Google Helps Government Conduct Warrantless Searches, Alleges EPIC (tomshardware.com)

schwit1 quotes Tom's Hardware: The Electronic Privacy Information Center ("EPIC"), a civil liberties group based in Washington D.C., filed an amicus brief in the United States vs. Wilson case concerning Google scanning billions of users' files for unlawful content and then sending that information to law enforcement agencies.

EPIC alleges that law enforcement is using Google, a private entity, to bypass the Fourth Amendment, which requires due process and probable cause before "searching or seizing" someone's property.

As a private entity, Google doesn't have to abide by the Fourth Amendment as the government has to, so it can do those mass searches on its behalf and then give the government the results. The U.S. government has been increasingly using this strategy to bypass Fourth Amendment protections of U.S. citizens and to expand its warrantless surveillance operations further.

Google and a few other companies have "voluntarily" agreed to use a database of image hashes from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to help the agency find exploited children.

More than that, the companies would also give any information they have on the people who owned those images, given they are users of said companies' services and have shared the images through those services.

Comments

Boycott Google

[schklerg]

Or as I have renamed them, "Be Evil"

Re:Boycott Google

[swillden]

Or as I have renamed them, "Be Evil"

Yes, trying to help missing and exploited children is the height of evilness.

Seriously, I saw the headline and started to get pissed off, and continued getting angrier until I got to the line that says "Google and a few other companies have "voluntarily" agreed to use a database of image hashes from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to help the agency find exploited children."

Then I said "Oh, well, I agree with that. Automatically identifying kiddie porn and reporting it to the relevant agency makes a lot of sense." There is room for badness and abuse there, of course, but in the absence of any evidence of badness or abuse, I'm willing to give the NCMEC the benefit of the doubt, and assume that they only provide image hashes of actual exploited children, and that they handle subsequent investigations with appropriate regard to civil liberties and due process. (Cue someone to point out some case in which an overzealous law enforcement official did not demonstrate such appropriate regard; if data shows the NCMEC's program creates many such situations, I'll change my opinion about the NCMEC.)

Yes, yes, "but what about the children!" is a dangerously overused argument, and blindly accepting any encroachment that can be justified as protecting kids is a very, very bad idea. But the reason it's such a powerful argument is that there are a lot of cases where it's a legitimately compelling argument. I think identifying child pornography sites on the web is such a case, and this article just says that there are people in the relevant division of Google who agree with me.

(Disclaimer: I work for Google. I'm also an old-time cypherpunk and an ardent supporter of civil liberties, and generally very suspicious of centralized power in any form (though I worry a bit more about entities who also have the power to jail or kill me). I also don't want to live in Somalia. Generally, any view taken to its logical extreme becomes nonsense, and thoughtful balance is always required. I actually have a high degree of confidence that most of my Google colleagues do think carefully about these things, because I know I do, and so do the people I interact with directly. So, those are my biases, consider my comments in that light. Or just assume that anyone who works for Google and comments publicly is a shill, an SJW, and an asshole for believing that all advertising isn't immoral and evil. Your choice, though if you choose the latter perhaps you need to think more about my "thoughtful balance" point.)

Child Porn

[bitchtits]

Why do stories like this come conflated with things like missing/exploited children? It seems that "protecting children" is the gateway to all manner of surveillance. I think, perhaps, they consider us to be those children.

You agreed to have your email searched ...

[drnb]

My gmail account is not, or should not be, considered public.

Nor should it be considered private. You did after all consent to google scanning your emails for keywords to better target advertisements towards you.

Government + corporations working together = fascism. The real fascism, not the bullshit nonsense where idiots scream nazi at anyone who disagrees with them.

What about the bullshit nonsense where idiots scream fascism anytime a corporation is involved?

You don't understand fascism. Under fascism both the people and the corporations are under state/party control directly or indirectly. The two are often played off against each other to keep each other weak, to maintain government control of both.

Why doesn't the 4th amendment apply?

[SoftwareArtist]

Here is what the 4th amendment actually says.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

It doesn't say anything about who's performing the search. It says that being secure against searches is a right, and it "shall not be violated". Nothing in there about this only applying to searches by the government. How can anyone read that and claim it doesn't apply if the government gets a private company to do the searching for them?