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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[fucksl4shd0t]

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

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.

[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.

[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

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..

[PhotoBoy]

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

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]

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...

[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.

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!

At least...

[The-Bus]

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

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!

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

[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

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?

[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?

[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?

[DAldredge]

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

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?

[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?

[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.''
}

Ads

[mckniglj]

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

Sorry, it made me laugh.

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.

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?

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

[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

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

[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!

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: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.

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...

-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.

[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?

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.

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

[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

[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]

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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

Anti-Americanism?

[Sean Clifford]

How is criticizing the Administration being anti-American?

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.

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?

[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.

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!

[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?

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: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.

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.

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.

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

[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

[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.

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

[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

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

[HarveyBirdman]

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

Hope this helps.

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.

No problem ..

[tardibear]

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

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?

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

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

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.

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

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?

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: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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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]

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]

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

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...

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.

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..

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.