Is Google Policing the Internet?

Don’t be evil, huh?

That was part of the sixth official statement of core values in Google’s IPO when the search-engine behemoth first listed its shares on the Nasdaq in 2004. Turns out “evil” is dependent on who’s defining the word — because to me, actions Google has taken in recent years are evil to the core.

The latest example of evil occurred earlier this month when Google revealed the name of a Houston man whose email account held images of child pornography. Now, to be unambiguously clear from the outset, I am not defending child pornography or the people who collect and trade in it. Period.

I am, however, attacking the right of Google to police the Internet … and the right of Google to act like an enforcement arm of the police state that is overrunning our country.

Because the question in my mind in the wake of Google outing the man in Houston is this: Where does it end?

I understand why Google did what it did. There are, after all, certain things that probably should not be Googleable — bomb-making tutorials and child porn come to mind. And Google revealed the Houston man’s identity to the police as part of the company’s partnership with the Internet Watch Foundation, which trolls the web for child-abuse images. I get it.

But as someone who is concerned about the rapid deterioration of privacy in America, Google’s actions are troubling. Maybe even evil, depending on who’s defining the word.

Consider for a moment exactly what Google has done. It has scanned through the billions of emails that flow across its network every day, and, based on hashes — mathematical formulas used in database searches and information encryption — it plucked out one offending email that matched a database of kiddie porn pictures … and then it called the police.

Yes, it was child pornography. And society as a whole has deemed child porn to be bad. And, to be fair to Google, it was following federal law that mandates companies report images of child exploitation. But that doesn’t end the questions or give Google a pass. It actually intensifies the questions and shines a spotlight on all the data gathering that Google and others do.

What will offend society or government tomorrow? And why should Google, or any company without a proper search-warrant obtained on the basis of cause, have the power to peer inside anyone’s email?

What happens if society begins to grow increasingly paranoid about patriotism and deems unpatriotic speech and imagery worthy of jail time? What happens if government decides those who invest offshore are traitors who must be identified and prosecuted? Or, let’s take it to an absurd level: What happens if American society becomes so overtly militant in its religiosity that if you don’t follow a government-prescribed belief you are deemed a heathen who, by law, can be stoned to death in a public square?

In an electronic age, we are constantly being scanned. Even our refrigerators, washers/dryers and thermostats are increasingly becoming spies in our own home. Companies are building Internet connectivity into every aspect of our lives so that we can check from our smartphones whether we need ketchup, or if the laundry is done, or if the house is too hot prior to our arrival after work. And it all seems so innocuous — until it’s not.

One day, I guarantee, the information collected by a refrigerator or a washing machine or an Internet-connected thermostat will be used to prosecute someone.

Take Back the World You Want to Live In

So, the big question: To what degree should we expect privacy from a company like Google?

We shouldn’t expect it.

We should demand it.

Google for years has scanned emails to weed out spam or to target each of us with affinity advertising. But now comes to light the fact that Google’s email scanning has a darker, more nefarious side. It makes you wonder — and worry — about the massive amounts of data that Google and others, including government, collect on each of us and the lives we live electronically.

Is that information being used to build a case against you right now? Or, against someone you know?

Google claimed as part of a class-action lawsuit against the company regarding email scanning that “a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.” In an era when electronic communication is the status quo, Google’s claim is utter bullshit. Emails between me and my boss, or between me and my friends, or even between me and my brokerage firm, bank , doctor, accountant, lawyers, spouse, child, business partner, whoever, should never be considered as anything but private. Hackers aside, we do not relinquish our expectations of privacy just because we’re using an electronic medium.

If we permit the notion that Google has the right to scan emails for criminal content, then we tacitly agree to a world in which government, through outlets such as Google, can suppress even the thought of crime by scanning all of us for intent, whether that intent is real or imagined — or even fabricated. Think about what happens, for a moment, if an aggrieved person floods your Gmail account over time with child pornography.  You can probably explain it away, but you’re in for a long hassle with the police and maybe the courts.

We are allowing ourselves to slip into an Orwellian world of cameras, detectors and scanners that corral all of us into obedience and government-mandated thinking and actions. That is a dangerous trajectory for society.

So, yes, child pornography is bad.

But what Google did in Houston might ultimately prove more evil to that greatest of American attributes — personal freedom.

Until next time, stay Sovereign…

Jeff D. Opdyke
Editor, Profit Seeker

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