A word of warning: Families in Houston and San Francisco have suffered mightily because Google mistook photos of their children, which were taken strictly for medical and diagnostic health reasons, for child pornography.
A report by The New York Times tells the story of the families who were victims of extreme reprisals that were made because an automated tool that Google uses to protect against child porn caught their photos “in an algorithmic net designed to snare people exchanging child sexual abuse material.”
Houston police investigated
The Houston man’s problems began when he noticed an infection on his toddler’s intimate areas. At his pediatrician’s request, the man used an Android phone to take photos of the area—photos that were backed up automatically to Google Photos. He also sent the photos to his wife via Google’s chat service.
As a result, the Houston man suddenly had his Gmail account disabled, which caused problems since he was in the middle of trying to buy a house. He also was unable to get his Google account of 10 years restored, despite the fact that he had been a paying user of Google’s web services.
According to The New York Times, the Houston man was told by a Google customer support representative that sending the photos to his wife using Google Hangouts violated the chat service’s terms of service.
Even worse, he was investigated by the Houston Police Department.
An HPD detective called the man and asked him to come to a police station. The man complied. He then showed the detective communications he’d had with his family’s pediatrician after he’d noticed his toddler’s infection.
The HPD then quickly cleared the man of any further investigation. But as he and the San Francisco man found out, despite being cleared by police, getting Google’s reinstatement was impossible.
Another case of mistaken criminality
As for the San Francisco man, he’d noticed on a Friday night last year that his young son’s genitals were swollen and were hurting him. So he used his Android smartphone to take pictures of the area in order to document the problem and track its progression.
His wife then contacted their healthcare provider to schedule an emergency consultation for the next morning. But the consultation would have to be by video since it would be a Saturday and the pandemic was raging.
A nurse for their healthcare provider told the couple to send photos of their son’s problem so a physician could review them in advance. The boy’s mother then used her husband’s phone to text close-ups of their son’s groin area to her iPhone so she could upload them to the health care provider’s messaging system.
Two days later, her husband’s phone sounded an alert and declared that his account had been disabled because of “harmful content” that was “a severe violation of Google’s policies and might be illegal.” A link to a list of possible reasons revealed that one possible reason was “child sexual abuse and exploitation.”
The San Francisco man then lost 10 years’ worth of photos, emails and contacts. His Google Fi account also was shut down, which meant he had to get a new phone number via another carrier.
And, since he lacked access to his old phone number and email address, he couldn’t get the security codes he needed to sign in and access other internet accounts.
As The Times noted, the “domino effect of Google’s rejection” locked him out of much of his digital life. Besides emails, he also lost contact information for friends and colleagues and documentation of his son’s early years.
But that wasn’t all. Like the Houston man, he became the target of a police investigation.
San Francisco police investigated
The San Francisco Police Department mailed him a letter indicating that he was being investigated. It also sent him copies of search warrants it had served on Google and his internet service provider.
The SFPD investigator had requested everything in his Google account, from his location history and internet searches to his messages and any documents, photos or videos he’d stored with Google.
Like the Houston man, the San Francisco man contacted the police, who then quickly determined that no crime had occurred. He then provided the police report to Google to appeal his case. But unlike police in Houston and San Francisco, Google proved to be indifferent to the facts and the context.
Why are innocents caught in criminal nets?
While it’s understandable that technology companies, which capture so much data, examine what passes through their servers to spot possible criminal behavior, why are innocents caught in criminal nets—and then punished severely and in so many ways?
The fact is, not every picture of a young child’s body is abusive, pornographic or exploitative. In both the Houston and San Francisco cases, such photos were taken strictly to protect a child’s health.
According to Carissa Byrne Hessick, a University of North Carolina law professor who writes about child pornography crimes, legally defining what constitutes sexually abusive imagery can be complicated. But she agrees with police that medical images do not qualify.
In such cases, “there’s no abuse of the child,” she told The Times. “It’s taken for nonsexual reasons.”
You may need a sex crime defense lawyer
If you or a family member has been snared in a widely cast net seeking internet sex crime offenses, you may need to engage an experienced sex crime defense lawyer. Sometimes such nets are cast by the police themselves in massive sting operations that can lead to arrests—even of innocent people.
6 possible defense strategies to beat a child pornography possession or distribution charge in Texas
To protect your legal rights when facing an accusation or a charge of a sex crime—especially a sex crime involving children, such as child pornography, for which punishments are far worse—contact a skilled and knowledgeable sex crime defense attorney today.
