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A dad took photos of his toddler for a doctor – Google flagged him as a criminal
- googlryas 4y agoHave you ever hated child porn so much that you sent private medical photos of someone's naked children to multiple strangers? If not, you obviously aren't as committed as Google about ending CSAM.
- fortran77 4y agoAnd the center for missing and exploited children is not a law enforcement agency and uses volunteers! That’s outrageous
- googlryas 4y agoI wonder how many pedophiles volunteer for this(or do content reviews for Google et al), and surreptitiously copy pictures they're intended to review.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago> subsequent review of his account turned up a video from six months earlier that Google also considered problematic, of a young child lying in bed with an unclothed woman. Isn’t that also a description of breastfeeding?
- pas 4y agoor, probably millions of families with a small kid. not everybody sleeps in pajamas. also, while we might find it unwise to make a video, but also we were not there.
- diebeforei485 4y agoIt's not Google's place to say what is or isn't problematic.
- superchroma 4y ago"Google’s review team [then] flagged a video he made and the San Francisco Police Department had already started to investigate him." That sounds like a permanent stain on his records.
- amelius 4y agoAlso a permanent stain on Google's reputation.
- adastra22 4y agoIt will be forgotten about by tomorrow.
- leereeves 4y agoBy many people, yes, but they'll be reminded in future discussions about trusting Google.
- GekkePrutser 4y agoThat will be dismissed off hand by most people when it happened more than a few months ago. Because Google PR claims they've improved sooo much
- mikece 4y agoGoogle has a responsibility, to a limited degree, to turn over to law enforcement anything that they know about abuse that comes through their system. More likely, the trigger for that is set really low as a corporate CYA and to pass the buck. I can totally see Google's point of view on this: We're providing a free* service to you, we're not going to stick our neck out and risk ANY liability of being blamed of storing/harboring/distributing abusive content... we would rather err way over on the side of insane caution and let law enforcement sort it out.
- yborg 4y ago
- mikece 4y agoI worked in a 1 Hour Photo when I was in college. The standing rule we had is that any photos of naked adults were not printed (the customer was given their negatives though). In the case of naked children if it was the typical "kid taking their first bath" it was fine but if there was any doubt we had a manager review it. I think we had to call the cops a couple times (more for passing the buck than making an official decision like that ourselves) but there is/was a policy for things like that.
- hosteur 4y agoWhy would you not print naked adults?
- mulmen 4y agoPuritans. We “banned” alcohol for 13 years. America’s greatest battle is with our dark religious past. We claim to be secular but really it’s an aspiration.
- tehbeard 4y agoAs much as the evangelicals of America screw with the rest of the world in their quest for purity, the better answer seems to be: How do you know those nudes are taken consensually? And what's your liability for developing ("reproducing") them?
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- anon_123g987 4y agoWhy would you assume a crime by default? The presumption of innocence is only a slogan in the US, just like the above mentioned secularity. Look what happened with the guy in this post. You can't even take a photo of your own kid.
- sgdesign 4y agoI’ve heard great things about Google Domains but this kind of story is exactly why I probably won’t be using that service. It’s just too risky if you lose everything at once.
- XorNot 4y agoHonestly: don't upload unencrypted content to anyone, for exactly this reason. I have cloud backups of family photos, but they're all through restic or rclone with the crypt filter applied. Privacy is about the right to put yourself in context.
- joshenders 4y ago> Privacy is about the right to put yourself in context. Wow. This is a brilliant. Did you come up with this?
- Kaibeezy 4y agoMaybe from here? Six Words on Privacy https://safecomputing.umich.edu/six-words-about-privacy https://safecomputing.umich.edu/six-words-about-privacy
- antfarm 4y agoPrivacy is about the right to put yourself in context. Very well said.
- Roark66 4y agoThe problem with personal encryption for long term storage is that it is easy to loose private keys and passwords.
- LadyCailin 4y agoFor this type of encryption, I think the password could be “password” and that would be good enough. The primary goal is to frustrate automated scans, not targeted brute force attempts.
- Traubenfuchs 4y agohttps://archive.ph/tL6wk https://archive.ph/tL6wk
- octoberfranklin 4y ago
- jokowueu 4y agoI just did Nothing happened
- rasz 4y agowelcome to the list
- MerelyMortal 4y agoIt's when you're not on any list, that you become suspicious.
- scarface74 4y agoI have a larger issue that no one addressed. There has to be some type of special software for the medical profession that allows you to take a picture on your phone that is not stored on your phone and that you send to the doctor.
- killingtime74 4y agoSnap chat?
- scarface74 4y agoA specific medical oriented app. I’ve had a few virtual appointments where they ask me do I have an iPhone for FaceTime. I do. But what do they do for Android users? Which one of the ten soon to be discontinued Google video conferencing apps would the doctor use?
