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

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.

[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.

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...

[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: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.

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!

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?

[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.

Ads

[mckniglj]

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

Sorry, it made me laugh.

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.

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.

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.

-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.

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

[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: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: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.

Anti-Americanism?

[Sean Clifford]

How is criticizing the Administration being anti-American?

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.

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.

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: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?

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: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?

[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: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.

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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!

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...

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.