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A dad took photos of his toddler for a doctor – Google flagged him as a criminal

nytimes.com

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Re: A dad took photos of his toddler for a doctor – Google flagged him as a criminal

#191

Post by saagarjha »

soraminazuki wrote: post #15

> 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 com…

I’m amused because it’s a microcosm of the actual problem: it’s probably the default response to anything that has to do with child sexual abuse material, given without thought to context or circumstances, with too little review. But hey, I guess it’s Google’s official position that this dad is a child pornographer ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: A dad took photos of his toddler for a doctor – Google flagged him as a criminal

#193

Post by bambax »

isodev wrote: post #45
mike_hock wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to fascism. A private company is the de-facto judge, jury and executioner because it owns half the infrastructure you live your life on.

With the flick of a switch, they can deploy this technology to a global scale and way beyond protecting children. Imagine the feature propagating to their Chrome browser or their smart speakers "listening in" on what's happening in your home to "prevent" crimes by sending the cops whenever you raise your voice or say "the wrong things." This kind of power should not be in the hands of a single company. Edit: I recent…

Or any company, or groups of companies. The entreprise is a necessary evil, it should be treated as such and not be tristed with anything.

Re: A dad took photos of his toddler for a doctor – Google flagged him as a criminal

#194

Post by marginalia_nu »

mike_hock wrote: post #20
soraminazuki wrote: post #15

> 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 com…

Welcome to fascism. A private company is the de-facto judge, jury and executioner because it owns half the infrastructure you live your life on.

That doesn't really sound like fascism. Closer to feudalism than anything else.

Re: A dad took photos of his toddler for a doctor – Google flagged him as a criminal

#195

Post by Gatsky »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #86
Gatsky wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think is the ratio of innocent to nefarious pictures of naked children Google encounters in aggregate? This is relevant to how outraged one should be by this story. I think it is probably > 1:100000. As such, probably not much outrage is warranted, although it’s obviously not great for this one guy.

Wow, I'd guess the opposite when we consider the base rate. Seems like a classic Bayesian problem. It's fairly normal for parents to take pictures of their children naked in the bathtub/at the beach/ camping/etc. Conversely, I'd expect actual pedophiles and CSAM producers to be really quite rare. So even a relatively low base-rate of normal parents with normal nude photos would likely dwarf CSAM upon detection. So, i…

If the types of photos you mention were getting flagged as per the case in the article, we would be hearing about a lot more cases. The case itself involved a medical photo, not smiling children at the beach. As such the denominator you use isn’t relevant here.

There is a lot of child pornography in image sharing platforms. Facebook, which reports most reliably, had 20 million CSAM reports in 2021, and that’s photos posted to a social network or sent via messenger, not even in private albums. As I understand it CSAM is more focused on reporting re-uploads or transmission of known abuse material, rather than new material. So I still maintain that if we take the type of image referenced in the article as the denominator, vastly more of such photos would be child abuse material. Granted, 1:100000 is too high, I would revise that down to 1:1000.

Re: A dad took photos of his toddler for a doctor – Google flagged him as a criminal

#196

Post by makach »

It 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.

Re: A dad took photos of his toddler for a doctor – Google flagged him as a criminal

#197

Post by bambax »

blueflow wrote: post #39
HL33tibCe7 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And 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…

You 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.

The sentiment is noble, but that's not really true.

Re: A dad took photos of his toddler for a doctor – Google flagged him as a criminal

#198

Post by salawat »

christophilus wrote: post #89
vgatherps wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the incentive for Google to EVER give the accounts back? If they wrongly deactivate an account (like here), you get a bad article, EFF and friends ruminate about your behavior, and the world mostly moves on. If Google wrongly gives an account back, you get a different article: "Google helped child pornographer even after discovering CP in their account". Now that gets attention. That's a scandal that leads to…

If due process was followed, and the police / state exonerated the parents, I don’t think anyone would blame Google for reactivating the accounts. They’d blame the police or whatever flawed exoneration process was used. At least, that’s what I’d hope. Google here looks even worse than I thought possible, and I’m a de-Googled, anti-fan, so I already had a very dim view of them.

What's this exonerated?

They didn't do anything. Investigation/State scrutiny shouldn't be considered an act of guilt that requires a vouchsafing.

Re: A dad took photos of his toddler for a doctor – Google flagged him as a criminal

#199

Post by MerelyMortal »

734129837261 wrote: post #160

Quoted post unavailable.

Just 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.

Re: A dad took photos of his toddler for a doctor – Google flagged him as a criminal

#200

Post by qwery »

734129837261 wrote: post #160

Quoted post unavailable.

Yeah, 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.

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