- cinntaile 4y agoThey require you to install their own.
- 7steps2much 4y agoI have had a few appointments where they didn't ask me about what device I wanted to use at all, just send me a webex link and had me join in a browser. Works for (almost) all devices.
- afandian 4y agoHere’s an American one used in the UK. That had a data breach exposing sensitive images. I won’t ever trust consumer computers for sensitive medical stuff. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52986629 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52986629 Discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23471347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23471347
- scarface74 4y agoI’m not saying health care companies are competent. I am saying at least they have legal obligations to try to keep your information secure. Google has no such obligation. Besides, there is less likely of a chance that a medical app targeted toward virtual care for babies would be flagging parents for sending pictures of their children to a doctor.
- lizardactivist 4y agoBut they keep insisting that their services and cloud storage is private and secure? Odd.
- 7steps2much 4y ago> private and secure the meaning of both words being defined by their provacy policy and ToS
- klabb3 4y agoPrivate to Google's tracking algorithms. Secure from competitors.
- Frost1x 4y agoLying to make money is hardly odd.
- dogleash 4y agoThese statements should be understood as Google's privacy, and Google's security. You're just an authorized user.
- NoPicklez 4y agoPrivate and secure are ambiguous terms that mean different things to different people. They're insisting its private and secure because there is some level of privacy and security. Whether you would consider that private and secure enough, is a different story
- soraminazuki 4y ago> A Google spokeswoman said the company stands by its decisions, even though law enforcement cleared the two men. Wow. Just wow. This is worse than the usual Google's automated screw-ups. In this case, Google was notified of the issue by the NYT. Yet they actively chose to continue to screw over their victims just because they can. > In a statement, Google said, “Child sexual abuse material is abhorrent and we’re committed to preventing the spread of it on our platforms.” Just how tone deaf can Google be, continuing to treat these innocent folks as criminals in this passive aggressive statement even after being proven wrong? Do these people have no empathy at all?
- mike_hock 4y agoWelcome to fascism. A private company is the de-facto judge, jury and executioner because it owns half the infrastructure you live your life on.
- HL33tibCe7 4y agoAnd you can’t even escape these companies by moving to another country. They have their tendrils everywhere, except in places that consciously prevent them - which is usually done by even worse tyrannies like China/Russia. Always makes me laugh when I see employees of Google, Amazon etc. claiming to be “anti-fascist” and “standing in solidarity with the common man” etc etc…
- blueflow 4y agoYou still have the choice to not use any of their services. You can get pretty far in life despite not using the internet at all.
- hosteur 4y agoWell not in all countries. In my country you are required to receive electronic messages from the government as well as to have a government issued ID and authentication system that forces you to have a fairly recent smartphone. For now, it is theoretically possible to use the authentication system without a smartphone but you will have to jump through an awful amount of (artificially imposed) hoops. Not having an internet connection is NOT an option. There is a legal process to get a special permit to avoid having to use these state mandated electronic systems but it is almost only theoretically in that you will need to have a doctor's note saying that you are unable to use such systems. E.g., by suffering by severe dementia or similar.
- peoplefromibiza 4y agocontroversial opinion: as much as everybody knows that China isn't exactly championing the western way of life and western democratic standards, I keep my private files in a Chinese cloud (backups are kept private in a NAS in my house). Why? Because they are not in contact with our authorities and, frankly, the chances my private files will be of any interest for Chinese authorities are close to zero. Not that I have nothing in particular to hide, but as this example proves once again, if life damaging mistakes can happen, they will happen.
- curiousgal 4y agoThis. China, unlike the U.S., is not gonna ask other countries to extradite me if they ever find me in violation of whatever bullshit law they have.
- kzrdude 4y agoThat's because it would be largely ineffective. States use the powers they have.
- hedora 4y agoAlthough the US apparently does not have an extradition treaty with China, a DDG search for: china extradited from us Produces many independent cases of China successfully extraditing suspects from the US and vice versa.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gpt5 4y agoThis is fine as long as you don’t plan to travel to China in the future.
- peoplefromibiza 4y agoPlease explain why this is different from traveling to any other country. I haven't been to the US since they made it legal for custom officers to search travelers' personal electronics without a warrant and deny entry if you refuse, because, thanks but no thanks.
- scarface74 4y agoI’ve heard too many things about how non existent Google’s customer service is to ever trust them for anything critical. You hardly ever hear stories like this from any of the other big tech companies. I’m excluding FB, because I don’t care about FB enough.
- dannyr 4y agoCan you name other big tech companies with good customer service that is purely software? You can get customer service from Google's hardware just like Apple. It's the software/services that have awful/non-existent customer service.
