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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.
There were plenty of pictures where the prisoners were not identifyable. Also, your theory doesn't account for the absence of Lynndie's pictures.
Hee-hee. Dying tickles!
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.
An interesting case is booble.com - sent a takedown notice by google and now reopened as tauntedbytatas.com
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.
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."
~X~
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.
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Hope this helps.
--- Ban humanity.
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. :0 520 239423/qid=1099847168/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/102-9360 843-2040902?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
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/-/
_____ "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." -- Orwell
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.
sig: sauer
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.
"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
Logic, macros, and more
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.
/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.
Even more clearly that this is not a sinister Bush
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!
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?
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.
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
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.
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.
Sergey asked me to pass this on:
From me: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.
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
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
Full post here: with a note from Sergey about this
Chris
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
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..