Google is scanning Gmail users mail for kiddie porn

Posted on: Mon, 08/04/2014 - 10:33 By: Tom Swiss

The sexual abuse of children is bad. People who sexually abuse children should be locked up, full stop.

It's more questionable whether people should be locked up for having images of the abuse of children. We've previously covered Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge's take on that topic. (If you find questioning the criminalization "child pornography" shocking, ask yourself: isn't it odd that you can go to jail for having an image of a 16-year-old making love but it's a-ok to have an image of a 16-year-old being murdered? And no, I don't have either sort of image lying around, nor any interest in viewing either sort of image.)

But it's even more questionable whether ISPs should be routinely spying on people and looking for evidence that they have images of the abuse of children. The use of "OMG won't someone think of the children!" as a justification to limit liberty and create a digital panopticon should give us pause.

Did Google Go Too Far? (Business Insider)

On the other, debate rages about how much privacy users can expect when using Google's services like email. In a word: none.

A year ago, in a court brief, Google said as much. Then, in April, after a class-action case against Google for email scanning fell apart, Google updated its terms of service to warn people that it was automatically analyzing emails.