- scarface74 4y agoSo I can walk into one of 272 Google Stores in the US and talk to a real person about any Google product I pay for like I can with Apple? I can depend on Google to support a Google branded phone I bought in 2013 with security updates 8 years later like an iPhone 5s user could or with operating system updates for a phone I bought in 2015? The original poster couldn’t get anyone on the line about a Google account. You can call an Apple CSR about an iCloud issue.
- samat 4y agoIs this the case with Apple iCloud Photo Library, too?
- ekianjo 4y agoWasnt that the whole point of building hash database of encrypted child abuse content with Apple?
- dannyr 4y agoIn the article: "Apple announced plans last year to scan the iCloud for known sexually abusive depictions of children, but the rollout was delayed indefinitely after resistance from privacy groups."
- georgia_peach 4y agoThey all embed themselves deeply into our communications, for not-so-altruistic purposes--allegedly to "serve us better", realistically to train the shit out of their AIs in the hopes of growing (or at least maintaining) market share. If people weren't such cattle, a hard line would have already been drawn. If...
- pwdisswordfish9 4y ago
- ugjka 4y ago> Not only did he lose emails, contact information for friends and former colleagues, and documentation of his son’s first years of life, his Google Fi account shut down, meaning he had to get a new phone number with another carrier. Without access to his old phone number and email address, he couldn’t get the security codes he needed to sign in to other internet accounts, locking him out of much of his digital life. > “The more eggs you have in one basket, the more likely the basket is to break,” he said. I only have a google account to have access to Play store. Everything else, mail, calendar, photos and storage, has been moved off Google
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- SergeAx 4y agoMoved where? Not to iCloud, I hope? Self-hosting mail, calendar and media is too complex task for 99% of population. This is not a solution.
- ugjka 4y agoProton, Hetzner Nextcloud
- tremarley 4y agoDon't trust Hetzner. They will do the same.
- lrem 4y agoWho won't?
- SergeAx 4y agoThere's no Proton Photos, as far as I am informed. Surprisingly, there is a Proton Calendar. But does it syncs with Calendly or Zoom, for example? I don't think so. Currently more or less adequate solution in terms of integration is self-hosted Microsoft Exchange. I wonder how much does it cost (including Windows Server license).
- zerof1l 4y agoThis story should serve as a warning and a motivation to move away from iCloud, Google Cloud, and alike for video and photo storage. The easiest thing is to just purchase a drive or NAS and store your media on it. If you're a bit tech-savvy, you can run your own NextCloud. I run NextCloud on Hetzner, 1TB storage box + web server for a total of $7 a month. Or you can get Hetzner to run the NextCloud for you for about $4.7 a month for 1TB storage, but then you don't have full control over it. Then there are quite nice NextCloud apps for Android and iOS that you can configure to sync your photos and videos into your cloud.
- threeseed 4y agoNo you see that requires work when most people would rather complain. It's such a shame because having these services be healthy and popular benefits everyone.
- bbarn 4y agoI am a software professional and run my own email and it's a massive pain in the ass. I started also using a google account just to use for all the stupid sign ups the internet makes you do, and use my real email for actual correspondence, banking, and a few other things only.
- pas 4y ago> 1TB storage box hah, we're a hetzner costumer for .. years now, but I had no idea they have this :D https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box so you can connect the NextCloud to the storage account? which protocol do you use for this?
- RealStickman_ 4y agoNot OP, but I also use Hetzner and their storage boxes. Servers I use will connect using samba. For temporary access from other devices I usually use FTPS, but they also offer a bunch of other protocols.
- 4y ago
- nullc 4y ago> “I decided it was probably not worth $7,000,” he said. lol. Missing 4 zeros there. Part of the reason for the brazen actions of companies like Google is that their substantial financial means and legal department sizes grant them a substantial degree of immunity to judicial review.
- dennis_jeeves1 4y ago>lol. Missing 4 zeros there. Also some execs behind bars won't be a bad idea. Granted that mistakes do happen, but when they don't resolve it in a timely manner, punishment is fair. Addendum : I don't know if companies have a govt imposed rule to report porn, in that case I'd say the root cause is the govt, not the company. Of course if the root cause is govt, and even more root cause is people themselves. People collectively generally get the govt they deserve...
- nullc 4y ago> I don't know if companies have a govt imposed rule to report porn In the US there isn't and generally cannot be a government requirement to search the customer's data. If there were, the provider would effectively acting as an agent of the government and the customer would enjoy 4th amendment protection of their privacy (absent a warrant or other, similarly targeted and justified reason). Unfortunately, there is a bit of a wink-nod situation going on where the government quietly pressures companies to engage in these activities "voluntarily" -- in exchange for varrious forms of preferential treatment and refraining from enforcing other regulations -- and in court when a target attempts to present 4th amendment defenses everyone pretends (and testifies) that the provider was searching the customers private files of their own volition and not on the government's behalf. In this game neither the provider nor the governments hands are clean because they are both conspiring to undermine the constitutional rights of the public.
