their privacy policy that they will not, unless forced by the judicial branch. Choose those that have this policy.

Re:Is this the work of Bush?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

This is what the free market is for

And why, pray tell, do we have a Constitution, when all we have to do is vote people out when they act like tyrants? The Constitution seems kinda redundant. But it's not, because as we all know, a crude tool like the ballot box can easily fail us. Same thing goes for markets. I don't want to trust my rights to the hope that a bunch of ignorant people will choose companies that provide less censorship. We all know that doesn't happen.

Ads

[mckniglj]

I love slashdot. Under 'related links', there's a link for 'Best deals: Censorship' through PriceGrabber.

Sorry, it made me laugh.

Re:Ads

[Anonymous Coward]

My personal favorite is:

"Sponsored Links

Satori
Great Prices on Apparel.
Clothing - Shoes - Shop on eBay!
www.eBay.com"

Re:Ads

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but only the link is ridiculous. One would expect to follow the link and find the best censorship tools. Yet, there's only books about censorship and such...

Same with spam. Best Deals in Spam gives you pointers to anti-spam tools.

Your Imagination

[Anonymous Coward]

The American government would not specifically censor only Google. If the images are available at Yahoo!, then there must be another explanation for the inaccessibility of said images at Google.

Allow me to take a stab at the explanation.

Unlike Yahoo! and other fine American companies, Google engages in self-censorship for some political reason. For example, Google censors many types of information when Chinese users in China (including Taiwan province and Hong Kong) query for it.

Google is probably trying to compensate for the fact that it tends to favor foreigners in its hiring practices. Estimates indicate that more than 30% of its workforce are former or current H-1Bs. So, in order to try to look more "American", Google has censored the Abu Ghraib pictures.

Not even a disclaimer

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't even have a little disclaimer at the bottom, like the Kazaa lite pages that they blocked because of the DMCA request.... I'm starting to think it's time to find a new search engine.

Lost for respect

[Janitha]

I held my upmost respect for Google and being a very loyal Googler. This, if in fact was a self sensorship, my respect for that is going to go down very much, I would feel backstabbed by google. If its the govt, I wouldnt really have anything agaist Google.

This begs the question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Google affiliated with the Theo-Cons in some way?

Another spin..

[nuclear305]

"I'm guesing that this is another case of our administration confusing "National Security" with "Politically Undesirable"."

I'm going to play devil's advocate here...if you were those prisoners would you want humiliating images of you readily available to the world? I can't imagine anyone saying "Yea, that would be great! Now the world can see what happened to me!"

I can't speak as to why Google is censoring the images, IF they really are...but I can think of several reasons to do so that have nothing to do with Big Brother conspiracies.

Re:Another spin..

[vjzuylen]

There were plenty of pictures where the prisoners were not identifyable. Also, your theory doesn't account for the absence of Lynndie's pictures.

Re:Another spin..

[jacksonj04]

I'm going to take the bait...

Because if the humiliating pictures of you weren't available to the world, then the US marines would still be breaking all kinds of conventions with regards to human rights, since nobody would know they were doing it.

THAT's why they should be available.

Re:Another spin..

[gl4ss]

****

I'm going to play devil's advocate here...if you were those prisoners would you want humiliating images of you readily available to the world? I can't imagine anyone saying "Yea, that would be great! Now the world can see what happened to me!"

****

yeah, I _WOULD_ like those pics to be spread, to show the world wtf was going on.

If there's anything, I'd be glad they were so fucking stupid as to photograph themselfs doing that shit.

Re:Another spin..

[Anonymous Coward]

.if you were those prisoners would you want humiliating images of you readily available to the world?

guy> if you went camping with someone
gal> uh huh,
guy> and woke up with a sore asshole, a bad taste in your mouth, and vaseline smeared all over your body, would you want to tell anyone?
gal> no...
guy> cool, wanna go camping?

Re:Another spin..

[westlake]

I can't speak as to why Google is censoring the images, IF they really are...but I can think of several reasons to do so that have nothing to do with Big Brother conspiracies.

The Nazis documented things beyond imaging, but does that mean a research service like Google has to give you instant access to every pornographic image in the historical archieves?

Re:Another spin..

[m50d]

Oh no. I'd much prefer that no-one knew I was being tortured and the public never complained about the inhumane treatment I was getting. It's so much better when you're being tortured if you know the person torturing you has no chance at all of getting in any trouble for it, so much more bearable than if they're going to be charged with war crimes. Idiot.

Re:Another spin..

[Anonymous Coward]

If it would alreaddy be available on everynewssourceintheworld.com, then yes I'd like google to return those pages if I did a search for it...

Re:Another spin..

[westlake]

If it would alreaddy be available on everynewssourceintheworld.com, then yes I'd like google to return those pages if I did a search for it...

What you want and what Google is willing and able provide are two different things.

We are taking about linking to unconsionably sadistic and pornographic images which you have no prima facia need to see, I think the victims and their families should have some say in this, our military courts, and the people of Iraq. Google is not a newspaper and it's legal exposure in cases like these is unknown.

It's their own doing.

[Icegryphon]

They Censored my friend's website for being hate speech against gays. Even though there is no mention of anything about gays. It's googles choice and if you don't like it leave them. They are a company and can do what they want. So take off your liberal tin foil hat.

This is what happens when companies go public.

[palutke]

I'm guesing that this is another case of our administration confusing "National Security" with "Politically Undesirable".

No, somebody in Google's 'risk management' department probably decided that it would be a prudent step to avoid bad publicity or offending shareholders. The minute Google went public, their primary responsibility became looking after the best interests of their shareholders, not being an impartial index of internet sites.

Re:This is what happens when companies go public.

[Malc]

And you think a search engine with a reputation for unreliability is going to be popular enough to generate maximum revenues for those shareholders?

Re:This is what happens when companies go public.

[palutke]

Personally? No, I don't. However, the folks at Google didn't ask for my input on this particular decision.

Re:This is what happens when companies go public.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really think the average user reads Slashdot or gives a shit that Google is censoring Abu Gharib pictures? I think not.

Re:This is what happens when companies go public.

[grammar nazi]

No, somebody in Google's 'risk management' department probably decided that it would be a prudent step to avoid bad publicity or offending shareholders. The minute Google went public, their primary responsibility became looking after the best interests of their shareholders, not being an impartial index of internet sites.

I am bothered by people who assume that if it has to do with capitalism, then it's automatically bad. This is _NOT_ what happens when companies go public.

Re:This is what happens when companies go public.

[payndz]

The minute Google went public, their primary responsibility became looking after the best interests of their shareholders, not being an impartial index of internet sites.

Somehow I find it hard to believe that 'do no evil' and 'maximise returns for shareholders' are compatible philosophies - especially when the latter is actually enshrined in the law!

Related point: in the UK, Body Shop founder Anita Roddick was recently on the radio. She talked about how Body Shop had put money (not a huge amount, either) into a civic project - IIRC, it was a kids' playground in Glasgow. Good publicity for the company, you'd think. Wrong - she got torn apart in the financial pages and by the City for 'wasting' money that would get no return for the shareholders!

There's something wrong with the system when a selfless deed to improve the lives of others is considered a bad thing...

Google's just trying to keep perspective

[Baldrson]

There are hundreds of thousands if not millions of acts of racist sexual sadism in US prisons every year and you don't see expose pictures of those on any search engine anywhere.

The sexual sadism of Abu Ghraib is insignificant by comparison and may even be seen as a symptom of the US penal system's standards.

Google is merely trying to keep things in perspective.

Re:Google's just trying to keep perspective

[vjzuylen]

Did it ever occur to you that this goes beyond the US or its penal system? Non-US Google users couldn't care less about the racist sexual sadism in US prisons, so why would Google be "trying to keep things in perspective" for them as well?

Re:Google's just trying to keep perspective

[vondo]

Is google a news organization now?

No, it's a search engine.

No idea why they might have done this, but I don't want google making judgements on what it thinks I should see.

Re:Google's just trying to keep perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

The fuck with your perspective. If I wanted getting the "perspective" I would have watched Fox or somebody else. I want mechanic, automated web search and if google doesn't provide it, there are other alternatives just good enough.

Re:Google's just trying to keep perspective

[Atraxen]

Got any citations for those numbers? "[H]undreds of thousands if not millions of acts of racist sexual sadism" sounds a bit high to me.

Re:Google's just trying to keep perspective

[macrom]

US penal system's standards

You just HAD to use that word when referring to these pictures, didn't you?

Re:Google's just trying to keep perspective

[rsklnkv]

Due to the fact that so many corporations (American Express, Merrill Lynch, GE, Shearson Lehman, Etc) in the US either directly or indirectly make a profit off of the Prison Industry, it is extremely difficult to get mention of much scandal out from behind bars. Also, I would imagine it would be easier (at least at the time of said abuse) to get a camera in Abu Ghraib than in a US prison and into a segregation cell where much of the abuse takes place.
And you didn't even mention INS lockups!
I can't even imagine...But if you are interested try reading this book :
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0 520 239423/qid=1099847168/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/102-9360 843-2040902?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Re:Google's just trying to keep perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they didn't DO this. Google's image search just sucks.

Google + text search = good
Google + image seacrh = teh suck

Quit playing the victim - or are you starting to realize that it's cool to hate Google around here now that it's so popular? Soon you'll be bashing Firefox as well.

No Matter

[niko9]

Some people here will still praise Google as if it were Jesus no matter what they do.

Re:No Matter

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

I call it the "Apple phenomenon." Apple gets a pass for makiing DMCA threats, suing skinners, crippling their software, using DRM, and stuff that Bill Gates would be tarred and feathered for in this forum. Apparently, it only takes fancy design or a few freebies to buy off the Slashdot "community."

Flamebait

[DanielMarkham]

Can we moderate the whole article to flamebait?

While things may or may not appear in a google search, how the heck does that have anything to do with the current administration or national security?

People got a right to run companies the way they want to. If I wrote a search engine, perhaps I wouldn't want anything to do with French fries to appear, or pedophilia, or digestional disorders. The more intersting question is: How do we inform the public what is crossed out?

How did the author determine this? Is there some kind of automated search engine tester? Now THAT would be an intersting slashdot story.

Re:Flamebait

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

Google has no right to an implied claim of impartiality if they are censoring results. If they censor results for political or other reasons, that fact should be prominently posted. But it isn't, because they want to have their cake and eat it, too.

Re:Flamebait

[Kamel Jockey]

While things may or may not appear in a google search, how the heck does that have anything to do with the current administration or national security?

Agreed. If you google for "Miserable Failure" you still get linked to President Bush's official White House page. If there was any sort of political influence on Google that would have been changed.

Re:Flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical: you guys are always so ready to mod anything you don't like as "flamebait".

The article raises a valid question: is Google doing self-censorship, perhaps in resopnse to a government request? The answer appears to be that Google image search just sucks. But that's an answer one gets to after some discussion and examination.

Images Index Old

[christowang]

I've found the Google Image Index to be quite old. For instance if you type in 'world series', you get images of 2002 and before. The Red Sox are stilled cursed.

I think it's possible that no images have been indexed of the prisoners over the sensoring theory.

Type in 'abu ghraib images' in the Web search and the first page that comes up is detailed images of the abuse.

Re:Images Index Old

[Anonymous Coward]

http://images.google.dk/imgres?imgurl=http://gwbus h04.com/boot/i/foxdecidesbush1.jpg&imgrefurl=http: //www.gwbush04.com/archives/000182.php&h=185&w=276 &sz=44&tbnid=popzrfRxTpAJ:&tbnh=73&tbnw=108&start= 5&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpresidential%2Belection%26hl% 3Dda%26lr%3D

Maybe slow, but definitly not old.

Re:Images Index Old

[argStyopa]

Stop it with your right wing apologia!

Logic has no place in the real of tinfoil hats!

Re:Images Index Old

[Anonymous Coward]

are you sure that 'moderate safe search' was not on? ;)

Re:Images Index Old

[the_quark]

I think this hits it on the head - Images isn't updated very often. Check out, for example, pictures of the toddler who was rescued from a well a week ago. A regular Google search for Jermere McMillan photo returns 117 results, the first of which has a picture. An image search for Jermere McMillan returns no result. Although it's hard to imagine what the Bush administration's angle is on supressing that picture.

Even more clearly that this is not a sinister Bush /Rove plot: Ashley Faulkner is a girl whose mother died on September 11, 2001. There is a recently famous picture of George Bush giving Ashley a hug that a Bush-friendly 527 made into a political ad. This picture has been known about for some time; the picture was taken at the beginning of May and was reported on at the time. It's certainly had time to propagate through the net: A google search for Ashley Faulkner Bush photo returns 4290 results, the first few of which all include the picture. A Google image search for Ashley Faulkner Bush returns no images. Explain to me again how propagating this image would be "Politcally Undesirable" for the Bush administration.

Rob just speculating this is government malfeasance is ridiculous. There is no evidence to support his positiona and no evidence to even suggest it. Slashdot should post a conspicious retraction to this groundless acusation. The story here isn't "Bush represses Google," it's "Google's image index isn't updated very often." Stick to reporting the news, please, not your tired conspiracy theories!

Re:Images Index Old

[Fancia]

The story claims that Google Image Search used to be able to find them, however. If that's the case, then *something* happened to remove them from the index.

Re:Images Index Old

[Tablizer]

Check out, for example, pictures of the toddler who was rescued from a well a week ago. A regular Google search for Jermere McMillan photo returns 117 results, the first of which has a picture. An image search for Jermere McMillan returns no result...Although it's hard to imagine what the Bush administration's angle is on supressing that picture.

Simple: They tried to knock John Kerry into a well, but obviously missed. Must have slipped on a grassy knowle or something.

Re:Images Index Old

[Alsee]

Stop it with your right wing apologia!
Logic has no place in the real of tinfoil hats!

Good job leaping to accept any illogical explanation that happens to defend your ideology!

As the story said, Google had PREVIOUSLY indexed and had been returning these images. They have apparently been actively REMOVED.

-

Re:Images Index Old

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck is a knowle?

Is it possible that you meant knoll? Yes? Why the fuck didn't you even try to spell it correctly?

Yor spehlehng is reel gud. Trai Whoocked Awn Phoneecks. Downt fohrgit two reerite yor rhesoomey ths wai. Yool go fahr.

Re:Images Index Old

[Tablizer]

Competition to GNU :-)

A consumer may choose.

[rastakid]

Ever consider that Google is a business and has the right to choose what they want to include themselves?

Jup, that's right. But keep in mind that the consumer has also a right: the right to choose. So, if Google does censor its spider index, the consumer has the right to know that and based on that information may choose to continue using Google, or may start using another search engine.
Remember that Google has only admitted censoring its index in the past after someone said 'Hey, I can't find page "blabla" using Google'. It would be better if they announced censoring on the forehand.

Re:A consumer may choose.

[sabernet]

However this appears only to affect the US

I can see the photos quite easily via google.ca and I've never gotten a DMCA warning. Google is following your laws and pressures but is at least nice enough to leave us out of it.

Re:A consumer may choose.

[acebone]

I can't see them via google.dk (Denmark)

Re:A consumer may choose.

[sabernet]

then they like us better;)

Re:A consumer may choose.

[raju1kabir]

However this appears only to affect the US

I just did two searches: One on images.google.com.my, using a Malaysian IP address, and one on images.google.com, using an American IP address. I searched for "lynndie england" (no quotes). In both cases I got zero results. The same search on Yahoo's image search engine gives me 239 matches.

Just curious: What do you get when you search from Canada?

Re:A consumer may choose.

[sabernet]

this is interesting, when I search for it via a US based proxy, I can still see them.... maybe your country has a firewall like china now:) but honestly, I can see them via both google.ca and google.com via pureprivacy.com bizarre

Re:A consumer may choose.

[aduzik]

The consumer has a right to choose, but why does that imply that Google is compelled to provide those images? Google, as a company, has its own best interests in mind, which means providing what they consider to be the best to the consumer. If you don't think it's the best, then it's your responsibility to seek something better.

Re:A consumer may choose.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing, he's full of shit. Zero Results.

Google has only two choices with the DMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

They either follow the take down notice (which they do, and often point you to it where there are links to the material taken down) or fight a huge lawsuit. Yes, we might want them to fight a large court battle, but I doubt their investors/stock holders would want them to.

Your Imagination

[Anonymous Coward]

The American government would not specifically censor only Google. If the images are available at Yahoo!, then there must be another explanation for the inaccessibility of said images at Google. Allow me to take a stab at the explanation.

Unlike Yahoo! and other fine American companies, Google engages in self-censorship for some political reason. For example, Google censors many types of information when Chinese users in China (including Taiwan province and Hong Kong) query for it.

Google is probably trying to compensate for the fact that it tends to favor foreigners in its hiring practices. Estimates indicate that more than 30% of its workforce are former or current H-1Bs. So, in order to try to look more "American", Google has censored the Abu Ghraib pictures.

that's right, you're guessing

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guesing that this is another case of our administration confusing "National Security" with "Politically Undesirable"

that's right, you're guessing. how about we find out who is respossible for removing the images and then ask them.

Xfree86

[Anonymous Coward]

remember that?

What the crap?

[Lord Bitman]

What happened to "Dont be evil"?

I'll never use google again

[Anonymous Coward]

Google's good but frankly it ain't so fantastic that I can't use a competitor.

Your Imagination

[Anonymous Coward]

The American government would not specifically censor only Google. If the images are available at Yahoo!, then there must be another explanation for the inaccessibility of said images at Google. Allow me to take a first stab at the explanation.

Unlike Yahoo! and other fine American companies, Google engages in self-censorship for some political reason. For example, Google censors many types of information when Chinese users in China (including Taiwan province and Hong Kong) query for it.

Google is probably trying to compensate for the fact that it tends to favor foreigners in its hiring practices. Estimates indicate that more than 30% of its workforce are former or current H-1Bs. So, in order to try to look more "American", Google has censored the Abu Ghraib pictures.

And Yet..Invasion.

[Anonymous Coward]

"... if I do a google image search for "goatse" I get all kinds of nasty results. Certainly those should be blocked as well. They are clearly a threat to national security."

Who wants to invade there?

Re:And Yet..Invasion.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Who wants to invade there?

Tubgirl

Isnt this evil?

[Anonymous Coward]

Censorship is evil.

Didnt we get a "dont be evil" promise? :(

-sigh-

Welcome...

[Anonymous Coward]

...to the fourth reich.

And if you think that's too extreme, do some research into what fascism really means, particularly the level of corporate/gov't ties.

Not the OP, the EDITOR

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, those are CmdrTaco's words. The original poster's words are in italics.

www.ogrish.com

[dummkopf]

if you want completely uncensored pictures and movies from the atrocities happenening due to poor policymaking of a certain world power you should look at www.ogrish.com. while i have to admit that the framework is rather tasteless, if you really want to get an idea of what atrocoties are (besides the fact of the existence of such webpages) you should definitely have a look. and if you intend to vote for another shrub in the future, you should have a look and think twice...

Re:www.ogrish.com

[Scorpius-nl]

Indeed, how horrible the movies and pictures might be, it shows the sad truth of what is really happening arround the world. You can't deny that the existance of such a site is part of a free and uncensored web, which should be defended. But already some countries block the site, like spain because of the movies of the madrid bombings.

-1, Idiotic.

[Wakko Warner]

Hello? Google is an information provider. What they're doing, if they're doing it, is knowingly and willfully blocking access to information, simply because that information happens to be controversial.

Would you like it if your doctor only told you what was right with your body?

Idiot.

- A.P.

Re:-1, Idiotic.

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you're pretty upset that've removed people spamming from the index. Your analogy is so flawed, I don't even know where to start.

Re:-1, Idiotic.

[Wakko Warner]

And you're officially the worst troll ever.

God, what happened to GNAA? The page full of barely-topical links with hidden redirects to goatse?

This place has really gone downhill. You know I'm right, and you're not even a good troll. Just go back to sleep, little boy.

- A.P.

Re:-1, Idiotic.

[Atzanteol]

Way to miss the point buddy. He was saying it's likely to be Googles fault, not the US Governments in this case. He further points out that other search engines still show the pictures.

As yet, we don't know *why* they aren't shown by google. Perhaps even the families of those involved asked they be removed?

Re:-1, Idiotic.

[Wakko Warner]

Well done. That's slashdot as I remember it.

- A.P.

Re:-1, Idiotic.

[AchilleTalon]

They don't block access to information. You can still search using competitor's engines. They just don't allow searches using their engine. The information is still available somewhere on the net and other engines can be used to find it.

Also, Google is not an information provider. It's an ads provider and search engine provider. Not quite the same thing.

Re:-1, Idiotic.

[dipipanone]

> What they're doing, if they're doing it, is > knowingly and willfully blocking access to > information, simply because that information > happens to be controversial. What exactly do you think is controversial about Lynndie England and Abu Ghraib? These photographs have been shown in all of the major news media everywhere in the world -- and the Abu Ghraib images actually show up if you Google from the UK. Perhaps you mean 'controversial' in the same way that Stalin regarded photographs of Trotsky as controversial?

Re:-1, Idiotic.

[Anonymous Coward]

Err, I think you're behind the news. Google is now officialy Evil Company (tm).

Re:-1, Idiotic.

[cicho]

The information they're blocking is not even controversial. These are well-documented facts, the images are evidence, they're raw data. Google is blanking out portions of _history_.

I've read about the many perceived problems with Google before and ignored them because Google is free to do whatever they want yadda yadda. But this is giving me a major pause.

Re:-1, Idiotic.

[ShinmaWa]

The information they're blocking is not even controversial. These are well-documented facts, the images are evidence, they're raw data. Google is blanking out portions of _history_.

Isn't this interesting?

Someone posts a question to a tech forum website, which then gets turned into a conjecture, which then becomes an accusation by Slashdot, which then becomes solid indesputable fact by the parent poster here... all despite the fact that you can get to the information very easily by doing a Google search on "Abu Ghraib photos". Not that anyone even bothered to TRY....

