Google tip off leads to arrest over child abuse

A 41-year-old Texan has been arrested for possession of child abuse material, after a tip-off from Google about the contents of a Gmail account, police said last week.

According to the police, the search firm tipped off America's National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) about material detected in an email sent by John Henry Skillern, a registered sex offender from Houston.

Detective David Nettles told local news channel KHOU 11, Skillern was trying to get around getting caught, and he was trying to keep the incriminating material in his email. He said he could not see the information, he could not see the photo, but Google could.

The Guardian said the internet company only said it did not comment on individual accounts, but it said it understood that the process was similar to the system that the company rolled out in 2008 to try and clear its search results of child abuse material.

Images are hashed and a unique identifier (known as a hash) is created. The process makes it impossible to recreate the initial image, and the hash is compared to a database of known child abuse images. The technology Google uses in the process is unique, and was developed specifically to solve this problem.

The hashes are then compared with a database of known child sexual abuse images, and in case of a match, the image is passed on to the NCMEC, or its British counterpart the Internet Watch Foundation.

At that point the first human – a trained specialist at one of the two organisations – sees the image, and decides whether the authorities need to be alerted.

Google expanded the system, partially in 2013, in response to pressure from the prime minister.

According to the company's chief legal officer, David Drummond, the company had recently started working to incorporate the fingerprints into a cross-industry database. He said it would enable companies, law enforcement, and charities to better collaborate on detecting and removing child abuse images.
 
Meannwhile, according to the BBC, the arrest raised questions over the privacy of personal email and Google's role in policing the web.

BBC quoted Emma Carr, the acting director of privacy lobby group Big Brother Watch, as saying with the rate that Gmail messages were scanned, and the fact that all US companies were bound by US law to report suspected child abuse, it was hardly surprising that this individual had found himself on the wrong side of the law.

However, Gmail users would be interested to know what action Google proactively took to monitor and analyse Gmail messages for illegal content, including details of what sorts of illegal activity may be targeted. Carr added, Google would also need to make itself very clear about what procedures and safeguards were in place to ensure that people were not wrongly criminalised, she added.