- MrDresden 4y agoI keep telling anyone who will listen that they need to move every aspect of their online identity away from the big tech giants, and make sure that each type of service (email, webpage, memory storage, document storage, backups, contacts, etc) is compartmentalized in such a way that if one gets removed then it wont affect the others in any way. Imagine having all your memories in the form of images and videos taken away because of sloppy review work at a tech company.
- Gigachad 4y agoThis event happens so rarely that it would be better advice to tell people to wear a bullet proof vest and helmet when going outside. It’s more likely to benefit them than self hosting media.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y agoYou don't need to self-host, there are plenty of alternatives for each service offered by google.
- some-human 4y agoThe problem is finding them. If a layman looks for a cloud back up provider that isn't one of the BigTech group - uses Duck Duck Go and finds a small company offering 10GB back up for free. Unfortunately for them, that service is using AWS for storage, so ultimately despite they're best effort they're just using amazon cloud storage.
- quickthrower2 4y agoThis is where the small guys kick ass vs the Googles/Microsoft. Try Dropbox, Backblaze etc. Much better experience. Apple is OK UX wise but locked in which sucks.
- some-human 4y ago
- benj111 4y agoI wonder what happens if I share the Nevermind album cover?
- MerelyMortal 4y agoOr Virgin Killer by Scorpions.
- beebeepka 4y agoI think the baby from that cover tried his luck, and lost, in court recently
- jwilk 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevermind#2021_lawsuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevermind#2021_lawsuit
- hedora 4y agoThe copyright filter nails you to flaming pentagram while the priests of Syrinx surround you and chant. In the style of Rush 2112. (For the first time ever, I wish I had a DALL-E 2 account)
- Havoc 4y agoIt's completely ridiculous that Google's customer support process is basically: 1) AI bot 2) Beg HN/twitter for insider help 3) Lawyers That's absolutely insane for a product set that has become central to one's life
- 7373737373 4y agoHN should add a [Corp Support] tab, if Google & Co won't create their own support system, let's do it here, and add a dark pattern leaderboard for not replying/acting
- barneygale 4y agoGOOGLE EMPLOYEES: Quit your jobs and do something positive for the world for a change.
- tsukikage 4y ago"don't be evil"
- SergeAx 4y ago> Mark spoke with a lawyer about suing Google and how much it might cost. > “I decided it was probably not worth $7,000,” he said. I believe it is one of the roots of the problem. How is it even possible that getting justice in court in such a trivial case costs about three months of median income?
- pas 4y agoWell, it's really not straightforward to know what would be the outcome of such a lawsuit. Google's ToS is one thing but the main point is that random user uploading family photos is not a protected group, so Google refusing service is very much their right. The state usually cannot force otherwise.
- Aeolun 4y agoThe state should. Otherwise, what’s the point of having it.
- pas 4y agounfortunately consumer protection is basically nonexistent in the US. (besides a lot of reporting requirements, that should be streamlined and automatic anyway.)
- SergeAx 4y agoI get "How much suing is" doesn't imply winning the case, it is just a price of getting case to court.
- SergeAx 4y agoAlso, it looks like a powerful attack vector. Just slip a questionable content onto a victim's phone - and voila, a lot of trouble is under way, probably irreversible.
- googlryas 4y agoEspecially because you can take photos with someone's phone without locking it. All you need is brief physical access to the phone.
- Aeolun 4y agoYou also need brief physical access to a naked child at the same time as the phone. That may be a bit more difficult to arrange.
- fomine3 4y agoThis looks easy critical attack method I've never come up with. Very realistic CGI shown on tablet could be used for that, instead of real CSAM.
- LorenPechtel 4y agoWhy not both? Use the phone to take a picture of real CSAM.
- JodieBenitez 4y ago
- 734129837261 4y ago
- anonu 4y agoYou clearly dont have children...
- JodieBenitez 4y ago> The context doesn't matter. That is possibly the most idiotic comment I've read on this thread. Of course it matters.
- MerelyMortal 4y agoJust don't make knives. Period. The reasoning doesn't matter. The innocent tool that you use for cooking could be stolen, could be lost, could end up donated to a thrift store where anyone could buy or shoplift it, and the knife could end up in the hands of a serial killer. Your intent doesn't make it right. And you have to make sure a criminal can never get their hands on one. What's next, actual serial killers declare themselves chefs and thus can receive and share knives with other chefs "for cooking reasons"? Please. Don't be so naive guys. Don't make knives. How the hell is that not common sense? --- That is how rediculous your suggestion about pictures sounds to other people.
- dennis_jeeves1 4y agolol.