Whatever happened to fact-checking and thinking for yourself? What happened to never taking anything at face-value? Are we so used to be screwed by faceless corporations that we make these reactionary knee-jerk blind leaps without any real evidence to back them up?

Re:-1, Idiotic.

[Anonymous Coward]

You got it dude

I've got no sig...

Useful links there

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you mean: lyndie england
Your search - lynndie england - did not match any documents.

*click*

Your search - lyndie england - did not match any documents.

Taco, You're A Nitwit

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea...I'm sure Karl Rove just so happened to goto google and not any other search engine and got them to remove those images. Are dirty political tricks or other black-helicopter conspiracy theories the first thing to come in your mind?

Seriously, Taco you may be a great coder, but your childish and inane politics is stupid. Why don't you pick up a book and really learn what "your rights" really means?

Re:Taco, You're A Nitwit

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, Taco you may be a great coder...

No, not really...

Re:Taco, You're A Nitwit

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, Taco you may be a great coder

Where do you base this on? I can point out so many flaws in Slashcode that its unbelievable and they refuse to fix or acknowledge them. On the contrary, Malda is an average, if that, coder with avererage IQ and talent.

Never trust a single source

[Teun]

However good Google might be, this is just a proof of why not to trust a single source.

Because we've started to see Google as The Best, this is The Best proof of why not to trust a single source.

We all know that Google has a sort of Moral Conduct Policy (like no gun advertising) but maybe they should make it optional like with is the SafeSearch option to limit the exposure to, of all thing, people in their natural state.

At least their wish for Moral Conduct should make them set up an easily accessible list of things they have 'banned', be it on request or following their own standards.

Re:Never trust a single source

[Hockney Twang]

I woman bound hand and foot and dangling from the ceiling with a garden hose shoved into her vagina is not in her "natural state." Much of the imagery found on the internet is so freakish that even hardline perverts such as myself blanch a little at the sight of it. I appreciate having the option to filter out some of it. Of course, "option" is key, I don't want it filtered without my consent, and I don't think that just because I don't wanna see it means no one else should be able to find it, should they choose.

Re:Never trust a single source

[kloidster]

I whole heartedly agree. We need more diversity in our information sources. The only thing that can help prevent our decidedly our new found unAmercanism is to diversify.

Re:Never trust a single source

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, you wouldn't happen to have, ahem, a link to that, um, hose thing, would you?

Google just sucks

[blamanj]

Sorry, conspiricy theorists. There's a simpler answer, and that's that Google isn't the right tool for the job. Use Yahoo or Picsearch.

To verify this, try the following search "Obama convention". You'll get hits on Yahoo and Picsearch, but not Google. Goolge image search simply isn't timely. Their image index cycle appears to be about six months, and the Abu Ghraib pictures in (I think) around June.

If Google were truly censoring, they'd censor the text search too, and you can easily find the pictures using the text search.

Re:Google just sucks

[Neophytus]

Perhaps then they should step up their renewal cycle, at least when indexing new pages into their database. With 20/20 hindsight it's an obvious problem.

Re:Google just sucks

[M1FCJ]

Results 1 - 10 of about 71,800 for Obama convention. (0.14 seconds

What was I supposed to look for in these 71.8k links?

Re:Google just sucks

[the_demiurge]

I think it sucks for news-type images too. Look at "Bush Cincinnati":
Google image search
Yahoo image search

The Yahoo one returns the images that I was expecting.

Re:Google just sucks

[Mornelithe]

Shhh.

Google is getting very big, and they just became a publicly traded company. That means it's becoming fashionable (on Slashdot) to lambast Google based on whatever the conspiracy theory of the day is. Obivously they're censoring, and we should all complain about how news sources have a responsibility to report unbiased versions of the news and both sides of the story. Never mind that Google doesn't really produce news reports, and that there's no such thing as an unbiased news source that reports all sides of the story, and that there's probably a reasonable explanation besides censorship in this case.

Please, let's not let logic enter into this. Groupthink and alarmism is much easier, and more accepted around here.

Re:Google just sucks

[hikerhat]

You're supposed to look for images with the image search. Not links with the web search.

Re:Google just sucks

[acoustix]

"Results 1 - 10 of about 71,800 for Obama convention. (0.14 seconds What was I supposed to look for in these 71.8k links?"

Please tell me that you're not that retarded. The discussion is about the IMAGE search, not the web search.

-Nick

Re:Google just sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Hellooooo, Obama is a Democrat. Surely the current administration is censoring this as well!

*tightens tin foil hat*

Re:Google just sucks

[hikerhat]

Hmm. But if you search for barack obama you do get hits. Including his pic at the Illinois state senate web site, which must have only been updated a few days ago.

Re:Google just sucks

[blamanj]

Uh, you were supposed to do an image search. It returns about 71.8K fewer links.

Re:Google just sucks

[blamanj]

Yes, but that has an explanation, too. News images rotate in on a temporary basis from the "News" secton. You can find images from "Bush wins election 2004" as well (though not "Kerry concedes", but they may well disappear by December.

Re:Google just sucks

[radtea]

What part of "Google used to be able to find them" don't you understand?

--Tom

Re:Google just sucks

[Dun Malg]

You're supposed to look for images with the image search. Not links with the web search.

What do you mean "supposed to"? Maybe if you want to avoid deflating your rampant paranoia. The truth is not that Google censors Abu Ghraib pictures, but that Google's image search sucks. The fact that plenty of pics are findable via the text search proves this point.

Re:Google just sucks

[TheRaven64]

That would be believable, if it weren't for the fact that doing the image search on google.co.uk instead of google.com reveals the relevant images.

Re:Google just sucks

[Dun Malg]

Sorry, disregard my previous reply. The post you were replying to had disappeared due to down-mods and totally screwed up the context in which I read yours.

Re:Google just sucks

[camooT]

Google and other search engines are the only viable portal to the internet. If your sight is stripped from all search engines, and you don't put out massive amounts of ads and have many, many popular websites link to you, your site might as well not exist at all. Thus, when the engines censor something, they are more or less removing something from the internet.

Of course, the Abu Gharib images are easy to find elsewhere, but it's the concept that matters. This isn't the only thing that google has censored, it's given into legal pressure from groups like the Church of Scientology and Microsoft, and who knows what else. If google gives in this easy to pressure, and other groups catch on, than we wouldn't be able to trust what we find on google anymore. However, Google will remain deceptively innocent to the masses, and their searches for "Iraq War Crimes" will remain deceptively CENSORED. The internet is the single most popular and accessible portal for free speech, so obviously, it's scary when you realize that your most trusted portals are cracking down on controversial material.

Group think? Alarmism? I think you've got your terms mixed up. If anything, they're antonyms, where in the latter serves to counteract the former.

As for logic, I think your lack of any logical argument elaborating on why you think censorship isn't important speaks for itself.

Re:Google just sucks

[M1FCJ]

I don't know anything about this "Obama convention" thing, be fair. What's so important about pictures about Obama and a convention? Please explain.

AFAIK, Google is all about ranking, if no one refers your page, it ranks at the bottom. Are these pictures referred enough or at all?

Re:Google just sucks

[M1FCJ]

and the point is? This Obama name gets blocked or what or is this the widely known fact of Google image search does suck?

Re:Google just sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

By principle Google as a publicly traded company, regardless of particular event here, should have announced its censorship of information so the public may decide; this may be different now-it is an American company-but all the more reason to make it known. This applies to all companies everywhere subject to public approval, their actions should be made public. Populations at war have different views though, likely no substantial effect in this even if it becomes common knowledge.

Re:Google just sucks

[afxgrin]

Actually, it's much easier to stop using their service.

Fuck Google. There's many many other search engines on the net. Since I now know Google is engaging in self-censorship, I'll just use another site that is not.

Re:Google just sucks

[blamanj]

Did you actually look at the images or just notice that images were returned?

A search on google.co.uk does not return any of the torture photos.

Re:Google just sucks

[vena]

that doesn't seem to figure. images from abu ghraib have been hitting the news stands the world over again with the election and various foreign papers extoling the failures of the administration, as well as continually published as domestic papers revisit the issue for non-partisan reexamination. these papers are indexed by google news - where are the images?

Re:Google just sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

idiot. Obama's been elected to the U.S. Senate after serving in the State Senate.... BIG difference.

-e.

Re:Google just sucks

[blamanj]

The point is that if you are looking for proof that Google is bad at indexing relatively recent photos, you would pick an event that would illustrate this.

The recently elected senator of Illinois, Barak Obama, was a big hit at the Democratic National Convention. You would, therefore, expect to find pictures of him. As I pointed out, you can at other search engines, but not at Google.

It is, therefore, reasonable to believe that the same is true of the Abu Ghraib photos. Just a little appllication of the scientific method.

Re:Google just sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all online papers have the images. Go search for Abu Gharib in News, and then search for Abu Gharib in Images, and you'll see a lot of the same images. The non-news based images are pretty old.

Re:Google just sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

So the BBC is biased now?

Re:Google just sucks

[blargorama]

Funny, I have no problem using Google Images to find pictures of the recent lunar eclipse. I've *never* found Google to be six months behind on their images.

Re:Google just sucks

[toby]

conspiracy theory of the day

What a long day it has been, and continues to be...

Re:Google just sucks

[Rahga]

I've just put together a page on this topic. It explains how a picture of Morgan Webb that was removed from a server over 7 months ago can still drive traffic to a website from Google Images.

Re:Google just sucks

[cicho]

It sucks in a weirdly selective manner, though. Do an image search for "Abu Ghraib". Six pages of results. Not one image relevant to the issue of prison torture.

Re:Google just sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

"This isn't the only thing that google has censored, it's given into legal pressure from groups like the Church of Scientology and Microsoft, and who knows what else."

s/google/slashdot

Re:Google just sucks

[cicho]

I get no image search results for "Lynndie England" on google.co.uk. (safe search off) You do? Could it rather be that Google filters results based on geolocation?

Re:Google just sucks

[l0ungeb0y]

No, that's not the case at all. Google had plenty of Abu Ghraib pics not too long ago. Now they are gone.

I'm not sure if I'll stop using Google -- but my trust in them just sank to the point where I'd rather go to other engines first.

Re:Google just sucks

[Alsee]

What part of "Google used to be able to find them" don't you understand?

The part where you personally attacked him.

Our beloved leader is trying to protect us. We must all stand in unity and support to defend ourselves. An attack on Bush weakens and endangers us all. It is a personal attack on each and every one of us.

So naturally his reaction was to counter attack the claim, in self defence.

P.S.
See sig for my personal oppinion.

-

Re:Google just sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

By using the word "fashionable" and invoking a generalization of how others must think you dismiss the possibility that Google's decision is political. At the moment I really don't care about Google's decision. If they are censoring I'll simply use another search engine. What's more interesting is that a view different than yours, or one that's not completely expressed, is rebuffed by suggesting that those individuals are simply not in step with the (objective) truth.

I'm not an American but it was the same strategy employed in the recent election. Those opposing the Iraq war were caste as unpatriotic or cowards. There was no debate or individual study to evaluate the complexity of the situation and the mixed evidence for and against. The world was divided into the rational and the irrational - if you're against a particular view point then clearly one is irrational and cannot be taken seriously. The merits, or potential merits, are not taken seriously - believers.

Your argument can now be used to defend any large entity without ever resorting to facts because you wish to close the discussion before it gets started.

Why? You didn't pose your response in terms of "hold on a minute there could be many possible explanations ". You reduced the original point as potentially being cultish in nature to (implicitly) divert attention from a complete discourse.

Re:Google just sucks

[MikeXpop]

I think what the above people are trying to say is that the reason google used to find them was because they were on the news. Images that came in via Google News were put into the index, and then were taken away when they sopped appearing on the news.

Re:Google just sucks

[44BSD]

The FA says that searches which yielded results two weeks ago do not work now. If this is so, then it is not due to Google's cycle.

Re:Google just sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Or perhaps some of Google's machines have different versions of the index, and "TheRaven64" was randomly sent to a mcahine with a different index when he went to google.co.uk?

Re:Google just sucks

[NeoSkandranon]

I can believe this. I use google image search alot to find pictures of various species of snakes and tarantulas, and VERY often a picture will be indexed which will give me a 404 error when i try to view the full sized one or the webpage it supposedly comes from.

Google images is NOT updated frequently.

Re:Google just sucks

[d34thm0nk3y]

...a responsibility to report unbiased versions of the news and both sides of the story. Never mind that Google doesn't really produce news reports, and that there's no such thing as an unbiased news source that reports all sides of the story...

Yeah, those pictures are totally biased!

Re:Google just sucks

[Bad Dude]

I tried Picsearch.com and entered 'tits', 'boobs', 'pussy' and 'creampie'..

I was sadly unimpressed...

Re:Google just sucks

[kesler]

How does one "producing news reports?" I mean when was the last time that Dan Rather started a war?

Do the facts need to be spun before you'll call it news?
To me, the media, are just various mediums that give me actual information.

Re:Google just sucks

[funtime]

I got 106 hits with "Obama Convention" through Google. What is Obama Convention - at least the one you couldn't find?

Re:Google just sucks

[rizzo420]

funny... i did the image search on google for abu ghraib and found pics from 2003 in the first 2 pages. looks like your theory of updating every six months is wrong.

now while they would be censoring the text search as well if they were truly trying to censor stuff, they would get more complaints about valid news stories not showing up. the image search is less likely to get flamed (aside from on slashdot where anything and everything google does "wrong" will get flamed, although rightfully so in this case).

Re:Google just sucks

[Mornelithe]

Group think? Alarmism? I think you've got your terms mixed up. If anything, they're antonyms, where in the latter serves to counteract the former.

Oh? They're antonyms? "Google is turning evil and trying to censor our information!" That's pretty alarmist, and there's also plenty of people here willing to believe it based solely on the fact that "publicly traded corporations are EVIL!" which is group think. In this case, the former reinforces the latter. And frankly, around here, it happens that way far more than the opposite.

As for logic, I think your lack of any logical argument elaborating on why you think censorship isn't important speaks for itself.

I didn't say censorship isn't important. I said that in this case, it's not happening. Google's image cache is far out of date. Further, people have demonstrated that the only up-to-date pictures in the image index are those that are pulled in from the news section. That means that current news pictures may be found, but anything that's not current will expire from the news index and not show up in images any more either.

Those two facts easily explain this whole situation, as well as why Google would be "censoring" totally random things, like positive pictures of George W. Bush (no, wait, they're censoring both pro-Bush AND anti-Bush photos!!!!).

The sky is not falling. Google hasn't fallen into pure evil simply because they're a publicly traded corporation now (despite what many highly scored posts here would have you believe). But people here love to freak out and preach about the evils of capitalism, so this kind of story is Grade-A material.

Re:Google just sucks

[Mornelithe]

The post I replied to gave the reasonable explanation of the situation. But, in case you can't be bothered to go and read it, I'll post it here in reply to yours.

Google's image index is, in general, far out of date. The only current images are pulled in from the news index. When news isn't current anymore, it falls out of the news index, and consequently falls out of the image index.

That explains this whole situation. It's reasonable, and far more likely than the "Google is censoring random stuff" theory.

However, when a story like this gets posted, you'll see one or two replies with the reasonable explanation, and the rest will be, "Google is censoring!" and "public corporations are evil, so Google is turning evil!" They have no evidence either, and the events can be more reasonably explained by non-conspiracy theories, but that's not what gets moderated up easily, and not what most people here want to believe.

Lots of people gather here to bash Microsoft and other large corporations, and talk about how they all want to oppress us, and to some extent, I agree -- corporations have too much control over governmental policy and such. However, since Google has become publicly traded, there have been lots of people around here promoting the idea that Google is suddenly becoming evil, and lots of people readily agreeing with them with no other evidence than, "corporations bad!"

I'm not a Google fanboy, or the fanboy of any other big, oppressive corporation. I probably shouldn't even care what people here think, because it's too small a population to make any real difference one way or another for most things. But the behavior here is very similar to branding people "unpatriotic cowards" as you suggest, and that behavior annoys me.

Re:Google just sucks

[Mornelithe]

Dan Rather (or rather, his underlings) conduct research, interviews, etc. and write news reports.

Google finds news reports from CBS, BBC, etc. and links to them.

Google doesn't write their own news reports.

Sorry, I should have said "writing," but I didn't think that the word "produce" was so ambiguous in that context. Then again, I could have been writing about some huge conspiracy theory where CBS makes up its own fictional news.

Thanks for calling me on that.

Re:Google just sucks

[Dun Malg]

It sucks in a weirdly selective manner, though. Do an image search for "Abu Ghraib". Six pages of results. Not one image relevant to the issue of prison torture.

If you go look at the page context of those images, you notice that the dates (of those with dates at all) show nothing earlier* than January this year, months before the torture story broke. Abu Ghraib was a well-known prison BEFORE it's latest claim to infamy, so it's not surprising there are SOME pics. I think a modified form of Hanlon's Razor applies here: Never attribute to censorship that which can be adequately explained by inefficiency.

* I saw one story dated 11/8/2004 about a brit journalist being freed after being held as a POW by the Iraqi army at Abu Ghraib, but seing as how the Iraqis had been out of command of Abu Ghraib for 16 months at that date, I suspect the date is in error.

Nothing to do with the government?

[glowimperial]

This article gives me no reason to believe that this has anything to do with the government, or the current administration. Maybe image search has some "issues" or maybe Google is just looking out for their market share and shareholder value.

Re:Nothing to do with the government?

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

Or Google's trying to proactively avoid pissing off the administration that they'll likely be lobbying soon.

Re:Nothing to do with the government?

[bhima]

What would it look like if the government, or the current administration was involved?

Surely They wouldn't point out that censoring was going on or what was being censored. That would defete the whole point of censorship (i.e. having the unwashed masses forget the whole thing ever happened).

I'm not saying that's what is going on, only that we can't tell what is really going on.

Re:Nothing to do with the government?

[Dun Malg]

What would it look like if the government, or the current administration was involved? Surely They wouldn't point out that censoring was going on or what was being censored. That would defete the whole point of censorship

Censoring google image search, but not yahoo, nor even google's TEXT search also defeats the whole point of censorship. Unless we see the images "become unavailable" from more than just the one place, it makes more sense to conclude that the one place just has problems. Google's image search has always been 6 months to a year behind in some areas. Like another poster said elsewhere, try finding pictures of the 2004 world series. Is that being censored too? It's not censorship-- google image search just sucks.

makes sense

[tinkerton]

Or why do you think they bend over so far?

Devil's Advocate

[fussili]

Ok for my own part I think the fact that other US search engines still allow access to the images should cross any conspiratorial actions on behalf of the US government of the list of likely explanations and relegate it to 'possible'.

What I think is likely to have happened is that Google has taken action akin to what many Bloggers had to do after they started hosting Daniel Pearl's execution video. We found that our massive traffic spikes were almost entirely from islamic extremists in various Middle Eastern states getting their jollies from snuff pr0n.

It was not for us to censor the news but many decided they wouldn't play any part in the dissemination of snuff videos to militants so they stopped hosting the video.

The photos from Abu Graib are a stain on America's honour and I am thankful that the barbarous sub-humans who carried out the acts are dealt with by the full rigours of the US justice system.

However those who show continue to show a gruesome interest in the photos 10 months on from the 2 days in which the horrible events took place are more than likely intending to use them for propagnda purposes to present a highly skewed image of American activities overseas. Why they should be provided succor by us is beyond me.

I think it's likely that Google took a look at their service listings and saw where the most requests were coming from and took a decision based on conscience as to the further likely use of those images. Whether they made the right decision is up to you but I'm just presenting a possible stream of reasoning for their actions.

Re:Devil's Advocate

[vjzuylen]

However those who show continue to show a gruesome interest in the photos 10 months on from the 2 days in which the horrible events took place are more than likely intending to use them for propagnda purposes to present a highly skewed image of American activities overseas.

Nonsense. The images have become important historical documents and should be preserved for future generations. Just like pictures of the atrocities of World War I, World War II, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, etc.

Re:Devil's Advocate

[Anonymous Coward]

From Google's Corporate Profile:

"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

Censorship is not "universally accessible".

"What I think is likely to have happened is that Google has taken action akin to what many Bloggers
had to do after they started hosting Daniel Pearl's execution video."

Google has the technology to handle the spikes of traffic that your common blogger doesn't.

Re:Devil's Advocate

[fussili]

Hey I agree but simply note that Google might be taking a different view as to how they ought to be used. The iconic photos of war attrocities past, although poignant have largely lost their barb with time. In today's world the Abu Graib photos are dynamite propaganda footage in the same way that the photos taken of Concentration camps would have been during WWII. I doubt Google has any problem with the photos being preserved merely with their application in today's environment.

Re:Devil's Advocate

[fussili]

If you read the post bandwidth isn't the issue here.

International law

[panxerox]

I beleive that there are international laws against displaying photos of prisoners of war (laws against what was done to them as well of course) so it might have been legal pressure from various non US sources.

not the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

we wouldn't want the truth about policies to get out now would we
http://www.whitehouse.gov/robots.txt

Re:not the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

If the White House doesn't want people reading those pages, they can just take them offline.

Continuing This Devil's Dictionary Discussion ...

[Baldrson]

Yes of course this goes beyond the US or its penal system. That's why sexual sadism was standard practice at Abu Ghraib.

But if people don't see how much the governments of the US depend on sexual sadism to maintain compliance from their populace the Abu Ghraib immages may mislead them into believing that the locus of the problem is the US military or foreign policy.

Pathological US behavior around the world is merely a symptom of the sexually sadistic way US governments compell compliance US citizens.

Time to start hating google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahem..., Is it time for us to start hating google? Just let me know when you guys are ready...

Re:The OP makes a bad suggestion

[jacksonj04]

It's not the individual American that's the problem. It's the way that when Americans get into a group they generally become a set of self-centred idiots known as "Congress", "The Senate", or "The US Administration". Recent events have also shown "The US Electoral Roll" to be a part of this group.

