I work in a school as one of the ICT Technicians. Part of our duties is to police the way our pupils use the Internet – make sure they don’t look at porn or play games in lessons, that kind of thing. We have an excellent web filter in place, in which we can add, delete and edit every aspect of filtering; we can filter for groups (such as pupils), sub-groups (such as year groups or individuals), by content type (i.e. entertainment, games, adult) and much more besides. It is a very powerful tool in making sure kids do what they should and don’t do what they shouldn’t.
Except we have a major problem: Google. Or, to be more exact, Google Images. See, there is something about the way in which Google Images works that enables many pupils to get around our content filtering, although when the image is clicked on, it is normally blocked – but believe me when I say that kids under sixteen are perfectly happy with 50 X 50 pixel thumbnails on the Google Images index page.
So, as happens so rarely, I find myself and the American government in agreement; COPA (the Child Online Protection Act) is needed. For those unfamiliar with this piece of legislation, COPA was first introduced in the late-1990s, but was shot down by privacy groups and elements within the US government. The Act posited the view that current content filters, whether proprietary-ISP ones such as AOL, or corporate creations like we use, were inadequate to protect children from the seedy parts of the Web (which they are). It also wanted to provide far greater protection from paedophiles. Laudable aims, I think most would agree.
The current administration has attempted to revive it, possibly to pander to far-right Christian sentimentalities (although COPA does seems to be genuinely benign) but encountered some difficulties. From Google. In order for COPA to be passed, the Department of Justice was tasked with proving that such an Act was required. They came up with the idea to ask all the major Internet search engines (AOL, Yahoo!, MSN Search and Google) for all the searches from a certain month, but without any identifying information. This would show what percentage of searches, in a normal everyday period, were from people searching for child pornography-related material. It would also provide some clue as to how people (i.e. children) were perhaps getting round content filters.
AOL and Yahoo! immediately complied, with Microsoft following soon after. Google flat out refused to help. They were asked again; perhaps if they gave up a million random searches from a week instead, still shorn of all personally identifying information, maybe that would be more acceptable? Google point blank refused again. The Department of Justice, conscious that Google was the largest search engine in America and therefore vital for the success of COPA, served Google a subpoena to comply. Google, again, refused and took them to the press.
Google stated to the press that it was refusing on the grounds of protecting the privacy of its users; the Internet, after all, was all about freedom. Google was subsequently hailed as a hero for standing up to ‘The Man’. This must be a different, nastier ‘Man’ to the one in China, though, because they kow-towed to that one readily enough. People commenting on this case, including Google, also seemed to have missed the terms of the original and revised offers to Google; a million searches from the specified period, stripped of every single bit of identifying data, in order to preserve privacy. But they certainly seemed to relish the fact that Google had helped to make COPA a more difficult prospect.
This incident is notable to me for one reason; it was the first (and so far, only) time that reading people’s opinions has made me feel physically sick. Looking at people congratulating Google for refusing to hand over information that could not have identified people in any possible way but could have helped to save children’s innocence and possibly their lives, felt like people congratulating someone for burning a homosexual to death. What made it worse was a Google spokesperson claiming this as a “clear victory”. Yes, it was, but not for any decent, normal people.
On Internet discussions, I commented on this for a fair while and was staggered by the level of loyalty shown to Google (and corresponding ignorance of the case) by people who had no affiliation with them whatsoever. People said ‘Well, if the DoJ had asked nicely and on the quiet rather than just slapping them with a public subpoena and being all hard-arsed about it from the get-go, maybe Google would have complied. The DoJ deserved that slap in the face for being so heavy-handed’. At which point I would point out that the DoJ did ask quietly and nicely, twice. Google refused, twice, so got hit with a subpoena. At which point these people would respond with ‘This had nothing to do with COPA anyways – it’s all a ploy by the NSA…’ Hmm.
What really made me sick, however, was the sheer number of petty-minded people who said things along the lines of ‘Yes, we need to protect our children, but not at the expense of civil liberties.’ Okay, several things need to be said here: One; I pray that you people have no children, because saying your privacy is more important than their lives and well-being is selfishness on a staggering scale. Two (or ‘One and a Half-ly’): you have that the wrong way round my friend. What you meant to say, surely, was ‘We need to protect our civil liberties, but not at the expense of our children’s safety.’ Please, that is what you meant to say, wasn’t it? Three; what civil liberties could be impinged upon? The DoJ were asking for all identifying information to be removed. This isn’t some theoretical discussion about some possible information some government agency might ask for at some point in the future for some unannounced reason; this was definite, non-identifying information for the express and limited purpose of protecting our children. But these people forgot about all this; they saw red and rushed to defend poor, defenceless, innocent Google from the nasty men that wanted to help the wicked children.
People even advocated the argument that it would take ‘too long’ for Google to remove all the identifying information. Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo! managed to do it, why can’t Google? And since when should ‘takes too long’ ever be an excuse to not help children? But this is a moot point; Google refused to help the DoJ in any way whatsoever. I know this because I spent weeks trawling the net and Google press-releases, hoping to find what I was looking for. But I didn’t. What I wanted to find was a Google statement along the lines of ‘We do not agree with the DoJ’s request for this information as we feel that it infringes civil privacy. However, COPA is a necessary law and we applaud the DoJ for wanting to implement it. We are willing to work with the DoJ to find alternative methods of implementing COPA.’ But that statement does not exist – Google refused to even consider helping the DoJ find alternative methods of getting COPA off the ground. And, lo, the people they did rejoice.
Even the judge presiding over the case seemed to be actively helping to make COPA a more difficult prospect; he stated that as the other search giants had complied, the Department of Justice had all the required information and there was therefore no reason for Google to accede as well. Which begs the question: did the judge actually know anything about COPA and what was required? The DoJ needed a representative sample from all the search giants in order to find out how prevalent the issues were. Google is the largest of the search giants – almost all children will use it when trying to find things. Whether the other search engines complied or not is immaterial – the information from Google was vital for proving the breadth of the problem. Indeed, it could be argued that such is Google’s popularity as a search engine, that it is in fact the other search engines that were not required.
My final statement is this: what about the privacy of people in China? Google is a willing self-censor, actively blocking the people of China from free access to information. The actions of Google and the other companies working in China raise a very interesting point: for many years now, ISPs and search engines have repeatedly claimed that they are in no way responsible for policing the content they help people to find – it is too vast. Explicit pornography, paedophilia, drugs recipes, bomb-making instruction manuals, recordings of beheadings – these are all things which we have to live with and just learn to try and avoid. So how come a ten-year old in Brentford can watch a girl younger than he be raped then strangled, but a student in Beijing can’t see a man with a flag stand in front of a tank? Perhaps the Department of Justice went about things the wrong way after all – the real way to make Google comply is not to ask it nicely, or offer compromises, or to serve it court orders. It is merely to pay them.
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