- qwery 4y agoYeah, just delay seeking medical treatment (for your child) until this coronavirus thing blows over. The context is critical. Context is always critical. Also, I'm not sure why an "actual" paedophile couldn't be an acupuncture professional. I mean it's not really a thing to take your kids to before the GP. To be clear: I don't think that anyone should be able to just declare themself to be some sort of qualified practitioner and make or imply that they can provide a service or results that they cannot. But I'm really unsure why someone calling themselves an acupuncture professional (whether they are qualified to or not) would entitle them to freely trade in sexual abuse material.
- cletus 4y agoThe biggest failure here is Google's continued refusal to segment their services and this has been a problem since at least the Google+ days, which is more than a decade ago at this point. During Google+, Google controversially instituted a "real name" policy. This was controversial and completely driven by Vic Gundotra who would get up at company meetings when asked about this (back when he still answered questions because believe me that ended) and said "we don't want people named 'dog fart'". Legitimate concerns that people might have for their safety were completely brushed aside. Anyway, the enforcement for this of course was automatic and resulted in I'm sure many false positives. But what happened when your account was flagged/ You lose access to everything. This too was criticized at the time and people asked "well if it's a policy violation for Google+, why do people lose their Gmail?". These questions too were completely brushed off. At this time I decided I simply couldn't and wouldn't use any other Google service because my Gmail is too important to risk by an automatic ban from a false positive on a completely unrelated product. And here we are, a decade later, with the exact same nonsense happening. Now of course the CSAM ban itself is ridiculous. Refusing to reverse it is ridiculous. All of that is true. But don't tie your email or your phone to a company's other services when they do blanket bans like this. Disclaimer: Xoogler.
- xtracto 4y agoWhat I dont understand is why the stupid policies established by a coupled of troubled individuals years ago for failed projects are still in use today ... Give us de +Word back... dont "improve" the stupid quotes.
- makach 4y agoIt is beyond me that someone would use email to submit sensitive information. Pandemic aside, you should know better. Also, I am sorry this happened. It is very human to respond to a person in authority - but we need to be better and start asking questions. It is our privacy at stake. Hopefully everyone learns from this; Also, Google was doing the right things.
- boredemployee 4y agoTrying to understand why did u get so downvoted.
- makach 4y agoHow can you tell? Maybe I wasn’t clear enough when trying to communicate my viewpoint?
- detaro 4y agoWhere does it say that they used email to submit the information? And I really don't see how Google insisting that banning them was the right thing to do and being cleared by police doesn't warrant undoing the ban is "doing the right things".
- iosono88 4y ago
- gregwebs 4y agoWhat are the ways to mitigate these issues for someone that wants a lot of the features of Google Photos? It seems that Amazon Photos is basically copying Google Photos and has a lot of the features. I wouldn't care if my Amazon account was closed down. And it is free if you are already a Prime member.
- derwiki 4y agoDo Flickr or Dropbox have the features?
- aaomidi 4y agoI wonder what google would do if they realized there’s millions of people who live as nudists.
- neurostimulant 4y agoMy wife is a doctor and received a few of these kind of images in whatsapp from her patients from time to time. Should she be concerned?
- tomohawk 4y agoPerhaps switch to signal or telegram? Some service that guarantees confidentiality.
- desindol 4y agoInstead of questioning the use of whatsapp for medical purposes by a medical professional you tell them to use signal or telegram?
- tomohawk 4y agoWhat would you recomend, then? At least the two I recommend won't destroy your whole digital life if they don't like you.
- hedora 4y agoI think the issue is that you're trying to optimize for patient privacy, quality of health care service, and doctor productivity. The other commenter is trying to optimize for "doctor does not go to jail". The two goals are mutually exclusive in this case.
- tomohawk 4y agoGo to jail? Signal, for example, provides end to end encryption for all uses. Whatsapp does not appear to do that: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/whatsapp-end-to-end-encrypted-messages-arent-that-private-after-all/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/whatsapp-end-to-end-... It would seem like there would be HIPAA concerns with using a channel that does not guarantee privacy, and allows Big Corp to snoop on the content.
- JulianMorrison 4y agoReporting the images to law enforcement is good. There should be a human in the loop to separate medical images from exploitative ones. Perma-deleting his account on an automated accusation is bad. That should hinge on, at minimum, law enforcement's decision to charge a crime. [Edit: unless the criminality of the images is obvious - again, a human needs to be in the loop.]
- pas 4y ago> Reporting the images to law enforcement is good. citation needed. do these CSAM scanning things actually help reduce kid exploitation? and if they do, is this the best use of our resources?