Individuals are fine, but the group mind grinds against something in the rest of the world.

"America! Fock Yeah!"

[Anonymous Coward]

The movie is pretty funny and very offensive. Isn't great we can say anything. Freedom is great.

Google News

[FiReaNGeL]

If this is true, it makes me think about using Google News as my #1 information source. I realize that other news network DO filter information, too, but it my mind, Google wasn't in this kind of stuff (at least, outside China).

Their news service already report a link to this thread under the title "Google Censors Abu Ghraib Images". Now let's see if it'll remain there...

Probable answer

[Rayonic]

Most likely, Google was trying to make the Abu Gharib images recognized by their "SafeSearch" feature. Which is to say, if you have SafeSearch turned on, those somewhat explicit images wouldn't display (as I'm sure they did before, as none of the normal keywords would have applied).

But somebody screwed up, and now they're blocked even if you have SafeSearch turned off. I'd expect this to be fixed soon.

Re:The OP makes a bad suggestion

[vjzuylen]

The OP didn't make the suggestion, CmdrTaco did. Even so the OP could criticize the current administration and still not be anti-American, just anti-current-administration. So there goes your rant...

Flamebait-Pageranking.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Google has no right to an implied claim of impartiality if they are censoring results. "

Were do they make that claim? One could even argue that Pageranking removes any claims of impartiality.

Re:Flamebait-Pageranking.

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

They don't have to make an explicit claim to make an "implied" claim. Hence the use of the word "implied." Now if they advertised that they manipulate search results, they would be in the clear--but since there's overwhelming evidence that they do manipulate them (China, for example) and they don't prominently so state, they're being disingenuous about the whole thing.

Re:Flamebait-Pageranking.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bingo.

Google has made no claims of impartiality. In fact, the whole value-added purpose of a search engine is that there is some magic in what appears on what pages when you click "search" -- that is the entire nature of the brand.

You could have a fundamentalist christian web search service, or a people-who-like-dogs search service. They all do their work differently. That's the whole point!

Anti-Americanism?

[Sean Clifford]

How is criticizing the Administration being anti-American?

Re:Anti-Americanism?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is criticizing the Administration being anti-American?

Maybe because this story has absolutely nothing to do with the Bush Administration? You moonbats have no factual basis for blaming this on the Administration, yet here comes to flood.

Re:Anti-Americanism?

[sjwaste]

It's not the criticism itself, its the jump to a completely inane conclusion that would suggest simply being anti-American. I mean, it's a complete stretch to implicate the administration in a google censorship example.

Re:Anti-Americanism?

[Lowridah]

Legitimate criticism of the current ruling regime isn't only pro-American, it's damn right patriotic. Just ask our founding fathers.

Re:Anti-Americanism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the administration's not liberal! ;-)

Re:Anti-Americanism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. The administration is liberal enough to let YOU post that message.

it's working ... here

[l3v1]

I Googled for the mentioned topics, and I've found photos on the matter. I'm not in the US though.

Re:it's working ... here

[Anonymous Coward]

It is only the image search there seems to be infected.

Re:it's working ... here

[treuf]

I also googled for this (exact same link as the one provided in the article - http://images.google.com/images?q=abu+ghraib&hl=en &lr=&safe=off&output=search) and got : Results 1 - 20 of about 137 for abu ghraib. (0.14 seconds)

I'm located in France.

Re:it's working ... here

[treuf]

Although ... (should take more time before posting) there was no actual images which we all saw in news and TV.
Or just one or two, I don't know them all, but it was mostly "clean".

Re:it's working ... here

[raju1kabir]

I also googled for this (exact same link as the one provided in the article - http://images.google.com/images?q=abu+ghraib&hl=en &lr=&safe=off&output=search) and got : Results 1 - 20 of about 137 for abu ghraib. (0.14 seconds)

Yeah, that's what happens in the USA too. Now try an image search for Lynndie England.

mod nuts?

[incom]

The situation isn't remotely comparable. Torture by american soldiers in an occupied country, vs. tolerance for rape in US prisons are not in the same ballpark, although they are both bad things.

Re:mod nuts?

[Scareduck]

Moreover, one of the reasons cited for the situation in Abu Ghraib was that none of the guards had adequate training in prison procedures. Given that the Bush Administration drew up legal briefs absolving the President of any wrongdoing, we have to reasonably assume this started from the top.

Re:mod nuts?

[Richard_at_work]

Right, so it takes adequate training for you TO TREAT YOUR FELLOW MAN CORRECTLY? Its called morals, ethics and standards, and are fairly basic things.

Where's The Evidence??!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Other than the fact that google isn't showing those images, what evidence does CmdrTaco have to conclude that this is the work of Karl Rove or the Bush Administration? Did he do some investigative journalism that isn't shown by thie article? Seems like someone is still bitter that the candidate didn't win.

I think FUD is the nicest way to put this article. At worst, I would say Taco is a liar to assign blame without facts.

It is about time!

[mat catastrophe]

I tried to submit this as an AskSlashdot feature on where to turn when Google's policies censor searches you want weeks ago. Thanks for finally running something on this.

I think it is high time that people woke up to what google is doing out there. We can talk a big game about google "being a privately held company" and "freedom to do what they want" and whatnot, but it is seriously frightening to me exactly what it is that they want to do to the internet, especially when they are not too terribly forthcoming about what they want.

Do any of you all use an alternate search engine? If so, post it and let us all get away from google. We claim that decentralized data is what we love the internet for, yet we all clamor to a single search engine for that data. It's incongruous and seemingly dissonant to do this.

Re:It is about time!

[DanielMarkham]

I would like to use a branded search engine that makes intelligent decisions for me on what I want to see or not.

Since I have no desire to see these images, I'm perfectly happy to have them filtered. I have no desre for a mathematically precise web search -- I'm not grepping the whole web. Geesh! I want some neural net fuzzy logic processing going on. Some brains in the picture.

If I don't like the result set, I'll use another service. Very simple to do. It's called the free market, folks. As long as I have the ability to choose vendors freely the vendors must compete for the most useful and complete search (which are contradictory goals, by the way)

Re:It is about time!

[mat catastrophe]

"I would like to use a branded search engine that makes intelligent decisions for me on what I want to see or not."

I bet you watch Fox News, too, don't you? Sorry, cheap shot. Sorry all around.

"Since I have no desire to see these images, I'm perfectly happy to have them filtered. I have no desre for a mathematically precise web search -- I'm not grepping the whole web. Geesh! I want some neural net fuzzy logic processing going on. Some brains in the picture."

You are kidding me, right? Right? I'm being expertly and subtly trolled into the open to be made fun of? Right? If you don't want to see those search results, you would have simply not searched for them. No one willingly goes out of their way to search for "Tub Girl" and hope that picture is filtered out. No, they simply don't look for it. This is not a valid argument for this story.

"If I don't like the result set, I'll use another service. Very simple to do. It's called the free market, folks. As long as I have the ability to choose vendors freely the vendors must compete for the most useful and complete search (which are contradictory goals, by the way)"

Do you have the freedom to choose? Yes. But we all know that the free market is a myth. It's a wonderful concept that we simply don't have in place. Not even here on the wild wonderful interweb. We have a more bizarre corporate oligarchy of information in place, one that is probably more insidious and subtle than the open one out there in the Real World.

Come to think of it, what the hell are you trying to say?

Re:It is about time!

[DanielMarkham]

I'm saying that a complete search and an useful search are contradictory design goals. The perceived value of any search system is directly related to the intelligence behind the definition of what is "useful" to the user. This definition will vary among competing systems.

I don't know how I could explain that any clearer. Sorry if I failed to communicate effectively last time.

Re:It is about time!

[mat catastrophe]

The user should provide the terms that make the search useful to them. If I am looking for pictures of, let's say, pirates, then I probably have an idea of what I want before hand. So, if I type in pirates, I probably will get a ton of images that don't fit into what I want.

So, I would try to self-filter my search a little bit. Pirates "Clip Art" would give me on result while Pirates Carribbean would give me a completely different set.

However, no set of search terms at all seem to bring out Lynndie, the torture photos, or anything else. Now, that might be due to information I didn't know before now, but it might be something else. I think that User Filtered Results from a Complete Set or of more use than Server Side Filters that may or may not match up to User Request.

I think we two are now on the same page at least....yes?

Re:It is about time!

[Ars-Fartsica]

I would like to use a branded search engine

Every search engine has a name.

that makes intelligent decisions for me

Your self-censorship isn't intelligent. Also, you are advocating this for all users of the engine.

ince I have no desire to see these images, I'm perfectly happy to have them filtered

How did you know you did not want to see them without ever yviewing them? You must have already looked at them at least once.

Geesh! I want some neural net fuzzy logic processing going on. Some brains in the picture.

You continue to confuse brains with someone confirming to your limited worldview.

Re:It is about time!

[Ars-Fartsica]

I'm saying that a complete search and an useful search are contradictory design goals.

And you are wrong. A complete data set is a necessary precondition for a viable result. You are continuing to confuse algorithmic sophistication with your desire to impose your limited worldview on others.

Re:It is about time!

[DanielMarkham]

Gosh. You guys don't give up, do you?

Let's try again. I believe there are implicit and explicit assumptions in any search. An implicit assumption would be that I would want results in the language I speak, or graphic files in the formats my computer displays.

Optiminally, a search system would have a consumer profile on hand to assist with ranking and filtering search results. The more detailed this profile and the more adept the search system is at identifying and adapting to this profile the better value the result set.

My grandma does not want torture pictures from that prison. She does not want them on her computer, and she does not want to see them if she is searching for 1970s prison movies (motion pictures) to watch on late night cable. Now. I am not sure whether my grandma has dreams of world domination or even what her political preferences are, but if I was writing a search engine for my grandma, that's something I would keep in mind.

BTW "complete data set" is an oxymoron. In a search for semantic similarities, there exists no such animal. I really think it is you guys that are expecting google to perform like some giant disk-searching function. Perhaps if you thought through the problem some more?

Re:It is about time!

[powerlinekid]

You have to be kidding me. Google as of yet has done nothing wrong (minus the Scientogist stuff). Keep pretending they're Microsoft.

Complete FUD, really.

[krunk7]

Second hit on google web search for abu ghraib:

Abu Ghraib Photo's

Now, it is odd that their image gallery isn't equally pertinant, but I think it's more of a reflection on google having a poor image search engine or prehaps poorly maintained index....not some grand censorship conspiracy theory.

Re:The OP makes a bad suggestion

[Anonymous Coward]

Good to see that attitude here.

It's gotta be the Bush Administration

[gnugie]

Never attribute to ignorance or incompetence that which can potentially be blamed on Republicans.

Re:It's gotta be the Bush Administration

[veddermatic]

Looking back on the last 4 years, I'd say Incompetent and Ignorant pretty much describe the current batch of 'Republicans".

Itching for a Sell..

[DelawareBoy]

Perhaps Google is looking to be bought by FOX News?

hardly suprising

[Anonymous Coward]

coming from a country that executes children in prison while having the highest prison population in the western world

perhaps you are not ready for the whole "freedom thing" just yet

Re:hardly suprising

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no problem with the execution of "children" in the U.S.: if you're old enough to kill, you're old enough to die. It shows the disingenuousness of AI to lump the U.S. in, when our country only executes those under 18 for murder, with backwards third world countries that execute people for political crimes. As if the people are so stupid as to not see the difference--same mistake Kerry made.

~~~

Re: The Truth Is Out Their....

[vettemph]

Then why do the other search engines still carry it?

Because your government knows that google has the largest impact on US search results. Control google, control 95% of the US (world?) mind. It would be hard work controlling all search engines. It's kinda like how the saudi's attacked the trade towers and the pentagon. The attacks would not have the same impact (no pun intended) if they where directed at your house. The fact that google is blocking the most relavent results for a given search term tells you two things. ONE: You need to question who is REALLY behind the wheel at google. TWO: how much truth and fact are being hidden from you at google.

Depends...

[the_skywise]

If the US Government asked Google to take it down and they did, then yeah...

But if Google did it of their own editorial conviction then your analogy doesn't apply.

Ignorance is bliss

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure Google can choose what to censor, but the problem is that the average user doesn't know this is going on. At least I hope!
Censorship and ignorance is the only way I can understand recent election results.
The only way to stop it is, stop using google! money is the loudest voice.
Does any one know if Clusty.com does the same?

Re:Ignorance is bliss

[Anonymous Coward]

looks like clusty does too

Get real...

[Baldrson]

Do you really think the events at Abu Ghraib would have occurred if US governments hadn't become addicted to racist sexual sadism as a means of extorting compliance out of US citizens?

Re:Get real...

[Anonymous Coward]

As an American that has never engaged in racist sexual sadism, what the hell are you talking about?

Re:Get real...

[YrWrstNtmr]

Do you really think that similar outrages haven't happened with every military force, in every conflict, ever since Ogg beat Foo over the head with a stick?
Every military, every time.

Not excusing it, or saying 'that's ok, no harm done'. But, unfortunately, it does happen. A tiny segment of humanity is ready, willing, and able to do crap like this. Some of them gravitate to their countries' military or police forces. And given the chance, they do it.

Re:Get real...

[Anonymous Coward]

I see you've never been to a college fraternity hazing.

Re:Get real...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I thought the idea of buying "friends" was quite stupid.

Re:Get real...

[Anonymous Coward]

Horrifying conditions in prisons are not the government's fault. Its the people's fault. People are always howling for stricter punishments for crimes. You need look no further than slashdot to see it. Watch how people react whenever there is a virus or a spammer story.

It's easy to point the finger. It's harder to point that finger right up our collective ass.

Re:Get real...

[DeepHurtn!]

Everytime I hear an American say something like "Send 'im to federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison" I shudder. If extra-judicial and indiscriminate RAPE has become a socially tolerated and even *expected* method of punishment, something is really, really fucked up.

Re:Get real...

[DeepHurtn!]

Hmm, I don't think it's quite a case of it's being solely the people's fault or the government's. Both are guilty. Yes, you're right about people wanting it (see constant comments about "pound-me-in-the-ass prison"), but the government and media definitely encourage these attitudes by constantly exploiting people's fears in order to get re-elected or sell papers.

Re:Get real...

[Anonymous Coward]

If extra-judicial and indiscriminate RAPE has become a socially tolerated and even *expected* method of punishment, something is really, really fucked up.

I'd be more worried if judicial rape had become a socially tolerated and even expected method of punishment.

Re:Get real...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Something is _REALLY_ messed up in the USA. Some really sick puppies are running the show.

Re:Get real...

[marktoml]

>... something is really, really fucked up.

Is that a news flash :)

Re:Get real...

[Anonymous Coward]

Other folks treat prisoners harshly-even homocidally. What is unusual here is the kinkiness associated with the sadism here. That is it appears a function of the US government's addiction to sexual sadism. No other country has such a concentration of guards hardened to ubitiquous prisoner rape.

Re:Complete FUD, really.

[bhima]

Interesting that it appears on the "web" search and not on the "image" search...

Good call

[murderlegendre]

Personally, I would not feel right about indexing and displaying images of these people being victimized, without their consent. But there is an even bigger issue at hand here..

People, torture is very real, very horrid, and it happens to folks just like you & I every damn day. I have personally known victims of political torture, one of whom was still totally unable to sleep even 25 years after his experiences. Can you say goddamn heartbreaking? When I see torture depicted in movies and television, it makes me ill. Sorry if this is shrill, but listen up: TORTURE IS NOT FUCKING ENTERTAINMENT. To use it as such demeans the experiences of victims everywhere. These people need your support, compassion and understanding a whole hell of a lot more than the film industry needs your $9 to watch this crap.

Next time you think about seeing a film that depicts torture for your viewing pleasure, why not just send the $9 to Amnesty International, or some other human rights group that fits your own political leanings.

Re:Good call

[raju1kabir]

When I see torture depicted in movies and television, it makes me ill. Sorry if this is shrill, but listen up: TORTURE IS NOT FUCKING ENTERTAINMENT. To use it as such demeans the experiences of victims everywhere. These people need your support, compassion and understanding a whole hell of a lot more than the film industry needs your $9 to watch this crap.

A lot of dramatic things are quite disturbing for the people who experience them. That's why they are powerful on the screen. You are hung up on depictions of torture; someone else may be hung up on depictions of gun violence or forced sex or school bullying or meat consumption. If we give their concerns equal weight to yours, all we end up with is The Happy Little Elves in every cinema. So it's either that (a viscera-free world of pap), or you tell all those other people why torture is worse than they things that hit each of them where it counts. Good luck.

OPEN search engine

[Oxide]

Google censoring abu gharib images,
MSN censored linux sites,

This is excatly why we should have an "OPEN" search engine that is not controlled by a corporation but controlled and funded by the open source community.

Re:OPEN search engine

[Janitha]

I think Google did start out as a open search engine, just now that its going corparate. Are there any completly open search engines out there with no censorship?

Slashdot: News for Democrat nerds stuff that....

[Anonymous Coward]

Why dont they just change the slogan for this site...

Slashdot: News for Democrat nerds stuff that matters

Mightn't this be a bug?

[p-hawk42]

Funny, I thought that Google Images was out of beta.

Reader submitted "Do a Lynndie" pose

[EMIce]

A very spirited reader submitted 'Do a Lynndie' pose, if I don't say so myself.

Google image search indexes rarely

[jafuser]

I've read that the Google image index is only done twice a year. This also explains why so many of the images you find there are on pages that don't exist anymore -- Google image search has the worst reputation I've seen for this problem.

For example, try searching on Red Sox, and you'll see nothing about the world series.

Try searching on presidential debates and you'll get no pictures from the Bush/Kerry debates.

I think it's probably safe to say it's just image crawler lazyness more than a conspiracy.

Family friendly

[3770]

I dislike that Google has done this.

But maybe Google's goal isn't to censor things. Maybe their goal is to be family friendly. If you look at it that way it isn't immoral to prevent certain pictures to show up.

Re:Family friendly

[FiReaNGeL]

They have a "SafeSearch" feature for that, enabled by default.

Pictures aren't showing up even with the feature disabled.

What crack are you smoking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google doesn't have a 95% market share. The last numbers I saw had Google, MSN and Yahoo pretty close. Yes, there are people using MSN's search because that's where IE leads them.

Re:What crack are you smoking?

[vettemph]

A) this news story was a hoax.

B) Maybe everyone doesn't love a good conspiracy?

this isnt news.. google sucks.. what else is new?

[Anonymous Coward]

well ive been telling people the last 3 years that google has gone all corrupt and crappy but I still just get yelled at by geeks who refuses to realize the facts..

Re:Slashdot: News for Democrat nerds stuff that...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny because it's

Slashdot: News for Liberals, Stuff That Mocks Bush

Or

[HarveyBirdman]

I'm guesing that this is another case of our administration confusing "National Security" with "Politically Undesirable".

Or another case of paranoia by a wannebe oppressed rebel in his own mind? Just another idea to consider.

Here. Maybe this chart will help.

http://zapatopi.net/blackhelicopters/bhchart.png

Why ?

[ethzer0]

It's rather interesting that (with the filter off) I can do for an example, a search for 'Donkey Sex' and come up with at least 5 EXACT matches. Why not censor THESE images? Certainly the donkey has endured some sort of humiliation. On a serious note however, what is the point of Google censoring these images? I can't see them directly gaining anything by doing so. If I do a search for Abu Ghraib, it's a high-possibility I know about the scandal, so I'm going to expect to see those images anyway. Certainly this image isn't any less disturbing. I wonder if the Military has the copyright on those photos (saracasm). Maybe we'll see 'Army ordres Abu Ghraib Photos taken off website' on Chilling Effects

Re:Why ?

[Lehk228]

google has not censored anything, GIS is a poor search tool overall, singe it is much harder to form a network of links via pictures. with html pages they link to each other and the algorithm ranks pages as how relevant they are, but images only have two pieces of info, words used to link to them, and filenames, it is much harder to rank images.

And we voted for another 4 years of this...

[grasshoppa]

...Not to start a political flame fest, but if we voted for another 4 years of this, then we deserve whatever we fucking get.

Re:And we voted for another 4 years of this...

[HarveyBirdman]

Here you go: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/index.html

Hope this helps.

Re:And we voted for another 4 years of this...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Not to start a political flame fest

Don't worry you didn't. The article did.
That being said:

but if we voted for another 4 years of this, then we deserve whatever we fucking get.

If you go head first into blaming someone before looking into facts you deserve what you get aswell. You should attempt to research, or atleast listen to the other side of the story even if it is something you really badly want to believe.

Re:And we voted for another 4 years of this...

[Yosho]

I didn't vote for another four years of this. Why do I deserve it?

Re:And we voted for another 4 years of this...

[Anonymous Coward]

But wait.. Doesn't socialist Canada censor certian kinds of politically incorrect speech against certian groups of people?

Re:And we voted for another 4 years of this...

[jasonditz]

Wait, we voted on google's image search engine?

Why is this being called censorship?

[srowen]

OK, I'll ask the dumb question: why does the headline proclaim that Google is *censoring* these images? Nobody has cited any official Google position against displaying images of this type. As others have suggested, it's possible these images are just not indexed or aren't ranked highly by Google. Nobody has even suggested a plausible, concrete *motive* for censoring -- what does it gain them? This is not a very good headline, at best.

Re:Why is this being called censorship?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the little Bush alarm went off in CmdrTaco's head and he was ANGRY!!! TACO SMASH!!!!

Google Watch? HAHAHAHAHA

[Anonymous Coward]

They own stock in the tinfoil hat companies. Remember the time they were upset because Google... had web logs?! OH NO!!!! Just like 99.9% of other websites, Google was keeping logs. And then Google... used cookies!!!! OH DEAR LORD! Not the cookies... that you can block with your browser. Bunch of maroons.

Arab world

[gaijin99]

And if there's one thing we here in the U.S. really, really hate, it's to look bad in the Arab world

And people wonder why there is widespread doubt that the US entered Iraq with the intent of "liberating" the Iraqi people...

War is not about killing your enemies, every strategist from Sun Tsu to Carl von Clausewitz to the modern Pentagon made, and makes, that point. War is about convincing your enemies to surrender. Cowing them through sheer military might is not enough, that's what people mean when they talk about "winning the peace". Ask yourself why the guerillas in Iraq have so much support, then look at the US shutting down a newspaper, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, etc. I think its pretty damn important that we not look bad to the Arab world.

Re:Arab world

[RobotRunAmok]

The U.S. did not enter Iraq with the intent of liberating the Iraqi people; that was a happy by-product. We entered Iraq with the intention of de-stabilizing the region, getting a toe-hold in the Mid-East. With Iraq secured, strikes into Iran and Syria become much more feasible. (I'm sure Sun Tzu and Clausewitz could appreciate that.)

The ultimate focus is to keep space-age weapons from getting into the hands of medieval theocracies and the West-hating fanatics bred there. And since the global economy is still rather unfortunately reliant upon petroleum resources, keeping these safe from people who don nitro-glycerine boxer shorts and detonate themselves in crowded bus-stops with little more trepidation than you or I have over re-formatting our hard-drives seems not only prudent, but damn obvious.

Re:Arab world

[gaijin99]

I think that the best way to accomplish the needed, and laudable, goal of keeping more powerful weapons out of terrorist hands is not to produce more terrorists. Before the invasion there were very few terrorists operating out of Iraq, today that number has increased significantly. The poor post-war planning for both Iraq and Afghanistan has helped terrorist organizations recruit new members.

Also, re: atomic weapons, I cannot help but notice that Pakistan, the nation where one of its top atomic weapons specialists was selling atomic secrets to all and sundry, is being called an "ally". Abdul Qadeer Khan, the man who sold the secrets, got a slap on the wrist, yet the dictatorship of Pakistan is an ally? My point here is that the approach taken by the Bush government seems poorly thought out.

And, finally, I'd say that the most effective way to stop terrorism is to change the conditions that produce terrorists. We cannot simply say "these people are evil, that is why they are terrorists", not if we want to produce plans that work. The "use missile strikes in densly populated areas" approach has not worked yet, neither in Iraq nor Israel, and I see no reason why it should suddenly start working. We need a new plan.

Re:Arab world

[Jerf]

The "use missile strikes in densly populated areas" approach has not worked yet, neither in Iraq nor Israel, and I see no reason why it should suddenly start working.

Pray tell, what can we do in Iraq or anywhere else where the government didn't want us there? Whatever you may propose in answer to this question, the first step will always be "remove that government", or you have a faulty understanding of the governments of the Middle East.

I tend to agree that killing people isn't necessarily the path to peace. But we are building schools and hospitals and relationships. Your apparent belief that the US is just over there, gunning people down, shows both your own lack of initiative in getting enough information to form your opinions and the failure of the news media to present an accurate picture of what is going on over there. If it bleeds, it leads, but bleeding isn't anywhere near the whole story.

The first step in "winning the peace" is re-writing the board so that we can win the piece. Hopefully we're near the end of that phase, but that does involve killing people who are violently insisting that they, and everybody else, will continue to live in the 12th century. I'd love to live in a world where all we had to do was ride over in our "Reading is Fundamental" Van and hand out books peacefully, but we don't live in that world.

Based on your post, you ought to be supporting our actions on the whole, even as you may criticize aspects of our actions. We don't need a new plan, we need more people to understand what the current one really is.

Re:Arab world

[NoOneInParticular]

Oh no, you don't seem to understand. The first thing to do is to tell our friendly governments in the Arab world (this only excludes Syria and Lybia and possibly Tunisia at this point) that this whole idea of transforming actual education to a fundamentalist religious training was a tremendously bad idea of us.
We know, we've told them for thirty years that this was the only way to counter the socialist menace that was threatening peace, but we can change our minds, can't we?

Currently, the level of education in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, etc. is appalling. Students are required to spend more than half of their time studying the Koran, this includes technical education. This indeed to quell any thought of a fairer form of government (read: socialism). Unfortunately, this backfired, and now the Arab world is stuck with a generation of people that have no education whatsoever and are striving for the reformation of government based upon the principles of the Koran. Well, they did follow our suggestions.

Trouble is, even if we do start to educate, with a well educated population, they might want to try socialism again, because face it, USA style capitalism is not something most people want. At least, I do not know of any stable democracy that implements it even close to the American way.

Re:Arab world

[Jerf]

The first thing to do is to tell our friendly governments in the Arab world (this only excludes Syria and Lybia and possibly Tunisia at this point) that this whole idea of transforming actual education to a fundamentalist religious training was a tremendously bad idea of us.
We know, we've told them for thirty years that this was the only way to counter the socialist menace that was threatening peace, but we can change our minds, can't we?

It is unclear to me how sarcastic you are being.

While I think we are moving in the right direction now, that in no way implies, and in many ways disclaims, the idea that all our policy has been right all along. I'm 25, and for as far back as I can remember I've never understood our policy of "any dictatorship on our side is a good one", and I still don't. Nor do I understand the ideas that you mentioned.

While regret has its place, that doesn't change what we must do now. I for one am glad someone is actually standing up to the problem and meeting it head on, instead of pushing off into the future as long as possible and letting the "children" deal with it, only 10 times worse... or more. Which, considering the generation in charge, would be my generation.

It's a pity it took what it did to change us. I'm glad it hasn't taken more; we might have only realized the necessity of the current actions after a nuke or three.

I'm not worried that they might lean socialist, as long as they don't go to the extreme (which is bad on all sides of politics). Besides, that much less competition for us.

Re:Arab world

[gaijin99]

Howabout we start by having a civilized conversation without unwarranted assumptions, 'k? Nothing I wrote stated, or implied, that the only thing the US government was doing in Iraq was killing people. I *did* point out that using missiles to take out combatants in residential areas is a bad idea, which isn't the same thing at all.

I disagree with your basic assumption that the US needed to invade Iraq. Pakistan, just as an example, had and continues to have, weapons much more powerful than Saddam ever had a wet dream about, and the proven willingness to sell the secrets of making those weapons to terrorists. Not only that, but there is very strong evidence linking the dictator of Pakistan to terrorists operating in the Kashmir region. I'm not saying that we should have invaded Pakistan, but I am saying that Iraq seems to have been less of a threat than Pakistan is, and Pakistan is simply the easiest example I can think of.

Given that 15 out of 19 of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudi subjects, I would have expected the US to use its political muscle to force the Saudi dictators to stop funding "schools" that do nothing more than teach children to hate America. I find it horrifying that this basic step has not yet happened, and that the US government continues to be quite friendly to the Saudi despots.

Similarly, while military action in Afghanistan was self-evidently necessary, the US never put more than 1/10th of the troops on the ground there that are currently in Iraq. After the bombs stopped falling, the Bush government seemed to loose interest. In evidence of that, I will point out that in 2003, the year after the invasion of Afghanistan the Bush government's proposed budget had $0 for rebuilding efforts in Afghanistan. As a consiquence, the heroin output of Afghanistan is now back to pre-war levels, warlords control huge segments of the country, and the Taliban is growing again. I don't think you can successfully combat terrorism by taking that approach to things.

As for Iraq, the rebuilding is going quite slowly, in large part because the US government does little to involve the Iraqis in the rebuilding. Unemployment is 80% in Iraq today. Virtually all rebuilding is done by foreign contractors, which doesn't contribute much to Iraq's economy, nor to fostering a sense of confidence in the nationbuilding process.

Given both what the Bush government said before the war began, and news reports indicating that planning for the post-war was essentially ignored, I cannot agree with you that "we need more people to understand what the current one [plan] really is". I'd settle for there being a plan, much less having a good one, and I do not see any evidence that there was a well laid out plan.

"The United States is committed to helping Iraq recover from the conflict, but Iraq will not require sustained aid," 20030328 O.M.B. Director Mitch Daniels. I quote former Director Daniels as an example of the unwarranted optimism that went into what little planning was done. Richard Perle said that he'd be surprised if there wasn't a grand square in Bagdhad named after president Bush. In March 2003, during a meeting of war planners and intelligence officials at Shaw Air Force Base, an Army official's presentation on the Pentagon's strategy included a slide on "Phase 4-C," the period of rebuilding after fighting had ended. That slide said only "To Be Provided." Knight Ridder Newspapers. "the insurgency was not inevitable ... We had momentum going in and had Saddam's forces on the run. But we did not have enough troops ... They took advantage of our limited numbers." Major General James A. Marks.

My points here aren't that complex: 1) there doesn't seem to have been any reality based post war planning, and 2) that lack is creating sympathy for terrorists both in Iraq and the rest of the Arab world. Abu Gharib was just the icing on the cake.

Re:Arab world

[NoOneInParticular]

Sarcastic? Probably, though sceptic mostly. I don't think that meeting the problem head on is a solution. At least not in this way. If the intention is to bring stability to the Arab world (and I'm sceptic that this is the goal of the leaders of the free world), it takes at least a generation to get some initial effect. So I'm highly sceptical that founding a democracy in Iraq or any other Arab country is feasible before 2035. Reason for this is that a democracy depends on a well-off middle class that has at least some semblance of an education and is (thus?) capable of making valid choices.

The problem I tried to signal is that in the Arab world at large, fundamentalist education is the norm, not the exception and has been so for the last generation. This means that all people below 30 have been educated in a strict belief in the Koran, not in anything as tangible as critical thinking. This is not a good feeding ground for a democracy.

But okay, this is the Arab world at large. Iraq is a special case, as there religious fundamentalism was always least rampant. However, in that country, after a good start in the 60s and 70s, the war with Iran (the first gulf war), and the two following wars with the US has lead to another lost generation of people that have hardly any education at all.

This is what the US is fighting with now. The older generations are quite sensible, and all they want is a bit of security, but the generation that is supposed to build up the country has no education to speak off and can be thus be influenced by whomever makes most popular claims. So, if the US is serious about bringing democracy to the Arab world through Iraq, be prepared to be there with a large military presence for the next 30 years, and outright hostility during at the very least 10 years. My guess is that it takes that amount of time to get a self-sustaining democracy going in such a land (note that both Germany and Japan had a middle class that had something to gain from a democracy). I am however sceptical as I don't see American politics being capable of swallowing continuous losses for the next 10 years, and pouring money into the country at the same time.

But I thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that google could do no evil! Bah. Now who can I fanboy???

New slogan for Google

[Anonymous Cowdog]

I think it's too easy for them to split hairs with "don't be evil" and get away with stuff like this. They need a new slogan: don't be lame.

Re:The OP makes a bad suggestion

[tepples]

I highly doubt our government has any hand in censoring google's results, especially when the other search engines are returning these images.

Perhaps the gag orders to the other search engines are still in the mail.

It depends

[HarveyBirdman]

Honest criticism is American and wholesome and apple pie and all that.

But too many people these days are just making shit up out of the vacuum, and stuff that is so obviously stupid you can't help but start to question their motives and, in some cases, their sanity. This applies equally to the woo-woos who think Bush planned 9/11 and the hoo-hahs who think Clinton had dozens of people whacked in Arkansas.

Personally, I think they are just trapped in ideological singularities that they have constructed in their minds as an alternative to dealing wth the true complexity of the world, but, hey, that's just me.

Ideology and politics. It's easier than thinking.

Re:It depends

[camooT]

But where do you draw the line? The most controversial people in history have often proven to be right. If we were to eliminate the "crazies," nevermind the potential for abuse, we might be removing the truth as well. Who knows, maybe the Cube-Time theory is TRUE?

Re:It depends

[WindBourne]

You need some long history lessons. American policians and their policies have historically been attacked by the opposing parties as well as the press. In fact, that is the function of the press. Up until JFK, the press went after the politician and his policy only. Starting with JFK, they seems to feel that their personal life was fair game (too be honest, I think that is the opposite party pushing that crap). The same can be said of Carter (distance family was fair game), Poppa Bush (Neil in particular, gwb as well when poppa was in the white house), and Clinton( Interesting that they did not pursue LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, or GWB's family to any length ).

Now with GWB, he AND HIS POLICIES seem to be off-limits. In addition, their is now patriot act (I and II) that is thrown up at the press, companies, and individuals to prevent them from doing what they should do; that is report and criticize the policies.

Re:It depends

[Anonymous Coward]

When the bush administration stops making shit up, the American public might be less inclined to do so about said administration

Re:It depends

[Hockney Twang]

Bush did plan the Sept 11 attack, and he did it for the good of the American people. We're all just too in the dark to know about it. You see, Bill Clinton did have peopel whacked in Arkansas, and in fact, he can have just about anyone whacked at anytime anywhere. He's the leader of an international liberal crime syndiate, you see. Anyway, our fearless leader, GW, became aware of a mass meeting of all of Clinton's top lieutenants. They were gathering together to plot the impending "liberal coup" that was to permanently destroy capitalism and turn everyone into a bunch of hippies on welfare. This meeting was to take place on Sept 11, 2001, at the world trade center. Now, as you may or may not know, all of lower Manhattan is swarming with Clinton's shock troops, so it's practically impossible for a decent republican assassin to get anywhere near the WTC. Since everyone working there was an evil liberal commie anyway, Bush decided to take out the twin towers, crippling Clinton's organization, and saving America. Unfortunately, Clinton escaped the carnage as he was telecommuting to the meeting.

Re:It depends

[DankNinja]

I completely agree. I'm getting rally tired of the Michael Moore and Bill O'Reilly drones. Unfortunately, extremists are more inclined to bitch.

Re:It depends

[Anonymous Coward]

...and the hoo-hahs who think Clinton had dozens of people whacked in Arkansas.

I live in Little Rock. Soon the 8th wonder of the world, the Clinton Presentintal Library, will open. (http://www.clintonpresidentialcenter.org/) Come on down and ride the cats! (http://www.cat.org/rrail)

I've been here since before he was the 'guv. And WHAT are you talking about? Of course "Clinton had dozens of people whacked". He whacked all of them, personally. And then gave the whip to the ladies so that he got whacked for a bit. And afterwards they got some cigars and ...