- hedora 4y agoPerma-deleting the account is destruction of evidence, so even if the criminality is obvious, an account lock makes more sense. Even an account lock is probably a bad idea; it alerts the pedophile that they're under investigation, allowing them to destroy evidence, cut ties with coconspirators, etc. Best to let law enforcement deal with it. In this case, assuming it somehow went to trial, the jury would almost certainly acquit, and the account would be restored. There is the matter of the accused losing access to the account while the case was active though. That's potentially a big deal.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago> There should be a human in the loop to separate medical images from exploitative ones. No, there really should not. I would not want a facebook employee to look at my pictures. I don't use their services, but the thought is pretty off-putting. The idea that these companies have to police content is what is wrong. There are other ways to get to offenders here. An environment that takes good care of kids will spot it. Not some poor fella that needs to look at private images.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tomohawk 4y agoIt's time for the people to decide how they want companies that provide utilities to behave, and time for utility companies to stop telling the people how to behave. In the olden days, if the AT&T monopoly just cut off phone service to a (convicted in court) pedo, they would get in severe trouble. We the people imposed limits on powerful companies. Even today, with the monopoly split up, this would not be legal. Let alone just deciding on their own initiative to do it. In this case, a utility provider is cutting off service based on a digital rumor. They are judge, jury, and executioner. The laws governing telcos were made over a period of 150 years, but most particularly in the 1920s and 1930s. Google does not fit these laws because they do not charge for them (perhaps this should be made illegal?) and monetize them differently. Also, obviously the services are far beyond simple voice or fax. And yet, they are definitely utilities. Utility companies must not be politically partisan or active. Mixing those two things is toxic and bad for society. It also is too much of a temptation for politicians to use the implied power of utilities over the people to silence or supress opposition. If Google wants to be an activist company, then it will need to shed its utilities. If Google wants to provide utilities, then it needs to shut down its activism.
- welder 4y agoWhat if someone emails stock photos to Google execs that are known to trigger Google's child abuse algorithm? They would have to build a way to re-activate banned accounts to get their own accounts back.
- nrmitchi 4y agoI don’t think anyone believes the technical process does not exist. Someone with enough clout would 100% be able to get accounts reinstated (likely without even needing a police report of no wrong-doing). Google’s refusal to have appropriate moderation and support for edge-case situations is a completely different thing.
- welder 4y agoThen send it to tons of lawyers, politicians, judges, etc and a law might get passed forcing Google to reactivate accounts.
- Overtonwindow 4y ago..and with CSAM Apple is going to get in the same business. With this latest security update I would not be surprised if CSAM has already been deployed. Because why on earth would you oppose protecting children? /s
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ramesh31 4y agoWhat's actually scary here is that these were newly taken photos; not existing CSAM material flagged by hash value. That means Google is doing real time image recognition on all of your photos. And that means Google has an ML model somewhere trained on millions of pictures of.... yeah this is fucked up.
- bogomipz 4y agoFrom a link the article: While historical approaches to finding this content have relied exclusively on matching against hashes of known CSAM, the classifier keeps up with offenders by also targeting content that has not been previously confirmed as CSAM.[1] [1] https://www.blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/using-ai-help-organizations-detect-and-report-child-sexual-abuse-material-online/ https://www.blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/using...
- hk1337 4y agoIt doesn’t seem right for the doctor to ask the parents to take pictures then send them over SMS, email, or whatever they asked them to use. Why wouldn’t this just be done within the privacy of the doctor’s office?
- razemio 4y agoThere could be so many reasons. I will just name a few: - Corona - Specialist far away - Quick Checkup - Doctor is on vacation
- diebeforei485 4y agoTelemedicine has been thing well before 2020. You shouldn't have to travel to a doctor's office to get privacy. There is nothing wrong with a parent or a doctor taking pictures of a medical condition (rashes, etc).
- S_A_P 4y agoTime to break up the google into smaller parts that may allow a competitive market again. Google FB Apple could all use a bit of competition
- rep_lodsb 4y agoIt's long past time to break up every last Google server into fine dust particles, to be buried in a deep mineshaft with "this is not a place of honor" style warnings placed above.
- bigtex 4y agoWe have a direct primary care doctor for our children and would never send a photo with genitalia in it. Either she comes for a house call or we come to her. This article confirms my fear.
- bborud 4y agoThis highlights the enormous risk depending on Google, and similar service providers, for email, messaging and other important services is. It isn't so much the policies, but the fact that Google will never do anything to help you when they get it wrong. You are always only one algorithmic fuck-up away from losing access and having to spend days and weeks dealing with the consequences. I think the only way to deal with this is through regulation. Make it as inconvenient for Google to ignore customers as it is inconvenient for customers to be ignored by their service provider when something goes wrong. Systemic mistreatment of customers ought to have consequences of existential proportions to a company. There is no societal benefit to companies like Google getting away with behaving this poorly.
- concordDance 4y agoThe best way to solve this is to DE-regulate. Make Google etc explicitly not responsible for proactively monitoring people's private data and then said data will remain private.