OH!! You meant whacked as in "killed", didn't you? .... Never mind.

Re:It depends

[Zenzilla]

Yeah but....

We have a very closed administration. I think there is a huge gap between what people hear the administration is doing and what the administration is doing. I belive the administration is consiously doing this because it is a good strategy. Why is this a good stragety? You can tell people what they want to hear and they'll have a difficult time figuring out you're doing something different. Also it lets the wackjobs make up crazy insane shit, making everyone associated with said wackjobs look a little less sane. How can a democrat be a ration person with the way Michael more makes shit up? All other democrats must make things up to. I'd rather listen to what my party(administration) makes up and not have to worry about the facts. This will only work if the administration isn't open.
(I don't consider myself republican or democrat)

I feel this needs to be said because if the administration stated its policy on this matter we would be able to easily rule out its involvement.

Re:It depends

[HarveyBirdman]

See, I don't get that claim. I keep hearing about how it's de facto illegal to criticize Bush (as some people describe it), but I turn on the political talkies, and I hear endless criticism of Bush. I see endless web site devoted to every anti-Bush idea, from valid criticism to woo-woo conspiracies. Oddly, those site utterly fail to mysteriously vanish. Nobody has made anything off limits. Did you watch the Democratic convention? Has Michael Moore been sent to Gitmo?

What I see is a bunch of ideological wonk who appear to have this burning need to live under an oppressive regime and be heroic subversives. It's like some bizarre variation of Munchausen By Proxy Syndrome, except the imagine the country is sick instead of a child or relative.

And, again, this is coming from a Kerry voter (although I'm an independnet). This "oh, Bush is the incarnation of evil and his voters are troglodytes" approach IS NOT GOING TO WORK!!! You people keep it up and you'll be even more marginalized in 2008.

3 words: Do No Evil

[The Hobo]

Or something like that...

Re:3 words: Do No Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

And how do you know that wasn't your goal? Perhaps the intent to do no evil was to spare the family of the prisoners any more embarassment?

Re:Complete FUD, really.

[k_187]

Which means one of two things. 1. The image index lags behind the web index. or 2. they haven't erased them from the web index yet. Your paranoia level will determine which of the two you believe.

Re:Continuing This Devil's Dictionary Discussion .

[dnoyeb]

true, IIRC many of those particular soldiers have as their other job, prison guards. Further I heard there was some favoritism for putting this partucilar group of soldiers in the position they were in. Time will tell.

I have to disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

" TORTURE IS NOT FUCKING ENTERTAINMENT."

Let me say that funny is funny. Regardless of circumstance, if its funny, its funny.

"Doing the Lynndie" is funny.

Torture?

[Anonymous Coward]

What f-ing torture are you referring to? The gassing of civilians? The feet-first feeding of political prisoners into plastic shredders? The hacking out of their tongues? Throwing them blindfolded off the tops of buildings?

No?

Oh...You mean the panties on the head and simulated fellatio torture? Right...Sorry, forgot where I was.

Re:Torture?

[Anonymous Coward]

I always like how the more conservative viewpoints on Slashdot like to revise the definition of torture.. If you sexually abuse someone, make them do physically strenuous things to make them think they are going to be killed, put vicious dogs to their face, or any thing else of the like, all of the sudden its harmless fun on the part of our troops and patriotic.

Re:The OP makes a bad suggestion

[sjwaste]

But this particular example has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE AMERICAN ADMINISTRATION!

It seems like the commenter dragged it in just to get in a cheap shot against the US.

it's against the geneva convention

[Anonymous Coward]

it's actually illegal, via the geneva convention to show pictures of prisoners of war.

Re:it's against the geneva convention

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you tell me when Google signed and ratified the rules of the Geneva convention?

Re:it's against the geneva convention

[Anonymous Coward]

Terrorists aren't prisoners of war.

Re:it's against the geneva convention

[Master of Transhuman]

Remember that the next time some US soldier gets his head hacked off - since war criminals who murder civilians shouldn't be given prisoner of war status either.

That's strange...

[Anonymous Coward]

I middle-clicked on one of the links, and it brought up pictures of bloody, battered people, something in an article about insurgents, and other pictures of people who weren't in...such great shape. Maybe someone at Google saw Slashdot?

UH huh uh huh...he said...

[Anonymous Coward]

"US penal system'"

You said "Penal". That's funny.

When I bend my girlfriend over a desk, I tell her, "You are subject to my penal code". She giggles and bends over a little bit more, if you know what I'm saying

Re:UH huh uh huh...he said...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, she's laughing *at* you, not *with* you...

Re:UH huh uh huh...he said...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I know. But she's still bent over the desk, and that's all I really care about.

Why only one search engine?

[nberardi]

I think since Google is now at the top is taking pre-emptive action to limit liability for law suits. Much like we have seen Microsoft do in the past. All those other search engines that were mentioned operate in the US, so why if the "administration" is doing this, why would they only target one search engine?

Some insight...

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing you should know is that Google's SE regional big-wig Ron Carpinella is a HUGE Republican booster. I wouldnt be a bit surprised if poilitically motivated adjustments were made since over 60% of the company is now comprised of on-paper millionaires who have a vested interest in keep their taxes very low. Google's reputation, at least in the SE where I work and do business, has suffered incredibly recently since the entire company is more focused on its share-owners at the expense of their customers. As a result I've been using and loving Overture who (as yahoo) have already had the hubris knocked out of them last time around.

"Office Space" memories

[mpw2k]

his is another case of our administration confusing "National Security" with "Politically Undesirable". Tom Smykowski : It's a "Jump to Conclusions Mat". You see, you have this mat, with different CONCLUSIONS written on it that you could JUMP TO.

Re:"Office Space" memories

[mpw2k]

If I can't even get a +1 Funny, on freakin' Slashdot, for an Office Space quote because it goes against "the political tide" here, something is really fucked up. ;P

Actually, I was going to make this just a "funny" reply, but then I realized that this really gets to me. The original article was absolutly opinionated and absolutely false. The administration has nothing to do with Google's search engine. For years, Slashdot has been a place where I've read interesting articles and fun opinions. Now, somebody has taken it upon themselves to turn Slashdot into a propaganda machine. It's crap. I never came to Slashdot to read propaganda. In fact, it's one of those sites where I come to mostly check out what's happening with Space, Apple computers, and Linux. Usually I read everything with a grain of salt when it comes to "hot button" topics like Microsoft's corporate maneuvering or the DMCA. I listen to people complain about not being able to steal music, and I think it's total crap because the case is that stealing is stealing. I listen to people complain about Microsoft without giving them ANY credit for some of the good stuff they have done. I'm not saying Microsoft, Bush, Patent Laws, or Copywrite Laws are all perfect. I'd say that would be far from the truth. But I'm not going to post an article saying, "My apple has a worm crawling in it, sounds like Microsoft's IE Browser security has failed again." Maybe I'm the rare geek that doesn't EVER believe a conspiracy theory.

It would be so easy to put forth the conspiracy theory that Slashdot altered it's election poll results to give Kerry a big win on Slashdot. I wouldn't do that though. I know that most of rural America just plain doesn't "do" Slashdot, and that urban dwellers (read Slashdot users) generally voted for Kerry (at least in the northeast and the west where Kerry had tons of support and probably the greatest number of Slashdot users reside).

Among my friends, we have a word for propagandists. The word is "Liars". It's a sad thing too. I'm gonna take a shot in the dark and guess that the person who posted the article and the staff at slashdot aren't much older or younger than I am, at 29 yrs. old. It's sad to see that you haven't learned enough honesty to admit your own mistakes by now. Maybe you're stuck where I was when I was 21, working in Silcon Valley and making more money than I could ever need. That's the kind of thing that'll keep you immature forever.

Yes, I did see the link to the explaination by Google of the problem. But, I'm very suprised that you still kept the sentence about the administration in the body of the article. Maybe, this is another case of the administration of Slashdot confusing "their ability to run a site about interesting techie articles" with "their egos".

Matt

Whoa..

[Underholdning]

Microsofts new "google killer" gives you about a million more hits than google does in a regular web search.

On a tangent, but bare with me.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is constant talk in slashdot stories and posts about how the media gets things wrong and are irresponsible. **NEWS FLASH** SLASHDOT IS PART OF THE MEDIA AS WELL. Should the editors not hold themselves to the same standards they would like to hold to all the major news networks?

This story for example, was posted without any story verification or critical thought. It is simply FUD.

I remember reading a post showing that the rate of posts on Slashdot is declining (it was a post showing when all the important 10^n posts happened). At the time I thought to myself, "huh, that's weird", but not much of it. Now it seems painfully obvious that Slashdot is losing viewership because it doesn't take news reporting seriously. Slashdot could be perhaps the biggest internet community by now (its not) if it would take the "News for Nerds" seriously. The editors remind me of eternal critics who always want to find flaws in everyone else but never realize their own hypocrisy.

I guess a simpler to put it for the editors is such:

Step 1. Better reporting
Step 2. Higher viewership
Step 3: More ad $$!

Yeah, the Administration

[ichthus]

Sure, Taco. It MUST be that evil Bush administration. Google has no autonomy, but the other search engines do. Think about it.

Once again, your unfounded political bias shines through as total ignorance.

Re:Yeah, the Administration

[Zareste]

Funny how the word 'bias' has come to mean "not tending to the ideas of idiots."

Re:Yeah, the Administration

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how there is absolutely no proof of censorship but plenty of proven proof of political slant on this site. Especially odd how a general web search for the same search terms turns up the pictures in question. Another example of censorship perhaps?

Re:Yeah, the Administration

[Zareste]

Yes I'm afraid the site gives intelligent conclusions, which creates a horrible slant away from Bushies and neaderthals and all the sort, as the facts are very offensive to their standpoint. One solution involves select readers no longer being dumb, the other is for dumb people to get their news from Fox or some check-out line magazine where their ideas are fully supported and those dreadful facts no longer their face.

No problem ..

[tardibear]

.. we can just use Google's cache of Google's search results.

Let me get this straight....

[Anonymous Coward]

A few bad people in the US armed forces do some bad things (not torture, btw), and it's the fault of the whole, evil US government; but hundreds of thousands of muslims and their clergy openly support and encourage acts of terrorism like kidnapping, beheadings, and suicide bombers, but we can't fault Islam and/or the whole Arab culture?

Okay, sounds good to me.

Re:Let me get this straight....

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Google censor pictures of the WTC attacks, beheadings, and suicide bombings? No they don't. So what is your point?

Re:Complete FUD, really.

[bhima]

Actually I was thinking that the algo for picking images didn't work like everyone thought...

False Advertisement

[aphor]

Google offers their service to the general public as a peer-weighted ranking of all of the web pages indexed by their spiders. If they do less, then they are operating under false pretenses, and the advertisers and users by proxy are owed the difference.

If they censor their content, then they have pre-weighted the results, and this is not what people expect. They have a right to do this, but they have prior obligations to the people they serve.

I for one DONT welcome our new bullshit overlords

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Is this the next step in the war on terror? Deny EVERYTHING you do wrong? I remember when they claimed there was WMDs, but there wasn't. I remember when they said they wanted to make the world a safer place, but it isn't! We're taking bullshit from a monkey and a big eared twat and now they want to hide as much of it as they can.

Bush needs to learn people understand war is harsh and no one wants it, but hiding what it is does no one ANY good. I don't want to see my troops or anyone elses die in a complete farse of bullying (Hey we have tech they have pitch forks and minor explosives.. do the math). But this is just stupid.

In todays world you cannot censor most things, the internet has enough loop holes and back doors for you to find anything from the latest football results to pictures of a guy with his head cut off by these kidnappers.

If we can't find it at google we'll go else where and see how "evil" google truely was all along.

Good point.

[bs_02_06_02]

It's also the main reason that I don't trust mainstream news media. Forget the big 3 networks. They all take their agenda from the NYTimes.

I don't know if it's arrogance, but they can't seem to believe that we need to see anything else. If you've not noticed, the "news" is ALL doom and gloom. They realized that "good" doesn't sell advertising. And that's what it's all about. Advertising. If no one buys advertising, you've not got much of a business.

If you don't like what's happened at Google, why don't you ask them? Is it censorship? They are a publicly traded company, they fall under more scrutiny than they did before.

Into perspective??

[Fuzzums]

Out of sight, into perspective...

Ever consider that we are customers?

[Cryofan]

And that we have a right to boycott Google?

Why are there so many apologists for those at the top of the hierarchy? That is what I want to know. Are you masochists? Authority lovers? Idolizers of success?

Re:Ever consider that we are customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

No one said otherwise, but claiming without any basis in fact that this is the result of actions by the Bush administration is ludicrous.

Google is a business. You're a customer. You both have rights to act freely in our society. To sell what you want, and to buy what you want.

Re:Ever consider that we are customers?

[Sporkinum]

I aprecciate the heads up. I did various searches with other engines and they showed the information without fault. I used to be a die hard altavista user until google came along.

Google is no longer my default search engine, and with GW having 4 more years, I am sure glad I don't use G-Mail.

Re:Ever consider that we are customers?

[alakon]

Go for it.

Use Ask Jeeves instead- they own their own search technology, and it's just as good as google- without the spammers.

While you are at it, buy up some stock. Ticker ASKJ. They just posted amazing quarterly results.

C'mon, I have a limit order at 28- help me out here ;)

======= Altavista =========

[Anonymous Coward]

abu ghraib

I Love old good Altavista :)

Remedy

[zogger]

Buy one share of stock x thousands of people doing that = lot of legit complaining to upper management that can't be ignored.

I figured we'd start to see stuff like this more and more right after the royal appointment of the president this time. Just like they held off on the wasting of huge urban civilian areas in Iraq, delivering democracy in the form of 500 lb bombs, the regime in power now will use pressure, covert and overt to get it's way. I am betting that google went along with some back channel demands. The ability to index the web, have access to millions of peoples emails easily and spider them eventually, etc, is not lost on the official spook agencies. They have search capabilities, and they probably also want googles search capabilities-or blocking searches as the case may be. I've seen it with google news as well in searches I have run before.

Next step we might see the neocon technofeudalists want to drag out the alien and sedition act. It was used before to stifle dissent and to censor. And I have heard neocon radio show hosts and commentators advocate that this be done now, along with putting "protesters" in "camps".

This google crap just goes along with the whole mindset and tone of the goombahs "in charge" of this nation now, oh yes, they are "leaders", a buncha "fuerhers" is more like it.

Once again don't trust huge transnational corporations. Look at what they do, not what they say.

30 years in 4 years

[Anonymous Coward]

prepare for another 30

Relax Bill

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully, your marketing of a search engine does not fool some of the people all the time.

Is Google bound in some way to show these???

[GuruDino]

What law is Google bound to when it comes to content? Are they some on high entity that must answer to us in any way we ask? Hell no! They are a FREE ENTERPRIZE engaging in a business. They can run it however thay choose. The fact that one can find these images else where makes this whole subject a joke. Let's all pick on Google day! I too loathe another 4 years of Bush and his cronnies. *sigh* Are they to blame? Perhaps. Perhaps Google has done this motivated by Bush's favorite tool... FEAR! Seems to be evident by some of these posts as well...

Outdated Index? - Google Images FAQ

[Anonymous Coward]

While many people have suggested that this is a problem with a less-than-timely index, that fails to explain why the images appeared in earlier searches but fail to do so now. Luckily, the Google Image Search FAQ explains this oddity:

Sometimes I see what appear to be news photos at the top of my results. Why is that?

If you're searching Google Images for a particular subject, it's likely you'll want to see the very latest images available as well as those created some time ago. If we find images that match your search in Google News, we deliver them at the top of the Google Images results page. Because news is time sensitive, your search may show news images one day, but not another or the news images may be different each time you search on the subject.

So, it would appear, the claims of censorship are quite unfounded. The images appeared when they were still valid "news" but no longer do so because they are older than the Google News index and newer than the Google Images Index.

What search did you use and where are you?

[WindBourne]

If you are getting images in a non-USA and we do not, then yeah, that would be censorship. It would also indicate that it was government censorship. So, please, what keywords, (or better url), and where are you located?

Understanding Google

[Cokelee]

Why Politics Don't Belong on Slashdot, And other useful info . . . :-P

First off, Google is _very_ different from other search engines. They want to separate out blog content from other websites. They also put national news articles (that usually decay in a month or so) in news.google.com, and they allow users to rate websites and add their input in a magical way to PageRank. Given all of this I do not believe this could be called political as implied by the editor or censorship (since it is impossible for a private company to actually be involved in censorship). Such statements imply that Google News would also not have stories on the events that occurred in the prison, since they don't want you to know about it. I think you might be seeing the results of people looking at the sites (that have the GoogleToolbar) and rating them poorly. Moreoever, the results shown on yahoo are from news services--these things may be searched from news.google.com. Somehow a plethora of results come up there.

This brings me to my subtitle: Politics don't belong on Slashdot. No one is going to get rid of the section, and even if they did, it doesn't matter now. The entire site is now an acceptable place to insert your political opinions without actually analyzing a situation. This doesn't lead to more coherent discussion, or in this case even restraint on the part of the editor to develop a conspiracy theory in one line (without having to even develop it because so many people are already have the same mindset that they're ready to jump on anything they can). From now on, politics will be acceptable discussion on Slashdot in any topic, and for that reason I think the site's technical discussion over time may be greatly diluted.

This is neither a death wish, nor a threat to stop reading Slashdot. Slashdot may stay a good news site, but it's community is being threatened.

-Adam Colclough

Re:Understanding Google

[foniksonik]

Luckily /. has the moderation system. In fact it is the perfect solution to what you have described. -1 offtopic will need to be given free reign in all topics other than Politics to correct abuses to the discussions. If the readers have any objectivity in them then moderation will work and offtopic rants about political opinions will show up next to l33t discussions about the best way to attack your isp for 'revenge'...

Re:Understanding Google

[doodlelogic]

it is impossible for a private company to actually be involved in censorship

Editorial controls or policy of competing news organisations in a free market are difficult to call censorship. Where there are oppressive governments however, self-censorship by private sector organisations is often used to maintain government control of the news media whilst maintaining a veneer of respectability. Take Robert Mugabe's licensing of journalists and printing presses in Zimbabwe for example. There need not be government censors sitting in the news room for freedom of speech to be effectively squashed.

Another area where it would be fair to call "censorship" on a private company's actions is where it claims to act as a blind agglomerator or distributor of content but secretly edits content to suit a particular political preference.

About your freedoms, the elections and this

[NeedleSurfer]

You asked for it remember? The last elections... doesn't ring a bell, you guys chose the man who thinks freedom is a barrier to freedom, the man who thinks your security is so important that locking you in a cage is for your own good (of course you'll have the right to have your AK-47, don't worry, they will respect you constitution given right to kill people, we know how important violence is to you so...).

Anyways one little word of wisdom to all americans BLUE and RED. That won't work this time, Bush hasn't stolen the election he won them, wether by your actions or inactions, I know that all american travelling outside will tell us that THEY voted Kerry and they have nothing to do with it, actually all americans to which we will speak will try that bullshit but welcome to the very nature of democracy: YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE. You are your government, you chose the guy who is bent on the destruction of every living soul that do not bow before you. LIVE WITH YOUR CHOICE, next asshole who plunge into your buildings won't make us cry, you expressedly asked for it, you cannot menace the entire planet and expect to get friends. So starting for this day on, you guys might want to believe Echelon and Carnivore aren't real, you might convince yourself that you are free, you might try to pose as guardians of morality I don't give a shit and about anyone I know either, YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYTHING THAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT, you are as good of a target then any governement member or military personnel, because you are your governement, this my friends is called democracy, live with it, and in the meantime try to get some education cause according to your own Ben Franklin, democracy is impossible without eductation, result: Bush, and it's your fault.

As for this other episode of your liberties get corrupted get use to it and stop crying cause crying doesn't solve problems, actions do. Plus, you asked for it...

Feel safer?

(man I can feel my karma burning already! ;)) )

you know what? That felt good.. /rant over

Re:About your freedoms, the elections and this

[Kaenneth]

Perhaps if they crashed airplanes into farmhouses in the Midwest.

People in large cities voted overwhelmingly for Kerry, the rural folks, who are NOT in harms way, and the older/richer people who would NEVER be drafted, voted for Bush.

My word for that is Cowardice.

Re:About your freedoms, the elections and this

[foniksonik]

It's true. It's also true that European nations are responsible, directly responsible for nearly all of today's political and social problems in the world.

Over 200 years ago European nations began a policy of colonialism without regard to the impact it would have on those regions it colonized.

European nations began a policy of might makes right, military occupation of 60% of the world. Since then every conflict outside the two world wars has been a direct result of this policy's legacy. Every conflict has been one wherein the local population has had to throw off the chains of colonialism and it's consequences, including European sanctioned governments set up when the colonial power decided to pull out but maintain priority trading status and political influence. These governments were imposed upon the people of these nations for no reason other than maintaining European authority.

The policy continued after each of the world wars as well with European nations re-making national boundaries, creating nations out of disparate populations and controlling local governments in regions all around the world.

The only colonies exempt from this are the US and Canada... nations where the native populations were summarily displaced and almost completely exterminated.

The world outside of Europe was rudely and brutally thrust into the future at the point of a sword, on the other end of the cannon, their resources plundered, their cultures subverted, their people enslaved and marginalized. When will Europeans realize that THEY ARE THE ONES WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE for nearly every conflict that has occurred in the last two centuries...

The United States stayed out of conflicts for the first hundred years as much as possible. We tried to stay out of conflicts in the last hundred years but Europe had screwed up the world too much to avoid getting involved if we wanted to participate in the global economy at all.

Feel justified?

If you're Canadien then you can take solace in the fact that you are still a European Commonwealth Colony and that all you did was commit genocide on Native americans the same as us US'ers.

Yes, actions do solve problems - WE understand that, which is why we like George W. Bush, he's an action star... unlike the leadership in the EU and the UN which seem to be incapable of taking any action whatsoever and appear to be more than happy to let things happen to them rather than take a course of action.

In the end we'll all just have to agree to disagree on what is important to us. I feel that making the world a better place is very important and that it is worth sacrificing to improve our world for future generations. Western Europeans seem to feel that ignoring the problems of the 2nd and 3rd world is important because they are afraid of getting their hands dirty and having to do some things they'd rather not do. People around the world who look to western europe for guidance and ethical/social authority seem to have adopted this opinion as well. /rant over ;-b

So anyways, how do you really feel about the United States? Rants are all good but they don't really seem to change anyones mind... well I suspect my rant didn't do a thing to change your mind.

Some estimating...

[Baldrson]

From the Human Rights Watch report No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons:

The first empirical study of the issue, sparked by reports that Philadephia pretrial detainees were being raped even in vans on the way to court, was conducted in 1968 by a local district attorney. After interviewing thousands of inmates and hundreds of correctional officers, as well as examining institutional records, he found that sexual assaults were "epidemic" in the Philadelphia system. "[V]irtually every slightly-built young man committed by the court is sexually approached within a day or two after his admission to prison," the author said. "Many of these young men are repeatedly raped by gangs of prisoners."(380) In all, he found that slightly over 3 percent of inmates--an estimated 2,000 men --had been sexually assaulted during the twenty-six-month period examined. Although he was careful to exclude instances of consensual homosexual contact from his findings, he also acknowledged that some instances of apparently consensual sex might in fact have a coercive basis, due to the "fear-charged atmosphere" of the penal system.

The evidence is that once an inmate is "punked out" or "turned out", he is repeatedly victimized.

So, the only additional parameter you need to do the arithmetic is the size of the US prison population, which has been exploding over the last decade or so and is over 2 million. Indeed, the US now imprisons more of its population than any other developed country and it is in fact imprisoning more of its citizens than second-world and third world Islmic countries.

The formulas:

Rate = Punks * RapesPerPunk Punks = Prisoners * PunkRate

Can be used to estimate.

It is reasonable to expect that with the explosion of ethnic gang activity in the inner cities, and the general attitude of victimization-as-justification is encouraged among inner city ethnics, that the rate at which ethnic prison gangs sexually attack others, particularly whites, in prisons has substantially increased since the advent of the civil rights era when the above study was initiated. (This is not to disparage the legitimate complaints of minorities -- merely to point out the pathological prison mindset with respect to the civil rights era.)

So let's take 3 percent as a reasonable minimum and 10 percent as a reasonable maximum for PunkRate.

With an incarcerated population of more than 2 million we have a maximum Punks figure of 200,000.

Since punks are increasingly viewed as economic commodities, as are slaves, and the operation of gangs in prisons is frequently involved in economic activities, it is reasonable to place a fairly high number on the "work load" of a given punk. Most pimps demand multiple sexual acts of their employees during a day and we should expect similar rates in prison of punks and their "owners". It's hard to say what a reasonable minimum is here but a reasonable maximum is somewhere around one coerced sex act per day, and we can even round it down if you think that's a ridiculous work load in a prison gang pimping operation -- so we have a reasonable RapesPerPunk of around 300.

So we then have a maximum Rate of 300*200,000 or 60 million.

Substitute your own assumptions and come up with your own estimates, but the numbers are so incredibly high that it hardly makes sense to see Abu Ghraib as anything but a symptom of the domestic problem in the US.

MOD UP! 100% Explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

That would explain EXACTLY the reason the prison images were available when the scandal was covered heavily in the news. Images was simply returning results from the News section which had them in the index. Now they've expired from the news index and won't reappear in the image index until their infrequent update.

SO what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who fuckin cares? Clearly if someone wants to find those images, they're able to do so. Oh the horror! They might have to use another search engine! *gasp* WHAT has this world come to?


Trollie McTroll

Google Has Every Right To Do This; Get Used To It

[reallocate]

Google is not a public institution. As such, it can decline to index, or block access to, or "censor", any bloody thing it wishes. If you don't like it, use their competition.

As a content provider, Google has every right and every reason to make editorial decisions about what it publishes.

(And, here, you thought all along that Google was a search engine, eh? Wrong. Google is a publishing house that uses a search engine to create content. It's cheaper than paying wiriters.)

and for good reason

[chyllaxyn]

True , this is a matter of Google's liability.
And speaking as a legal consultant to the military Google could very well be held liable. Do you see images of Lacy Peterson's body? NO.
These images are evidence in multiple courts cases.
They will be public soon enough.

Re:and for good reason

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

While distasteful, if they're evidence at trial, they're public record and thus should be available to the public.

Now, will CmdrTaco issue a retraction?

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt it.

What about robots.txt?

[itsari]

Doesn't google allow a site to put a robots.txt fle in a directory? And that file can stop google from adding some of the sites file to its search. Maybe that's what is going on here.

oopsies

[Zareste]

Haha! Yep! First they accidentally tortured a bunch of people, then somehow information on it gets wiped out! Haha, that silly Bush administration, always making funny mistakes.

Re:I for one DONT welcome our new bullshit overlor

[back_pages]

Is this the next step in the war on terror? Deny EVERYTHING you do wrong? I remember when they claimed there was WMDs, but there wasn't. I remember when they said they wanted to make the world a safer place, but it isn't! We're taking bullshit from a monkey and a big eared twat and now they want to hide as much of it as they can.

Don't forget, we Americans voted for "moral values", which includes reminding gay people that they're nothing more than fags. We voted for "moral values", which includes buying popcorn and coca-cola so we have a snack while ethnic cleansing is happening yesterday, today, and tomorrow in Sudan (and the victims are Christians, to beat all). We voted for "moral values", but nobody had the balls to say which "moral values" the red states voted for - and sure as shit stinks they were not the moral values of Jesus.

Maybe off-topic

[Anonymous Coward]

but I find so many people aren't not just reading the article, but they are simply ignoring others' replies. So many replies discussing all sorts of conspiration theories even after some posts mentioning that it's simply a 'search engine problem that doesn't update its index frequently'.

Come on, can't you guys read?

not so bad

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't going to make a difference. These pictures are already out there. They should have never been let out to the media in the first place. It was a political tool, and the fact that we allowed people to see them was bad for national security.

Do you honestly think this country is safer because we were allowed to see those photos?

Re:not so bad

[Anonymous Coward]

On what grounds is censoring the photos from the public a national security issue?

Re:Google Has Every Right To Do This; Get Used To

[Anonymous Coward]

But the big question is:

did someone in government tell them it would be in their best interest to block this stuff? If so, let's see what was said!

Regular Google Search

[Anonymous Coward]

It's kind of humourous that a regular search will bring up this article as the top news result... just a little irony.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=abu+ghraib& bt nG=Google+Search

Cycle of abuse

[Baldrson]

The fact of the matter is that sexual abuse is contageous -- and the hysterical attitudes of many people toward sexual sadism in prison is in the mode of the abused becoming the abuser. You can't live in a society like the US is, particularly if you are a white-collar, white-bread, non-gang affiliated male, and experience the government in a way that isn't abusive. Eventually you either identify with the abuser, and become a jingoistic government lacky, or you decide that just about any means are justified against just about anyone or anything identified with the government's power.

mod parent up

[dildo]

the grandparent is totally nuts. This is just like the right wing blaming Abu Ghraib on pornography and women's lib.

No, really. The right wing tried to blame Abu Ghraib on pornography and women's lib.

I think these factors contributed far more:

• Working in an overcrowded, dangerous place (Abu Ghraib was shelled regularly and dangerously understaffed)
• Assigning people with no prison training to not only watch but "prepare" (i.e. break through torture) inmates for interrogation
• The not-so-subtle indoctrination that the Abu Ghraib prisoners were terrorists, instead of common criminals or innocent people (according to the red cross, anywheres from 60-80% of the Abu Ghraib prisoners were innocent people, rounded up in raids)
• Failures of leadership of the first degree
• Pure and simple racism and dehumanization

Re:mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

Assigning people with no prison training to not only watch but "prepare" (i.e. break through torture) inmates for interrogation.

One of the people recently found guilty was actually a private prison guard, I think -- and the firm he worked for had been implicated in similar levels of abuse in American prisons.

Re:mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

Several of the folks involved in the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal had similar history in the _US prison system_ and were not excluded from duty in the more politically sensitive Iraqi situation. The acceptence of US prisoner abuse _does_ have implications for AG.

The average user...

[Ikn]

May not know to use alternative methods to find 'questionable' material, but then again the average user isn't probably searching for such material in the first place. Until Google is sensoring the newest Britney lyrics, I doubt /most/ users will care. Which is unfortunate, because this is how very, very bad things get started. Not to sound arrogant, but why does it seem the geeks always catch wind of this kind of thing first?

Re:Complete FUD, really.

[bpd1069]

The images WHERE there, now they are not... They have been removed from the index...

Your point is moot...

STATE Senate vs UNITED STATES Senate

[stevemm81]

No, this is the Illinois STATE Senate web site. Obama was a STATE Senator, in the Senate of the State of Illinois. Now, he represents the state of Illinois in the UNITED STATES Senate.

Re:STATE Senate vs UNITED STATES Senate

[hikerhat]

oh. I didn't notice that. My bad.

Why Politics (Don't) Belong on Slashdot

[Teun]

Why Politics Don't Belong on Slashdot

I think politics cannot be avoided on Slashdot, "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters" shows the way to for example the following:

U.S. district to teach creationism

That *is* Stuff that Matters!

Btw, to get On Topic, I'm not so sure Google is knowingly 'censoring' these pics or for that matter any other news, it could be corporate suicide.

Sometimes I wonder...

[Anthony Boyd]

...if the government has wandered by Slashdot, helped themselves to a member list (without Taco knowing -- thanks Patriot Act!) and just put every last one of us on their watch list. I mean, damn, what an easy way to round up every last consipracy theorist, anarchist, and anyone else suspected of "failure to support the administration." After coming here, they don't need to look anywhere else. We're the meta-list!

So what - Slashdot censors beheadings of US

[Anonymous Coward]

So what - Slashdot and every other outlet censors every single beheading that has taken place in Iraq of US, Korean and Pakistani citizens. Note - CITIZENS, not soldiers, but peacekeepers.

The images that the propaganda machine puts out - I.e., OLD NEWS of ABU GRHAIB - means absolutely NOTHING - it is OLD NEWS, has been taken care of, and soliders have been SENTENCED. So why are you moronically searching for any info on this story?

Why aren't you searching on news as to Kerry's lies and why he was not elected? Or why the Democrats lost seats in both the house and senate? Or why George W. Bush - Possibly the most hated president of all time - one by a majority, plurality, and historically highest voter turnout in American history?

Let's ALL ask them.

[KinChip]

Why don't we just ask them? I mean A LOT ot of us ask them at:
http://www.google.com/contact/search.html ?
Clearly Google will respond (or not) and eliminate a lot of the speculation here. Let's get an answer, or at least a response (or not, which may give conspiracy theorists a lot to chew on).

Proof that it is censorship and not outdated index

[MTO_B.]

I see many posts saying it's probably as a result of an outdated index. It's not! Proof?

Some of the images that they do have are from articles of recent as June.

Just look at the article dates. Some are really old, but some are rather "recent". Some of the articles where the pictures are found are even talking about the scandal!

No Censorship Here

[stevemm81]

It seems like these comments make it pretty clear that there is no censorship at Google.

The pictures used to be there because Google Image Search updates about every 6 months and includes pictures from Google News. The Abu Ghraib pics aren't in Google News anymore, and they're not 6 months old, so don't expect to find them on Google Image Search.

Same thing with World Series, Obama, etc. Someone mentioned seeing Obama Senate pics, but they're wrong: search for Barack Obama and get pictures of him in the State Senate.

The idea that Google would just cave to a Bush Administration request to block searches for Abu Ghraib is ludicrous. Google has no reason to give in. Also, notice when the linked forum discussion at AnandTech began. In October, a month before the election. The Bush Administration would not have risked the bad publicity of attempting to censor a high-profile news source like Google for such a pointless task right before an election. These pictures are widely available and have already been seen by anyone who might be interested in them, so attempting to restrict access then would only have hurt both Bush and Google.

Do a regular Google search for Abu Ghraib pictures. Notice that all the links, to sites like antiwar.com, contain exactly what you'd expect. Moreover, Google News even pops up at the top, linking to this Slashdot story. Now, if Google were interested in censorship, wouldn't it be a simple matter for them to tell their news-accumulating bots to flag all stories involving their name and words like "censorship" for a human to review before posting them?

Re:No Censorship Here

[DankNinja]

You mean it's not a conspiracy? I'm surprise you haven't been modded down for even suggesting that.

They can kiss their #1 ranked ass goodbye...

[freedom_india]

...especially when they start to pander to Big Brother twins (China & USA).

The phrase: "Do no evil..." needs to be appended added with following "...and do not bite any Government's ass..."

Imagine if India flexes it's muscle and demands google remove all references to "occupied Kashmir"...

The first censored post, the first stopped mail, the first "missing" image is the first step we take towards losing our hard-earned freedom and liberty.

"Give me liberty or...uh how about a million dollars..."

Re:They can kiss their #1 ranked ass goodbye...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's the problem with people in USA. Every tiny opression they are experiencing is the first step towards... you should count those steps once in a while, to realize you took a pretty long walk, and you are almost getting there. What make you think you have more freedom than China, cos they said on TV? America, the land of the free, indeed.

Re:Complete FUD, really.

[Anonymous Coward]

No its not. If this is really censorship going on, then why were the regular search results not removed as well?

Worse than that. This isn't criticism. It's fact.

[khasim]

And the implication of THAT is that if you criticise the Government you're going to get stomped.

This isn't criticism of the government. This is about actual pictures taken of actual events.

Google is now self-censoring factual information.

Not someone's opinion or belief or criticism. Factual information.

I could, possibly, understand self-censoring opinion and criticism if based upon your beliefs. Why rely upon google to index people's insane rants and conspiracy theories?

But when it comes to self-censoring links to actual pictures of actual events, particularly ones that are of such political significance, that's way over the line.

So why did you react as you did?

[Cryofan]

Let's take a look at what you originally wrote, and see how it fits into the real world:
You wrote:
Ever consider that Google is a business and has the right to choose what they want to include themselves?

To analogize: two people, Customers A and B, walk into a KFC fried chicken joint to eat some chicken. Customer A thinks the chicken is bad and goes outside hollering "This is bad chicken; don't it eat it". Customer B walks up to him and says, "Ever consider that KFC is a business and has the right to choose what products they want to include themselves?"

Your problem is that you have been brainwashed by years pro-hierarchy, pro-business propaganda. You have been trained to react the way you just did. I know! I was once there myself. I have reacted just as you have, on many occasions.

Try thinking for yourself. Try reading some leftist material. Really read it. THink about it. Take your time.....

Re:So why did you react as you did?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe KFC has the right to serve food that tastes like crap. It probably won't help them in the long run, but if that's what they want to do then they can do it. Lots of people don't like McDondals, and lots of people do. Both have the right to choose to eat there or not.

I'm a libertarian, and that means making your own decisions, whether you're a business or a customer. As long as no one forces Customer A to eat at KFC, I don't see a problem. If Customer A is upset he can't get a refund, then he should've checked for some sort of money back guarantee before buying the food.

On history?

[miffo.swe]

American history is full of examples that makes the tinfoil fly. Based on past behaviour i should say that you should not write anything off when it comes to American administration.

Even the strangest conspiracy teory often has a counterpart somewhere in history.

Re:On history?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like Operation Northwoods. Or the FOIA data on Pearl Harbor.

Google has intelligence connections

[Everyman]

Last month Google acquired Keyhole, which got money from In-Q-Tel, which is a venture firm funded by the CIA. One of the most prominent engineers at Google used to work for the National Security Agency. The U.S. Army is listed by Google as one of the customers of their Google intranet search appliance. Google runs help-wanted ads for engineers with a top-secret security clearance. It's not hard to believe that Google would pull these photos as a way of positioning themselves for juicy contracts with the intelligence community.

Re:Google has intelligence connections

[Anonymous Coward]

On one hand there is a known problem with consistency and accuracy with Google's image search. On the other hand, there is a possible massive government conspiracy to repress images on only one search engine. Take your meds and get a reality check.

Just Goes to Show You

[tom's a-cold]

As near-monopolies go, Google is certainly technically competent and not too malignant. But with their mearket share they can easily become transformed into just another single point of failure.

We're back to the ecosystem analogy: the only thing that makes the Internet viable is diversity. Governments love monopolies and oligopolies and encourage them at every opportunity-- then it's easy for them to pick up the phone and an embarrassing political problem goes away.

Beware gatekeepers, no matter how benign they are. The only way the Web will continue to be useful is if we continue to bypass these chokepoints.

Re:Just Goes to Show You

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is not censoring anything. If you take one story from a news blog like Slashdot at face value and run with it as if its undeniable truth, you need to get your head checked.

As many people pointed out, including Google employees (i.e. people who actually know what they are talking about), Google Images is updated very infrequently. You can still find the images by doing a regular web search on Google.

Re:Google Has Every Right To Do This; Get Used To

[reallocate]

Are you paranoid enough to ask that question every time your local paper or TV statins makes editorial choices?

In any case, it would be wrong for the government to pressure Google. But, does it makes sense when the images are obviously available, anyway? If the government wanted to pressure someone, why not pressure the sites that display the images, not the company that indexed them?

But, still, even if they were pressured, the decision remains Google's. It is not a public institution.

Google seems to have pro-Bush attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

On pre-election day the story about 8 marines killed in Iraq and ~20 wounded immediately disappeared from Google news' front page to be replaced by some insignificant news from around the world. The stories about improvement in the job market situation stayed on the front page all day long.

Re:Google seems to have pro-Bush attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

Does *everyone* who reads slashdot have issues with paranoia? I would think "Nerds" would have heard of Occam's Razor.

Re:Google seems to have pro-Bush attitude

[DankNinja]

Not everyone here is decked out in tinfoil.

It's people trying to find *any* justification for their belief system. They disregard all the possibilities they don't agree with. This is why Bush/Clinton/Kerry are apparently responsible for everything wrong in the world.

Re:Google seems to have pro-Bush attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Google does not keep news stories that YOU think should stay on the top of the page means Google supports political figures you disagree with?

What is "anti-American"?????

[Ars-Fartsica]

This is a meaningless term that has been repeated so many times that people are beginning to believe it means something. It was first offered as a slander on striking American union workers. Their employer hired a Madison Ave ad man to come up with ways to discredit them, and "anti-American" was the catchphrase he offered them.

Lets get this straight - the term has no meaning, it is a logic vaccum, it is what the mentally handicapped trot out as an retort when they are backed into a corner.

Do a * image search from a website

[Anonymous Coward]

If you do a blanket image search from a given website on Google you will quickly find that all of the images the engine finds are very out of date.

This points to Google just having a weak image search update frequency as others have pointed out earlier, providing direct proof.

For example, search for WoW on www.battle.net using Google (advanced tools). You'll find no images or very few, because it's a relatively new game.

-Foo

bush's fault

[Anonymous Coward]

yup it is bush's fault the google censors pictures and it is bush's fault that people get cancer and micorsoft has 90% of the desktopmarket.....hell just remember that anything that goes wrong in yor life it is all becouse of a Bush.

stendec@gmail.com

Re:bush's fault

[DankNinja]

It's the Bush Paradox. The same people that call him a bumbling idiot are the same people who also believe he is an evil super-villain.

One try, I had no problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you mean: "abu ghraib" "lyndie england" "charles garner "

News results for "abu ghraib" "lynndie england" "charles graner " - View today's top stories
Google Censors Abu Ghraib Images - Slashdot - 1 hour ago

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household names around the world ... at the now infamous Abu Ghraib prison in ...
www.anairhoads.org/politics/graner.shtml - 15k - Cached - Similar pages

Lynndie England to Be Court-Martialed ... Lynndie England, the soldier seen in some of the most notorious photos with ... a clerk
no

But you reacted like Customer B. WHY?

[Cryofan]

You are customer B. Why did you react that way?

Re:But you reacted like Customer B. WHY?

[invenustus]

Is it truly impossible that someone might disagree with you for a reason another than corporate brainwashing?

Re:But you reacted like Customer B. WHY?

[Anonymous Coward]

As I already explained, every customer (and business) has a right to behave as they wish in a free market. No one should be holding a gun to anyone's head to dictate how they choose to do their business.

Customer A isn't being lied to by KFC.
Customer A can speak out against KFC.
Customer A can choose never to return to KFC again.

Sorry, I'm not going to become so pro-government, anti-business leftist. It's never going to happen.

Re:But you reacted like Customer B. WHY?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it is impossible. The fact that you question the great Cryofan is additional evidence that you have been brainwashed by Massa.

Have you read Cryofan's post history?

Google is NOT a good company anymore...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's grown too quickly and is getting out
of control. Someone in there needs
to clamp down and get it back to the ethical
startup it was origionated as.

My default search engine is NOT google.com anymore.
Is yours?

Re:Google is NOT a good company anymore...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should I change my search engine based on a news story from some third-rate website like Slashdot with hacks like CmdrTaco inserting his viewpoint into a story? All it took was 10 minutes for a few intelligent people to come here and point out how Google Images works and why Abu Ghraib doesn't appear, combined with the fact that a regular web search on Google still returns pages for the images.

Idiots. The whole lot of you.

I get images ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm nto sure what images you were actually searching for,
but I'm getting images related to "abu ghraib":

http://images.google.be/images?q=abu+ghraib&hl=n l& btnG=Google+zoeken
http://images.google.co.uk/ima ges?q=abu+ghraib&hl= en&btnG=Google+Search

What's more scary than 4 more years of Bush?

[cbare]

The 54 million Americans who voted for him.

Ideology and politics. It's easier than thinking

Very true. A thoughtful, informed, and educated electorate is essential to the functioning of a democracy. Too bad, it seems like our country is abandoning reason and replacing it with fear, religion, blind ideology -- all poor substitutes.

"Abu Ghraib photos" brings up lots of links

[jneider]

Just searched Google using "Abu Ghraib phots" and lots of links to the photos in question come up. I clicked on five and they all worked. No censorship here...

Whoa...

[rscrawford]

When did I move to China?

Re:Whoa...

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing we need to do is make Slashdot the state run media service.. you'd have news that is about on par with the accuracy and editorial balance of the news services of 3rd world dictatorships.

how quickly we forget

[Phantom of the Opera]

How about Oaklahoma City?
Also,
Muslim Pakistan and Shi Lanke and Indonesia have had female heads of state.

These images are easy to find with Google

[clayski]

For those who know how to use Google advanced search, instead of relying on Google Images, the photos are simple to find. Google has simply chosen not to promote them by serving them up in Google Images, which has always been a very small subset of the photos indexed by Google.

Just use "abu ghraib" in the "exact phrase" (string) field, and "image photo gif jpeg picture" in the "at least one of the words" (boolean OR) field. All of the top sites listed have the photos available (until Slashdotted in 10...9...8...7...6...)

Information just wants to be free.

Use their own forums

[mrmeval]

In a day I'm taking them out of my book marks and blocking them at the router if this doesn't stop.

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=google.public. su pport.general

Lot of misconceptions here

[mcbevin]

Firstly, if you search google's standard search for 'abu ghraib photos', you'll find plenty of sites with the photos. No censorship there.

The issue however regards google's image search.

Firstly, this search has always by default filtered out offensive images, such as porn. Personally I think the Abu Ghraib images are much more offensive than a nude, so its perfectly understandable that these might be filtered out.

It does however appear that even with the filter set to off, the pictures are still not found by the picture search.

It is also worth mentioning that this has _nothing_ to do with google being 'slow' or 'old' - i.e. the pictures not showing up to it not being up-to-date. Google's normal search finds numerous sites which contain the torture images, and you can find - for example - recent images from the 2004 election already using the image search. While there is some variance in how long various images/sites take to appear on google, I find it completely implausible that this is the cause for the pictures not appearing. The original post also actually mentions that google _used_ to find these images.

Thus it would indeed appear to be a case of censorship, if only on google's images search.

Re:Lot of misconceptions here

[mcbevin]

To add to my post - another poster writes that google claims precisely this excuse - that the image search is out-of-date:


In short, There is no censorship here. We are embarassed that our image index is not updated as frequently as it should be. Expect a refresh in the near future.

In the meantime, you can just search on Google Web Search for [abu graib photos] [abu graib photos] [google.com] to get plenty of what you are looking for.


I personally find this hard to believe. Can anyone somehow confirm whether or not google's image search previously found these images, as this this is the deciding issue in the whole matter.

Funny

[rscrawford]

I just did a Google search for Abu Ghraib. In the "News results" section at the top, the first headline was, "Google Censors Abu Ghraib Images - Slashdot - 2 hours ago".

Spiffy!

g00glez? lo!oll

[kaje103]

I love Google. Sadly my perversion for naked Iraqi men in bondage begs to differ.

try another google ...

[geraint-nz]

i used www.google.co.nz and initially there were 98 photos for "abu ghraib", none for lyndie england. however search instead for "abu ghurayb prison" and you get 2 links to global security org and there you get all the prisoner abuse photographs.

Official Respons from Google.

[chrisd]

Hi All,

Sergey asked me to pass this on:

• In short, There is no censorship here. We are embarassed that our image index is not updated as frequently as it should be. Expect a refresh in the near future.

  In the meantime, you can just search on Google Web Search for [abu graib photos] [abu graib photos] to get plenty of what you are looking for.

From me:

Please don't ascribe some dating issues on images to some political motive, we take this kind of stuff very seriously. We have to comply with the law, but there is no law yet on the books reguiring that companies in the United States take down pictures that might be embarassing ot the current administration.

Chris DiBona

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Hechz]

That seems a VERY unlikely explanation as they WERE available. That and the story is QUITE OLD.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah! The tinfoils here just wont give up. You have no clue as to how Google's image spider works (neither do I, but I don't paint balant accusations upon Google) yet you think that becuase Google isn't going out of their way to promote your political agenda that they must be censoring the images!

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

hmm... well alternatively, the person writing the article could have misremembered and have actually searched on Google normal index.. It's not so unlikely.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

I just tried and the pictures are there. Working fine for me, but then I am not an American.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, right, sure.

Up to date is one thing. Having ALL the more famous photos in question NOT show up in a search is another.

Try again.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

Help! Help! I'm being oppressed! :P

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your image index is not updated as frequently as it should be, eh? Then why do searches for events such as "halloween 2004" -- which happened much more recently than the prison abuse -- show up just fine?