- bborud 4y agoDo you think Google et-al have done a good job of keeping their noses out of your business? In fact, I would challenge you to compare privacy in the EU vs the US. Opinions on what should be done have more credibility when based in observable reality rather than blind ideology.
- ec109685 4y agoThey aren’t obligated to actively scan for this material (see Apple).
- xbar 4y agoApple Messages encryption is looking pretty good right now. Let's hope they hold the line on CSAM.
- elif 4y agoFrom my travels, my impression has been that America in particular treats child nudity as completely, unexceptionally obscene, beyond even adult nudity. Compared to a beach in Europe, where nearly half of children under 2 run naked, there seems to be no grey area or minimum acceptability in the US. It makes me wonder if our hypersexualized treatment of child nudity /actively contributes/ to the sexualization of children in our culture.
- jongjong 4y agoHaha yeah, in Europe there are often naked children running around at the beach. In Germany, there are places (especially lakes) where everyone is walking around, swimming and sunbathing naked - Sometimes the whole family. For me it was quite a shock initially but now I think it's fine.
- hulitu 4y agoPeople naked: ok. Pictures: nok.
- raxxorraxor 4y agoI often did run around completely naked at beaches. I don't do this anymore because now everyone has a smartphone and much more people take pictures now.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- riedel 4y ago50% of my childhood pictures ( all from beaches in the Netherlands) would be lost (actually my aunt already destroyed some living in the UK and felling pressured for some reason) . I find it disturbing attributing particularly sexuality to children (actually I find a lot of adult looking clothes more disturbing than a nude child). I know that there is people with sexual disorders (I would strongly argue that pedophilic arousal is one), that commit serious crimes. I also do not advocate publishing any nonconsensual pictures on the internet. However disallowing something just because it can be abused is rediculous. Banning this guy protects nobody from nothing. Yes they could have blocked the upload of the image to the cloud (I would be happy to locally install any nude detection AI that does not communicate with the cloud. Even something that ask me if I have consent feom all identifiable persons in an image is fine for me. I think the father would actually have been happy about this. No need for manual inspection.)
- shadowgovt 4y agoThis was a predictable outcome of the following factors: * Criminalizing possession and creation of child pornography equivalently * Conscripting the tech sector into detecting it via SESTA/FOSTA. Look forward to reading stories like this ad nauseum.
- hedora 4y agoYou could shorten your comment to "This was a predictable outcome of conscripting the tech sector", and it would be more accurate / precise. Child pornography is only one of many areas where false positives in legally mandated sescanners end up ruining people. Credit card payments come to mind, though I think those are mostly self-regulation.
- bogomipz 4y agoWhat's an "sescanner"?
- tomxor 4y ago> Mark and his wife gave no thought to the tech giants that made this quick capture and exchange of digital data possible Well... here we are, normal people don't think it's possible to transfer an image over the internet without a megacorp being in the middle of it. Pretty strong sign something has gone wrong.
- actbrett 4y ago
- robotburrito 4y agoRichard was right.
- mgpc 4y agoGoogle's arrogance here is astonishing. The police say no fault, and it's the subject of an NYT investigation, and they still won't restore the account. What hope do the rest of us have? I've been an Android user for a long time, but I think this might finally push me to switch to Apple. I'm just disgusted by this.
- userbinator 4y agoThe Apple who caused an immense controversy with its CSAM scanning debacle? All of Big Tech is ultimately not so different.
- hedora 4y agoThey cancelled the CSAM scanning project. In contrast, Google has been doing CSAM (and apparently AI porn detection) for years. Also, the bone-headed Apple plan had safeguards that would have prevented the victim in the article from losing their account. The two policies aren't remotely comparable.
- Aeolun 4y agoYeah, Apple was annoying (not even that really, it’s just the idea rather than the actual effect that bothers me), but ultimately fairly benign compared to what Google does.
- ComputerGuru 4y agoYou’re right, they’re not comparable: Apple was going to be scanning for CSAM on your device, without the photos even reaching their servers (by uploading a backup, texting a copy, etc). Google, so far as I can tell and as corroborated by the article, doesn’t do that. Apple and Google both already scan anything uploaded to your Photos account for CSAM and report to authorities.
- detaro 4y agoNo,Apple's proposal was for only scanning stuff that was being uploaded to their servers. And only matching hashes with known material, not general "nude child!" detection. While there's problems with that too, it is a better design than what Google does.
- quantified 4y agoWhat is not explained in the article is how the telehealth's services came in contact with Google's image-scanning to begin with. Is this not a huge breach of HIPAA? Telehealth is sort of done for if randos at bug tech can find there way into your sexual health records.
- detaro 4y ago> how the telehealth's services came in contact with Google's image-scanning It didn't. If it had, it wouldn't have been the fathers' accounts being hit.