halloween 2004
We take this kind of stuff very seriously too, you know.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[aliens]

but there is no law yet on the books

Ahhh, but there will probably be on rather soon. To not pass one would be unpatriotic and hurtful to our troops.

Want to help them out?

Soliders need love too Help keep up the morale.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

"halloween 2005" also returns results. Less than 2004 certainly, but 2004 itself returns less than 2003 by about the same ratio.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[chrisd]

As others noted, this is a view into the different ways that google schedules the crawl. Some sites get crawled more often than others, and some images are updated faster than others. And some stay in the index longer. News ones (I think) transit through the index perhaps faster than they should. I'm really going outside my level of expertise here though, So I won't go on about this too much, but I assure you that it isn't some bush administration/google partisan trickey.

Chris DiBona

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Rick the Red]

That link opens in a Google News search. Click on "Images" and guess what? NONE of the controversial photos appear. Also, the main story's link for lynndie england gets you to a page with zero photos asking if you meant lyndie england, a page that also returns no photos at all. There are lots of photos of here out there, so what gives? Something about this whole story smells.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[stoo..art]

I too have no idea how google implements its image search index, but I do know that it is either seriously flawed or being actively censored. These images received massive worldwide media coverage less than a year ago and are used by any anti-american group who want to say "look, see... *they* are the evil ones".

To not have a single listing on the index because it is "out of date" is frankly unbelievable.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

When there isn't, will you show any less vitriol towards the administration and will you be any less cynical and reactionary?

Doubt it. Hell, you'll probably arrogantly claim credit for there being no such law.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you actually think we believe this?

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

These photos and stories are so old (considered in terms of the fast spinning computer-world), it makes absolutely no sense that these pictures shouldnt be all over Google (the self-proclaimed "leading" search engine) by now.

I dont think its a "technical issue aka sorry we cant do it", but a willingful decision of delay to not let "critical material" of any kind spread as fast over the number one info-pool as it otherwise really could, as long as no LAWS are passed to stop that...

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Christopher Thomas]

I dont think its a "technical issue aka sorry we cant do it", but a willingful decision of delay to not let "critical material" of any kind spread as fast over the number one info-pool as it otherwise really could

Stop and think about this for a minute.

Do you have any idea how _huge_ an amount of effort it would take to screen images indexed and search terms and tweak them so that no images "harmful to the administration" came up?

When it takes this much effort, and there's nobody holding a gun to their head, and they have competitors gaining mindshare, why the _hell_ would Google bother with this? Their primary purpose is to make money, not please Republicans, and they're going to be around a lot longer than Bush will be in power!

The line is that their "news" images cycle out of the index quickly, and I can certainly believe this - after all, if I'm searching for newsfeed images, chances are I'm asking about something that happened recently.

Trying to stage a cover-up of the type suggested would be very expensive and not a good business strategy.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Babbster]

Here's my question, which none of the tinfoil responses I've read so far (no way can I read them all) address adequately: What would Google's MOTIVE be to remove the pictures from their image index? Everyone seems to be railing on and on about censorship, pandering to the government, etc. but none of those explanations make any sense. The idea that the executive branch sent some kind of request to Google to remove the images is ridiculous on its face since that kind of trail would lead to embarrassment (and probably an EFF lawsuit). The idea that Google is pushing a political agenda is ridiculous because there would be so many better ways to do it (you can still get to said pictures through Google "Proper").

In short, this proves once again that paranoid, imaginary conspiracies are more fun for some people than the truth.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[FusionJunky]

agreed, these were _removed_ we all know GIS would be all over it otherwise :(( this is bad.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Dachannien]

For all the people who for whatever reason still don't believe you, you might also point out that this search still results in over 100 hits.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[metlin]

I can kinda vouch for this -- my website (metlin.org) has some images which were uploaded in 2001, and these still show up in Google Images, although they're long gone.

While Google hasn't updated these pics, some of the newer pics from my school website gets updated pretty darn quickly.

Although I cannot fathom why, I'd say it's probably true especially since I've experienced it first-hand.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[aliens]

relax relax, I was joking. It just doesn't come across so well in text.

Guess that was the important part of my post, not the link. Cause got knows who cares about the troops when there's some nerd being cynical towards his government.

But no, I probably won't really ever like this admin, just like most didn't let up on Clinton during his tenure.

I remember attacks on him for firing at terrorist camps during the blowjob scandel, calling it a diversion.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

A user "crawl" scheduled on November 11, 2004 with the keywords: "abu grhaib england": google: Your search - abu ghraib england - did not match any documents altavista: AltaVista found 76 results How many hits would "Google Official Lies" produce?

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're wasting your time. Most of the people that read slashdot are so hoplessly partisan and paranoid (including a couple editors, who shall go unnamed) that logic and common sense seem to escape them.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Patrick.R]

Is this the only things Google is censoring? So far http://news.google.com/news?q=lynndie+england&hl=e n&lr=&tab=gn&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d seems to escape censorship.

But for one search that we can double check against known fact, how many can't we? Can we trust Google alone for information? Can we even trust a handful of web search engines all concentrated in the same part of the world?

And this is only a taste of things to come...

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

this is your gouvernment working for you and protecting you
from things that you do not need to know.
Feel safer?

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Qwegrpt]

What does the spelling suggestion prove? Searching for misspilling asfasfasf returns zero results, but suggests a search for misspelling asfasfasf - which curiously also returns zero images.

Oh no! Censorship!

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[xigxag]

Which part of their response did you not understand/ They simply have not updated their image index since before the Abu Ghraib incident took place. Look, do a search on some other recent news of international import. Observe, for instance, that a search of Mary-Kate Olsen fails to turn up any pictures of her as a skeeved-out anorexic. In addition to that, notice that a very large percentage of any picture search turns up as 404 errors, which result is consistent with the database not being updated recently.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

In short, There is no censorship here.

And in long?

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Atzanteol]

Simple. Not finding information on a subject does not mean none exists.

Christ people, just because Google is Good(TM) doesn't mean you should forget how to lookup information using other sources!

Hey, they're not perfect! Go figure!

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's interesting to look at where google's venture capital came from before the company went public:

http://www.google-watch.org/bigbro.html

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[stfvon007]

They both returned 0. But it will change to 1 when they index this page. (and I did use quotes in the search) Without the quotes AltaVista found 345,000 results and google found about 142,000.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Trogre]

Soliders need love too Help keep up the morale.
-- taking over the world, we are.

Begun, the Clown War has.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Barryke]

oh, i see.. [/ontopic]

sorry for my poo`ish english, i'm Dutch.

I just realy realy love gmail, i'd even pay for it (assuming
it'll expand its functions etc on a continous basis,
thats very important) but have this one small thing to say..

Gmail (Google Mail) is pronounced Gay-Mail in dutch.
I suggest you try to find a somewhat less strange mail adress,
as people who dont know google-mail look quite silly at me
after they asked for my mail adress.

PS: i don't hate homosexuals, but dont like people to think i'm gay.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't bother to try and explain this rationally to conspiracy theorists. They simply see the rational explanation as part of the conspiracy.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not much point in using Google Images if it's 8 months behind the times.

Porn doesn't go stale.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Monf]

....uuuuh, yeah, right, sure...

so... if that's the case, i guess google's technologies and hardware aren't all they are touted as, and I guess all us INVESTORS should AVOID INVESTING in GOOGLE, since they are much, much, much, MUCH, MUCH SLOWER at indexing content that pretty much EVERY OTHER search engine has NO PROBLEM indexing quickly...

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[gl4ss]

*hat would Google's MOTIVE be to remove the pictures from their image index?*

that someone asked them.

they do it *ALL THE TIME*, so there's no higher motive needed really, just that someone asked them.

*The idea that the executive branch sent some kind of request to Google to remove the images is ridiculous on its face since that kind of trail would lead to embarrassment (and probably an EFF lawsuit).* you see any eff lawsuits happening from the other active filtering done by google? no, you don't see.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

If you can read more than seven words at a time, you'd've had the answer to your question.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

That seems a VERY unlikely explanation as they WERE available.

Really? I don't recall anyone saying that apart from you. Got any evidence, or are you just conspiracy-theorising?

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

The line is that their "news" images cycle out of the index quickly, and I can certainly believe this - after all, if I'm searching for newsfeed images, chances are I'm asking about something that happened recently.

Do a google news search for "abu ghraib" and then check to see if the images shown in the articles also appear on the google image search for "abu ghraib".

If they are using images in recent news stories to add pictures to the image search funtion, I would guess that the pictures embedded in stories about abu ghraib would show up.

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&lr=&tab=wn&ie= UT F-8&q=%22abu+ghraib%22+abuse&start=10&sa=N
The picture in the mercury news story http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/sp ecial_packages/iraq/9970707.htm does not.

If the picture cache is updated in a rolling fashion by the news cache, why isn't the picture from the merc article in the image search?

(maybe I missed it)

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[DzugZug]

If you look at the context of the pictures, you will see that someone posted them on the web near text that said "Holloween" and "2004" but were posted in November of 2003.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fix the typos in your sig! Ugh!

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[acebone]

Bullshit !

Google was the ones who showed alta-vista how to do search. Now when they are NOT being contemporary (like the abu ghirab thing is recent events) - they DO appear censoring - coz we all think their technology couldn't be the problem

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[acebone]

Oh - and to say that the US is using torture as part of their righteous christian way of doing things is a political agenda ??? Even when it's evident - it is a political agenda ???

Sometimes I wish I where an american - stupid and conceded and sure in my own ways...

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[acebone]

*were

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[snarkh]

Actually, it is complete trivial to handcode it so no images come up for certain searches. What exactly is your point?

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[opeboyal]

If you look up Halloween 2005 and Halloween 2006 you get a lot of photos too. So until i see a photo that has some guy in a halloween costume with the year 2004 plastered in the image somewhere, your point is moot.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uuuuhhhh, GEE ! I never fucking realised that! I think that from now on, I'll make all my investment decisions based on what some spotty-arsed slashdot wank-monkey thinks about some tiny aspect of the company's technology! Why, you must be EVER SO FUCKING WEALTHY yourself, since you know so much about investing! I bet that even though you're still living in your folk's garage, you've got all sorts of real frigging cool stuff on the walls and investment bankers and the like are just coming and going all day long!!!!

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Monf]

Well, your welcome for the advise...

I'll be right back, but right now I gotta find another cardboard box- it's raining and the one I'm in now is getting soggy...

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[alw53]

Maybe it's some secret section in the Act of Which We Do Not Speak.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Alsee]

Which part of their response did you not understand/ They simply have not updated their image index since before the Abu Ghraib incident took place.

The part about the images FORMERLY DID APPEAR, and thus had obviously been index already and had been REMOVED.

Either quite a few people are lying or deluded in claiming that these images used to be available, or the given explanation just doesn't make any sense.

-

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[loraksus]

Respons?

So you're just asking us to believe that this was just a minor, routine screwup.
Sounds a bit fishy. I suppose that is why Google is on /.'s front page.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google, stInc, has a larger market cap than General Motors but doesnt produce nearly as much.

You guys sit there furrowing your brow with your arms dug into your thrones of intellect giving out GLAT tests to people. But you CENSOR people who try to sell guns and ammunition from advertising placements. Sergey is a Russian Communist who believes that Americans should be DISARMED and you pulled wool over Wall St. with that IPO like the Bolsheviks pulled wool over the Russian public.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Rick the Red]

Yes, but there is no such thing as a "misspelling asfasfasf", but there is such a thing as a "Lynndie England" and there are lots of photos of her on the internet, not all of them of her at Abu Ghraib. Why don't any of them show up? Why was the link given in the main story if it lead to nothing? I believe it led to non-controversial photos of her, and shortly after the /. story broke they removed those links, too. The other links, abu graib and charles graner, still work. I'm sorry, but I refuse to believe that Google is simply broken. I find it more likely that they're avoiding controversy now that they're a publicly traided company. Of course, their self-censorship only generated more controversy, so they're backpedaling fast. Shooting themselves in the foot is more like it.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

And just how funny is, "Um... we messed up"? No. This is obviously censorship of the first order.

-Anon

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

*conceited

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you assure us of anything? Did you write the Google Image search code? Have you audited the operation over at Google as to how images are indexed? Do you know *anything* about how image indexing works that the rest of us do not?

No? No? No?

As they say, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts, absolutely. And Google is well on its way.

(aren't you the guy who can't even configure a web server?)

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the other way around it makes sense....
Now where are mass-destruction weapons in Irak?
Debunking and revealing those tricks to keep the public misinformed is NOT to be mistaken for "conspiracy", but lying and misinorming from above certainly is.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[acebone]

I shouldn't post when I am drunk :)

Far from all Americans are of course like that, and I apologize to them.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[brainburger]

For what is worth, I remember getting many hits on Google Images for Abu Ghraib and Lyndie England some time ago.
It was about 4 months ago, I can't be sure what spelling I used and I have no evidence to show you, sorry.
I don't buy the idea that the spider is simply out of date.
Searching Google Images for 'Margaret Hassan' who was taken hostage 3 weeks ago produces one clear hit.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting and related story. Right after the US attacked Iraq at the start of this war, the Bush administration started orally attacking Al Jazeera news for showing pictures of dead US soldiers (they had pictures of dead and injured Iraqis too, by the way). All of a sudden, news reports from CNN and USAtoday etc. attacked Al Jazeera for doing such horrible things. And also all of a sudden, not only was Al Jazeera unavailable on the internet (couldn't get to it, or even from other countries ping to it)... but Google's cache button didn't work for the news there. What an amazing coincidence. My suspicion is that they got a visit from some government folks, and immediately afterwards the Al Jazeera cache went away. Google is a very powerful organization since they control the access to information for a lot of people and reporters. Power is dangerous when concentrated so much. Censorship sucks.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[srowen]

I completely agree. Until someone can posit at least a plausible motivation for doing such a thing, one that trumps the huge expense and downside, this is a non-story.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno, the explanation seems likely. Sometimes when I post to Usenet via Google, I do a search for my post and it appears about 50% of the time for the first few days, until it finally reliably appears on a search. It seems to me that it is probably a replication issue: My post is indexed on one server, which serves it up as results in response to one search, but the next search is redirected by their load balancer process to a server working from a less up to date index. Once the change propagates to all their servers, the updated change is served up reliably in search results, but this takes a few days.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Christopher Thomas]

Actually, it is complete trivial to handcode it so no images come up for certain searches.

I'm betting you don't do much filtering.

Short answer is, it's a very large amount of work to both cover all of the search terms that might bring up the material you want suppressed, and find, flag, and isolate _all_ of the material you don't want to be searchable.

As an exercise, try listing all sources of the images that you can think of, and all possible search queries you might use to find them. Once you've gone through several sheets of paper, you'll start to see my point.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

no. The typos are a reflection of my individuality, and rebellion against apostrophees! In fact, I think ill stop spel checking at all now. Let my tipos shine in all there glory!!!!

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

i don't hate homosexuals, but dont like people to think i'm gay.

Don't speak Dutch then.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

Freedom of speech goes two ways...you have the right to say (or publish) something and you also have the right not to if you so choose....for whatever reason! My advice: use another search site if you don't like googles policies. In the meantime, well, life's a bitch so stop the pissing and moaning when things don't pan out exactly as you want.

Re:Official Respons from Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

if news images filter through quicker than others, how come you can still search for "wardrobe malfunction" and find janet jackson's boobie?

your rights

[godlike]

right. and if you were one from abu grhybe prisoners. would you be happy if millions of people starred at your photo each and every day thanks to google? think about it ;)

Plenty of images are online via Google

[Lauren Weinstein]

Greetings. If you do a search on Google for "iraqi prisoner abuse" you'll find plenty of entries. My own blog comes up just fine with its collection. --Lauren-- Lauren's Blog: http://www.vortex.com/lauren-blog (Search for "prisoner" on the blog to find the items.)

Re:Complete FUD, really.

[Alsee]

Re: Sig

I would characterize it as a 51% coalition of the fanatical, the frightented, and the fooled.

-

type in ABU GRAIB and click the first link

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the FIRST LINK that comes up on GOOGLE - http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444 ... so please stop the lies. You guys are insanely anti bush and anti-republican to the point of being blind.

Stop the BS and start learning how to accuse everyone of censorship or facism simply because of a few mistakes here and there.

What does "our administration" have to do with it?

[artemis67]

Last I checked, Google was a corporation in the private sector, and not a branch of the federal government. You got proof of government involvement in a cover-up?

Damn, dude, just because you're probably bitter about the election, you don't have to go spreading lies about the President. Try to maintain at least the illusion of objectivity.

Re:You're guessing? - ??

[Tuna_Shooter]

I agree with this opinion.... if they are doing self censorship then their ability to provide unbiased - non-partisan information just went down my shitter also...

Frustration...

[rainman_bc]

You know, I've become increasingly frustrated with Google. If it any of the other major search engines indexed usenet and images, I'd switch in a heartbeet.

Google has really gone downhill. Google spam is so commonplace it's made searching for web content useless. Try looking for any programming help, and you'll find usenet posts dumped into a web site.

Try looking for product reviews and google will get first index pages that link to other product reviews.

Both are equally annoying and equally useless.

I'm actually finding much better results on alltheweb than I am on google now. Sure there's some useful features, and google is shorter to type than alltheweb.

If Alltheweb indexed usenet like google did, I'd switch fully and never look back.

IMHO, Google's hanging onto a thread. The more times we find results using alternative search engines to find what we need, the more likely we'll be to switch to them permanently.

Re:Frustration...

[Anonymous Coward]

Google has really gone downhill. Google spam is so commonplace it's made searching for web content useless. Try looking for any programming help, and you'll find usenet posts dumped into a web site. I look for programming help regulary and find many great resources. And... even a usenet post dumped into a website is usually a good targeted result that i'll find useful. Try looking for product reviews and google will get first index pages that link to other product reviews. Product reviews can be dicey. Rather than typing in the product name and the word review. Look for a product review site... then search that site for the product. Its much more useful. Then go with all the web, but they suck. IMHO, Google's hanging onto a thread. The more times we find results using alternative search engines to find what we need, the more likely we'll be to switch to them permanently. Yeah, yeah... shit or get off the pot buddy.

MOD UP

[Anonymous Coward]

This appears to be the best explanation for the disappearing photos, as well as the reason that more recent photos from the Presidential debates are accessible. Google's reputation (and Occam's Razor) suggest that this explanation is the right one.

Re:MOD UP

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Slashdot, remember.

Where has the right answer ever mattered less?

With apologies to the Au Pairs

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Sung to the tune of "Armagh" We don't torture, we're a civilized nation
We're avoiding any confrontation
We don't torture, we don't torture

Beheaded hostages
in Iraq
Heard daily on the news
forget about Vietnam
You can ignore the women too
There are plenty of women in Iraqi jails
political prisoners in their home
the Oceania state's got nothing to lose
It's a subject better left alone -

We don't torture
we're a civilized nation
We're avoiding any confrontation
We don't torture

Alleged crimes withheld information
They get no sanitation
Gitmo brain blasters defy
All convention
They're all doped up on valium
And so relaxed for the next interrogation
naked spread-eagled on their backs
it's a better position for internal examination
it's a better position for giving information
information. . .
An armed guard squad they all get a beating
bleeding and wounded some stopped eating
forming pyramids of naked flesh led on a leash
the facts don't mesh!

We don't torture, we're a civilized nation
We're provoking all the confrontation, but -
We don't torture, we don't torture!

Re:Proof that it is censorship and not outdated in

[John Miles]

See the FAQ, question 14. Move along, nothing to see here, etc., etc.

Little-known yet critical fact about Abu Ghraib

[FredThompson]

OK, guys, take off the foil hats and put away your copy of the Paranoia game.

Mary Mapes illegally obtained classified photos from Abu Ghraib which were part of a DoD investigation. (Mary Mapes is the "producer" of the 60 Minutes II episode with the forged GWB documents..."producer"...interesting term...)

Maybe the DoD did have some influence on Google. Maybe Google's lawyers are smart enough to know that Mapes' release of those photos had the very real potential to destroy the DoD's legal cases against the soldiers who participated. News media reports "taint" jurors, be they civilians or military officers being selected to serve on a courts martial.

Granted, the images have already had very widespread circulation but why contribute to the problem?

That's just as plausible an explanation as the typical Slashdot conspiracy kookery.

Re:Complete FUD, really.

[bhima]

Yep, but I only had 120 characters. Besides "the fanatical" and "the fooled" amount to pretty much the same thing.

long steady decline

[Anonymous Coward]

googles best days are behind it, now comes the long steady decline.

Slashdot puts cart before horse!

[gone.fishing]

So Google's image search wasn't as complete as someone elses. That alone does not mean that there is censorship or conspiracy. Perhaps Google screwed up, perhaps they took the initiative on their own or perhaps in some country where they have a presence, these images are illegal so they have taken them down to comply with the law. There are probably many other possible explainations as well!

Believe me I am not a fan of the current administration (don't blame me, I voted but not for these clowns). But to jump to the conclusion that there is some sort of conspiracy or censorship going on that involves them is just plain stupid. It lacks foundation or a shred of evidence.

Slashdot editors - I appreciate your freedom of speech and agree that you have a right to publish anything you damed well please. But your product is now mature enough and enjoys enough distribution so you should consider establishing and abiding by a set of "journalistic ethics" that would keep your integrity where you want it.

I am and will continue to be a faithful Slashdot reader - but will now always think back to this story and think about how appalled I was before I take your word on anything again. You have lost credibility with me and I suspect with a lot of other Slashdotters as well.

Fellow Slashdotters please help me: Reply to this message if you agree or disagree with my point. By asking this, I hope to accomplish two things. First make it more likely that someone from Slashdot will actually read and consider this. Second, maybe, just maybe it will help me keep my good karma!

Rights

[nurb432]

Actually those 'old men' DO have the right . Its their country, its their rules.

If they chose to make certain things illegal to view, its their right.

You may not agree, but its not your decision.

and FYI: EVERY country has information they wont allow their public to see.. This isn't anything new here.

Re:Proof that it is censorship and not outdated in

[Anonymous Coward]

How does that prove its censorship? Google

An alternative to Google/Private Search Engines

[Theocracy]

I have an idea. Unfortuantely, I do not know too much about search engine mechanics and how I would go about programming this. But hear me out:

So we're trusting private corporations with information. Private corporations that can have their own adgendas or other influences. Whether or not their connections with BushCorp are true, we have been placing too much trust on one "person," who can very easily abuse that trust.

However, one cannot simply ignore the service we trust them with: without search engines, the internet would be much harder to use for finding useful information.

Peer-2-Peer applications may come in handy. If we relied on a user-driven network instead of one that was privately owned, information would not be restricted. An individual could run spiders which would search for information they are interested in, and would also share any information found with the rest of the network. They could also add links to sites they favor/host, contributing to the network (or possibly spamming it, as my experience with searching gnutella will prove).

So that's my idea. An open-source (to ensure freedom) peer-to-peer search engine.

If Bush hears you...

[Anonymous Coward]

...he'll have his attorney general send you to federal "pound you in the ass" prison...

Re:If Bush hears you...

[Anonymous Coward]

like the sick sadists Bush and Ashcroft are.

Chill Out

[rubicelli]

Last fall I did a Google image search for Jessica Lynch. There were no pictures of her, although Altavista and other sites had plenty. The reason is simple: Google's image spider hadn't run for a while. I suspect we're seeing the same thing here.

America is mentally and spiritually ill.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a shame and an indicator of the decline of American civilization that the sentiments of intelligent men have no place in America today:

My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
-- Thomas Paine

We should uphold and respect certain inalienable rights everywhere, for everyone. None of this "Americans should be exempt from prosecution in the world court" or "Respect for the Chinese government's 'right' to censor information also means, ergo: that the US government can pressure for the same consorship upon it's own citizens"

And, all the while, the US can intervene in well-being and sovereignity of other countries, such as Cuba, Venezuela, Iraq, Chile, Iran, Indonesia, South Korea, South Vietnam, Australia, and, even to subvert the voting rights and democratic foundation of the UNITED STATES ITSELF.

America is growing more and more demented.

Slashdot Libels Google

[Anonymous Coward]

And not even a follow-up apology after the truth has come out in this thread.

Re:Complete FUD, really.

[Kymermosst]

The images WHERE [sic] there, now they are not... They have been removed from the index...

Well this begs proof. I never did a google search for those images before, so I couldn't tell you if they were ever there.

While it may be true that google is censoring the images (maybe due to a court directive?), why should I believe that they were ever there, based on an article on Slashdot (a site whose posts are often biased or just plain wrong) of all places?

Hooray for Pudge!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's hear it for Pudge for offering a real explanation rather than some non-fact based theory.

Re:Complete FUD, really.

[Alsee]

"the fanatical" and "the fooled"

One was intended to refer to religion and the other to Iraq. The frightened was obviously terrorist attack. And perhaps I should have added a catagory for those who think he's a fiscal conservative and/or a catagory for BigBusiness.

A major point is that he has no "mandate" on any issue. On each and every individual issue he has majority opposition. His coalition of minorities still barely hit 51% combined. No matter what he does he's going to piss off the majority.

But he doesn't care about that anyway. He's on a mission from God. His mandate comes straight from God.

-

All the news that's fit to print...

[corporate zombie]

Luckily it's already known to the media. The first hit I get on http://news.google.com when entering "google censorship" is this /. thread. :)

It's been answered above that Google's photo index is out of date. I personally have a difficult time believing photo's of Lyndie England (Google does seem to know how to spell her name) aren't easy to find in Google but I'll pass judgement in a few days after the public roasting.

Ok... just changed my mind. http://news.google.com has *2* articles on Lyndie England???

I'll finish by quoting from http://www.google.com/corporate/index.html

To learn more about Google, click on the link at the left for the area that most interests you. Or type what you want to find into our search box and hit enter. Once you do, you'll be on your way to understanding why others say, "Google is the closest thing the Web has to an ultimate answer machine."

-CZ

No torture at Abu Ghraib

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me be blunt. There are no pictures of torture at Abu Ghraib available because no torture occurred at Abu Ghraib. What occurred at Abu Ghraib could best be described as physical and psychological abuse. It was not by any means torture.

If you are interested in real torture you can search the internet and find lots of information about the practice of torture throughout the ages. If you are at all perceptive you will come to the conclusion that being punched unconscious, being made to wear panties on your head, being made to disrobe and wear a dog collar while being led around by a female, or being made to disrobe and get in a pyramid of naked men in no way, shape, or form constitutes torture by any definition of the word. If for some reason after researching torture you believe any of the aforementioned practices are torture then you have not researched thoroughly enough.

Signed,

Sadistic son of a bitch

Whatever...

[gordgekko]

I'm guessing that this is another case of our administration confusing "National Security" with "Politically Undesirable".

I'm guessing this is another case of Slashdot not knowing what the fuck they're talking about.

My message to comments at google dot com

[gbickford]

I would like to bring to your attention that I believe Google as a company has just violated it's "Do no evil." moto. This is the first abuse of power I have seen Google make that affects me personally. I will no longer blindly trust Google. When people ask me if I'm afraid of Google scanning my personal email for keywords I can no longer refer to the "Do no evil." moto.

A lot of Googles success is built around excellent engineering, an amazing advertising system, and also your users. It is specifically stated "Since Google is committed to providing thorough and unbiased search results for our users, we cannot participate in the practice of censoring information on the world wide web." at: http://www.google.com/remove.html while a slashdot article details how images of soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners have been specifically removed along with images of lynndie england and charles graner. see: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/07/14 42217&tid=153&tid=226&tid=217 These two statements conflict and actually put Google in a position where it is lying to its users. Lying is inherently evil. Bowing to an administration in a democratic government which claims free speech but wishes to censor undesirables shows a weak moral fiber which Google has never displayed.

I am irate at the thought that Google would provide politically biased results and I would like a response to this email, either public or personal.

Thank you,
Gardner

Huh? I get right to them

[crdarwin]

The second link on a Google search I just did is The Abu Ghraib Prison Photos ... June 11, 2004. The Abu Ghraib Prison Photos. ... May 19. ABC News has obtained two new photos taken at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq showing Spc. ... www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444. The photos are there

Real reason

[Chuck Chunder]

Once Google realised that 99% of searches on Google image search were for "Alyssa Milano nude" they just stopped bothering to maintain it...

Works for me

[Ernesto Alvarez]

I followed the "Abu Ghraib" link and got lots of images. Whatever is happening it's local to the submitter.

Maybe it's the great firewall of the USA?

I'm writing from Argentina BTW.

It worked for me on Halloween

[Anonymous Coward]

I used the Abu Ghraib search for my pumpkin design a week ago.

Torture

[Brandybuck]

note how you don't get any pictures of US soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners of war

That's because there were no pictures of US solders torturing Iraqi prisoners. None. Yes, there were pictures of abuse. Yes, there were pictures of humilation. But there were no pictures of torture.

Re:Torture

[radja]

humiliation is psychological torture.

AllTheWeb

[fvdham]

I use Google for web searches
and AllTheWeb for image searches.

In particular pr0n is filtered out
by Google but not by AllTheWeb.

way to stick it to the man!

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is a bunch of Bush loving hypocrites! Everyone knows they put alot of their money off the IPO into Bush's SELECTION campaign.

READ!

[Anonymous Coward]

As numerous people have pointed, the Google Image Search FAQ says they use NEWS photos. Guess what? Halloween is STILL in their news idex.

Re:Complete FUD, really.

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

Abu Ghraib Photo's

Perhaps people who understand that the plural of "photo" doesn't have an apostrophe will have better luck.

this is bad for their business

[Anonymous Coward]

These are very competitive times for Google. It would be a shame for them to lose business because customers were better off placing their trust in another provider of search services.

If we're going to accuse Google of selling out and censoring... perhaps we should come back with a business case for doing good instead.

In short what?

[Punto]

in short? where's the 'long' explanation? I assume this is considered a bug, not just 'the way things work', correct?

Re:In short what?

[Anonymous Coward]

You raving fucking faggot, who cares what you assume? Posting as anon because I'm a member of the Google legal team but fuck, people like you just tear my asshole wide open, you whining liberal turdbreath.!!!!!

Goodle TELLS YOU when it censors searches

[lhaeh]

A google for "kazaa lite" shows that searches were omitted because of a DMCA complaint. In googles protest of of the takedown, they convientially provide a link to the takedown, which provides the addresses removed. Gotta love goodle for that one.

Control of information

[robertdfeinman]

The indexing of information is being controlled
by just a few search sites. This is a serious problem for the free flow of information. Not only is there
a censorhip issue, but there is the issue that if
a search engine chooses not to index you, you effectively are invisible.

Read my two essays on the issue on my web site at this link:
http://robertdfeinman.com/society/google_mo nopoly. html

Re:Complete FUD, really.

[krunk7]

I've always found folks who thought pointing out a typo was a solid rebute to be particularly lacking of understanding.

Re:looser demo(crats)ns

[howiefl]

This is a democratic republic.

Grow up.

Those "Halloween 2004" pictures are a year old!

[Amgine007]

Then why do searches for events such as "halloween 2004" -- which happened much more recently than the prison abuse -- show up just fine?

Because those images aren't from Halloween 2004!

Mod the parent down; he demonstrates nothing. Look at the results for "Halloween 2004"; the images all have comments from 2003. I get results for Abu Ghraib, too; they're also a little dated.

Jeez, this thread has TONS of FUD..

Re:Those "Halloween 2004" pictures are a year old!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah? This image came up on page four, colum 3, row 3:

http://guavaween.net/2004/2004.jpg

That shows a windows calendar highlighting Haloween 2004, and the page it is on has Haloween 2004 photos.

Re:Those "Halloween 2004" pictures are a year old!

[boldra]

What a shame my moderation points expired while I was reading this article (really - when I loaded the parent I had points, now I don't). The Halloween images are from 2004. The first three at least. The fourth result seems be older.

Abbu Grab Greenback Pics

[stock]

from the smell-the-scent-of-entrepreneurship dept
in 2000 :
2600.org dude talking to journalist : "Hmmm ok we want to stop miramax from shooting this so-called movie 'Takedown'". Journalist : "Owww fantastic! How in earth did you get that movie script!?!? "
4 years later :
Journalist : "Owww fantastic! How in earth did you get hold of those Abbu Grabs pics!!"
I guess a new higly lucrative and scarse market has just been created.

Robert

Chris you karma whore

[Anonymous Coward]

lol..

"Google has a reasonable explanation"

[uarch]

"Update: 11/07 20:18 GMT by P: Google has a reasonable explanation."

Why should that stop the cook conspiracy theorists...

Re:"Google has a reasonable explanation"

[Qrlx]

Becuase their explanation is bullshit.

A GIS for "lynndie" has exactly one hit right now, and it's not a girl with an Iraqi prisoner on a leash.

Have you tried the links? Their reasonable explanation isn't very reasonable, nor is it an explanation.

Would this have happened under the "old" google, which was not a publically traded company?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2360351.stm

[Anonymous Coward]

Google censoring web content

Should Google decide what counts as an unacceptable website? Technology consultant Bill Thompson doesn't think so.

Since its creation in 1998 Google - at www.google.com, as you probably know already - has become the world's best search engine and the starting point of choice for almost all my web queries.

It has even generated its own verb - to do some googling around means sitting there playing with queries and exploring the obscure parts of the Web that are revealed by looking for odd or even improperly spelled phrases.

Nobody expects Google, or any index, to be perfect, since the Web is growing and changing so fast and many parts of it are generated from databases and therefore essentially impossible for a search engine to find or classify.

However, researchers at the highly-respected Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University have found that the company is actively removing sites from its database, and that this censorship is going unnoticed.

Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman have built up a reputation for their careful analysis of the ways in which web content is filtered, censored and controlled.

They have looked in detail at the practices of national governments, specifically China and Saudi Arabia, and provided lots of useful information for those of us who want to promote freedom of speech both online and offline.

The censorship of the French and German versions of the Google database is a clear demonstration of just what is wrong with internet regulation today.

Their latest paper deals with the differences between the results returned when searching google.com, the US/world version of the site, the French site at google.fr and the German site at google.de.

They have discovered over one hundred sites which can be found by searchers in the US but not by those in Germany or France.

They are mostly sites that feature racist material or that deny the existence of the Holocaust, such as Stormfront, a white pride site filled with white nationalist essays by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

Responding to the discovery, Google spokesman Nate Tyler said on tech news programme ZDNN that the sites were removed to avoid the possibility of legal action being taken against the company, and that each site was removed only after a specific complaint from the government of the country concerned.

On first sight this seems perfectly reasonable - after all, Google isn't a public service but a private company trying to make money out of its technology and database, and it has no obligation to index everything.

It certainly has a duty to its owners (it's a privately held company) to stay out of legal battles with governments, since they can be pretty expensive.

Unfortunately things are not that simple, and the censorship of the French and German versions of the Google database is a clear demonstration of just what is wrong with internet regulation today.

What is happening is that a government is saying to Google: 'we don't like that website - so drop it from your database' and the company is acquiescing.

The people running the website aren't told. The people looking for the website aren't told - they aren't even told that this policy exists.

The rest of us aren't being told either - Google's Nate Tyler said clearly that 'as a matter of company policy we do not provide specific details about why or when we removed any one particular site from our index.'

The result is that one of the web's most important tools is being deliberately broken at the request of governments, with no publicity, no legal review and no court orders.

The sites involved may or may not be illegal in France or Germany - we don't know because the case never comes to court, and is never tested. All we know is that they aren't wanted.

I would rather have a net where Google and other search engine providers had a legal obligation to prov

Does this mean that we can expect an apology

[artemis67]

from Cmdr Taco for accusing the Bush administration of performing a cover-up?

Re:Does this mean that we can expect an apology

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you high? The Bush administration are the kings of cover-up!

Re:Does this mean that we can expect an apology

[artemis67]

Wow, that means so much, coming from an AC who obviously doesn't value truth.

request: post links to Abu Ghraib images here

[purplejacket]

So does anyone have some links to images to post here on slashdot? My understanding is that there were hundreds or thousands of pictures taken by U.S. soldiers, but only some of these have leaked out into the public sphere. Right around the time of the Abu Ghraib revelations I did a lot of image searching and found maybe 10 or 15 such. Does anyone know more?

Abu Ghraib is up now.

[deemaunik]

http://images.google.com/images?q=abu+ghraib&hl=en &lr=&safe=off&output=search Didn't see if it was mentioned, but Abu Ghraib is up now, it seems. I actually respected Google as a good source of info... but since it became public, things have just been on the ropes. =/

Sure its just research

[Anonymous Coward]

You wanted to see torcher, mayhem and army porn you dirty bastard, and now you're whining about "our rights online". Get your porn elsewhere you filthy bugger.

To those who still don't believe it

[ESqVIP]

Well, I'm buying it.

My main reason is that when I do a Google Images search, the number of 404s I get when trying to see the actual pictures is fairly high; depending on the search, I think I already got over 50% broken links.

So, the indication that Google Images' index is outdated does make sense to me. Just like the guy that reported his Morgan Webb picture is still indexed "7 months after it was removed".

Now moving on, I'll happily wait for this update, so the image search gets useful again and returns more than a bunch of outdated links.

Re:To those who still don't believe it

[wheany]

Me too. A couple of examples:

When you search for images of "Dramatic Disneysea" in Japanese, a recent event in Tokyo Disney Resort (it ran during summer-fall 2004) , you find no images.
When you search for an event from the year 2002, "D-Pop Magic", you get 173 results.

Both return thousands of results in the normal search.

Good God (yes the "G" word)

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a freakin' search engine. It's not like there's not a hundred others to choose from. Four more years of listening to conspiracy theories from the loonies on the left. I'm taking stock in tin foil. As for the "abuse" they have suffered, cut me a break. Poor Akmed had to wear panties and beat off. Oh the horrors. I suspect most that are whining are doing the same at the moment. That same "tortured" terrorist would like to slit your throat.

Censorship, period.

[quarkscat]

The Bush/Cheney administration is making use of USA Patriot Act (I) and the DMCA to suppress information that might be considered "harmful" to their "message". Many corporations are now doing the same thing. "Self-policing" of detrimental information IS STILL CENSORSHIP. Of course, corporations that do not comply the "guidelines" suggested by the government will not have a good year -- an extra tax audit here, or a government contract pulled there, and now here we are. The United Kingdom implimented something called "D-Notices" back during WW-II in order to limit information that might be of use to the enemy. The laws that enabled this policy are still in effect in the UK, and are still being enforced. Looks like the "land of the free and the home of the brave" (aka USA) has adopted these tactics. The signs (or the lack of such signs) have been in the USA's press since the beginning of the Bush administration. War correspondents in Iraq getting mistaken for enemy combatants, the entire Abu Ghraib scandal, pictures of flag- draped coffins returning to Dover AFB, etc., all fit neatly into the same definition of censorship. Welcome to Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World".

Re:Censorship, period.

[AnotherFreakboy]

Welcome to Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World".

You're thinking of George Orwell's "1984". Brave New World had more to do with the effects of consumerism than censorship.

I'm an idiot...

[radtea]

...for believing the commentary in the Slashdot posting of the article. Based on the updated story, it is clear that the original article is not correct in its claim that the images were there previously.

Oh well, being an arrogant jerk makes me feel right at home on slashdot. Sorry about that.

--Tom

irresponsible

[martin100]

to make claims like this that are no more than a guess. a bit of abuse of your slashdot position, to mobilize people to be indignant over something that isnt even happening.

Definitely a form of torture

[Vexar]

Okay, anonymous cowards, do calm down! Let's just break out the dictionary an settle this: torture is anguish of the body or mind. Anguish is extreme pain or anxiety. I don't think anyone would argue that the craziness in that prison was mental anguish. Those terrorist thugs will never be able to show themselves in polite society again. Well, unless you count Hollywood.

Yes that's right Slashbots, it's a 'spiracy!

[Rotten168]

Google is in a massive conspiracy (with Diebold, SCO, and Microsoft no doubt) to deny you pictures you've probably seen a million times on the news... that is if you can stop popping your zits for 2 seconds.

fuckers

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, It was so nice to be reminded of the Iraq war again and to see those images again. Mental note: Next time I see an American -ANY American, Must remember to torture him or her for about 24 hours, then kill his/her entire family and burn the dog.

Insightful my ass.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the hell rates this dumb shit insightful?

Re:Insightful my ass.

[aliens]

People who want to help out the troops you moron.

Fuck you, go back to the USSR if you don't want differing opinions.

Thanks for the story

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for forcing me to go back and have a good look at exactly how barbaric those incidents were. Didn't pay any where near enough attention to this when it was in the press, and the media (I'm in the land of OZ) obviously chose to print the least offensive of the photos available at the time....

PS. Compared to Alta Vista, the Google image search for abu ghraib is woeful, and without pointing the finger, I don't buy the excuse rendered by Chris Debona... I've been using Google Image search over Alta Vista for years because it has been consistently more comprehensive and up to date in my experience.

Re:Thanks for the story

[Anonymous Coward]

As an aside... what always bothers me with this kind of footage is the fact that these photos are only of what they (the soldiers) were prepared to photograph in the name of "fun". The mind boggles at what might have been going on that didn't qualify as a happy-snap !

CmdrTaco with another stupid comment

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm guessing that this is another case of our administration confusing "National Security" with "Politically Undesirable""

What does Google's practices have to do with the Bush administration? They're a private company

Please read the Wikipedia articles and help

[Anonymous Coward]

I have spent the last few hours reading comemnts to this story. Many of them are very valuable. Some of you complain that it is hard to find informations and photos about the prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib. Others respond with important links and informations. It is a very interesting thread, containing fascinating facts and opinions. But instead of participating in that discussion, I would like you all to do something else. I would like to ask you all to read and to help expanding the Wikipedia articles on this very topic.

There is a very short stub article on Abu Ghraib:

"The name is also associated with the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in the city which was the site of the torture and execution of political dissidents under Saddam Hussein, and the site of prisoner abuse by members of the United States Army National Guard."

This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

There is also an article on Abu Ghraib prison with a short Under the US-led coalition section including:

"In late April 2004, U.S. television news-magazine 60 Minutes II broke a story involving regular torture and humiliation of Iraqi inmates by a group of U.S. soldiers. The story included photographs depicting the torture of prisoners, and has resulted in a substantial political scandal within the U.S. and other coalition countries."

You can also help by improving this section.

Finally, there is an extensive article on Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse including all of the pictures which we are complaining are so hard to find with Google Images. (Caution: This article contains several morbid photographs that depict nude, abused, and deceased persons.) In my opinion that is the place to find pictures and informations about the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. And that is also the place to write about it. Please don't get me wrong--I do think that Google Images search service is important, and I also believe that writing on Slashdot about those issues is even more important. But I think that this article on Wikipedia is the most important place to read and share informations about this scandal.

So please, everyone who has posted comments to this Slashdot story, everyone who has posted invaluable informations, links and facts, please spend few minutes reading and improving that articles on Wikipedia.

There is also the entire category of articles related to the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse on Wikipedia which includes these articles: Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse, Megan Ambuhl, Joseph Darby, Javal Davis, Lynndie England, Ivan Frederick, Charles Graner, Sabrina Harman, Janis Karpinski and Jeremy Sivits.

Anyone can add something to any of those articles. You can either log in or post your edits anonymously. Even adding just few words can be very helpful.

Google crafts search results...not a good idea.

[djupedal]

but if they start getting a reputation for filtering certain subjects,

I seem to recall voicing this worry well over a year ago, and I was shouted down as being anti-google. Now, someone comes along with the same opinion, and they get a 'Score:5, Insightful' - better late than never, I suppose :)

I'll go on the record again - Google crafts the results returned as a direct result of searches. This can take the form of artificial ranking and/or (seemingly) arbitrary or filtered censorship.

And for those that say 'so what, google says this upfront', why was it ok last year and now it's not? Answer....it is never ok - get it?

Link to Elections?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even though this comment is instantly going to get me tagged as a conspiracy-tin-foil-hat kind of guy, it's still extremely curious that this happened exactly around election time. What an amazing coincidence!

PS: I'm not an anonymous coward, I'm an anonymous-too-lazy-to-go-look-up-my-nick-and-passw d :)

Your SICK

[CarLBanks]

Your sick if you want to see pictures of being tortured.

Sick, sick, sick

[galaxyboy]

What kind of sick individual would look up these pictures anyway? It happened! That should be enough for any moral individual to condemn the actions. Anyone who has to see for themselves is either perverse or otherwise sick.

Are people looking for evidence that President Bush was behind it all? Obviously, most people don't think that he was personally responsible for what happened...and he was already reelected so why should the Bush administration care if the pictures are shown? The only thing it hurts at this point is the troops because it fuels the fire of our enemies.

reasonable explanation

[h4x0r-3l337]

Google's "reasonable explanation" does not explain why these pictures used to be available through Google Images, nor why pictures of an event such as the republican national convention, which happened long after Abu Ghraib, can be easily found using Google Images.

Just one more reason to NOT USE GOOGLE!

[c.ecker]

As a search tool, Google sucks. Period.

they really are 1+ year old..

[Amgine007]

What a shame my moderation points expired (...) The Halloween images are from 2004

eh?
image one
comment: From: Mark Packham (Tue 18 Nov 2003 00:31:59 CET) ...

and the photo properties:
File Upload Date: Sun 16 Nov 2003 19:10:12 CET
Item Capture Date: Sat 01 Nov 2003 22:17:53 CET

etc, etc, for all images

believe me, i checked. you made the same mistake -- you believed the album title and not the comments, upload dates, etc! as someone else said, you can get results for halloween 2005, etc... surely those aren't from 2005?

(anyway, the official retraction makes this all moot)

yahoo?

[Anonymous Coward]

isn't yahoo powered by yahoo?

umm... it worked for me

[snotman88]

Im writing from Vienna, Austria. The censorship doesn't seem to have worked over here, this was my first hit: http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444 Graphic enough for me...

Re:Continuing This Devil's Dictionary Discussion .

[Anonymous Coward]

What is especially important here:
many of these guards had records of abuse in the US system--and some idiot didn't consider the ramifications of putting someone with that inclination into a politically sensitive situation.

Re: The Truth Is Out Their....

[Bonus Onus]

I hope this post is being ironic, but for some reason i doubt it. What is really scary in my opinion is this sort of conspiracy theory opinion, as if the US government is controlling Google in a mass brainwashing brigade. Doubtful.

Re: The Truth Is Out Their....

[vettemph]

All is in the spirit of fun but on the other hand my country (USA) is being run by some fucked up whack job who tells people that god speaks to him and tells him how to run the country. Go ahead, YOU tell people that god speaks to you and see what happens. :) Thorazine will fix those voices in your head.