- hoppyhoppy2 4y ago>Mark’s wife grabbed her husband’s phone and texted a few high-quality close-ups of their son’s groin area to her iPhone so she could upload them to the health care provider’s messaging system. It sounds like it was probably the texting (maybe via the Google Messages app?) that got the images flagged, rather than the telehealth system.
- hawaiianbrah 4y ago> When Mark’s and Cassio’s photos were automatically uploaded from their phones to Google’s servers, this technology flagged them. Jon Callas of the E.F.F. called the scanning intrusive, saying a family photo album on someone’s personal device should be a “private sphere.” (A Google spokeswoman said the company scans only when an “affirmative action” is taken by a user; that includes when the user’s phone backs up photos to the company’s cloud.) I assume it was triggered when the photos were backed up to Google Photos based on the above quote.
- LorenPechtel 4y agoTelehealth had nothing to do with it other than causing the picture to be taken. The picture was taken with a Google-linked phone, the AI flagged it as CSAM. The transfer to the pediatrician was probably secure and not seen by Sauron's Eye.
- Animats 4y agoGoogle needs to be a regulated common carrier for many of their services. Then you have a right to service.
- Tiddles-the2nd 4y ago> “I decided it was probably not worth $7,000, [to sue Google]” he said. This is a big part of the problem, technically you have a recourse, but the cost for individuals is a barrier to justice. Organisations have a lot of freedom to act behind the cost to litigate.
- koala_man 4y agoMy parents gave me an old photo album I was going to digitize. It includes a photo of me age 1 having a bath in a wash tub. It never occurred to me that this might get my account banned.
- sinuhe69 4y agoDid Google actively scan and classify user’s photos? Because it seems unlikely that these particular photos would match one from the CSAM database.
- throwaway4good 4y agoThat is the implication of this story. Probably flag by ai, review by hand, report. I doubt it is unique to hangouts, probably anything cloud.
- throwaway4good 4y agoSounds like a great tool. Maybe it can be used for things … like preventing the next 9/11.
- TheRealDunkirk 4y agoGiven this story, you’d expect Google to make a yearly report saying that they successfully threw X number of pedophiles off their services, and the FBI convicted Y% of them. You’d think it would be something they and the government would love to crow about. But they don’t. Why?
- oehpr 4y agoGoogle used to have something on their front page to the tune of "What other people are searching right now!" To sort of add a lively "Here's what's trending!" kinda thing They pulled that feature really fast when it made users acutely aware that their searches were not at all private. So... Likely this reason.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- LorenPechtel 4y agoThe real problem here is companies are not cops and should quit acting like cops. The instant a company has evidence of a possible crime being committed they should be required to hand the evidence over to the police and then take no other action other than preventing distributing it or the like. This is not just Google's AI goofing up on what constitutes CSAM (and it sounds like given the witch hunt about such things that Google was being reasonable in informing the police), but colleges expelling "rapists" without evidence etc. The accused never gets anything resembling a fair trial but since it's not the government doing it that doesn't matter, there's no repercussions from messing up lives based on completely incompetent investigations.
- azinman2 4y agoThey may not be cops but they’ve created an enabling technology. They’re also the only ones who could access the data and recognize its potential for abuse. It’s not an easy situation. But clearly if they’re referring out to law enforcement, they need to close the loop on that and take responsibility when they get it wrong.
- LorenPechtel 4y agoThis is more than just Google and CSAM. We have a more general problem with companies playing cop--and generally doing a terrible job of it. This case is simply one example of the problem, we should be focusing on the bigger picture.
- nilleo 4y agoThis might be the final push I needed to migrate off of Google services. It's been all too convenient to have a one stop shop for everything, but I couldn't imagine my rage if I lost all of my child's pictures because Google decided that the picture of their first bath (no genitals or face in frame) was too risky. What's recommended for a domain registrar to move my domains over to? I figure I can probably self-host photo/file backups, move 2FA to Bitwarden, and migrate mail over to a paid Protonmail plan, but who can I trust for domain names? Mostly just for email aliases, but a couple for some hobby websites. GoDaddy can take a hike, and I've used namecheap before but what other options are good/trusted?
- stirlo 4y agoCloudflare does DNS and domain registration. They are subject to US laws but they have been very hands off and pro free speech (too much IMO, protecting abhorrent sites) but that does give more trust in this case.
- abetancort 4y agoSue Google.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- engineer_dude 4y agoThis is why I don't have a Dropbox account anymore. I am extremely fortunate that the account that was deleted without recourse only contained data I had copies of on my hard drive, and to my knowledge law enforcement isn't involved. The article fails to mention the stress and trauma of being accused of having CSAM. That remains to this day ... I'm posting from an alt because even the false accusation carries a potentially career and family destroying stigma.