Last week, three major tech companies publicly admitted that they are putting the safety of children above the privacy of their users. Google ,Microsoft and Facebook said they are scanning their users' records and reporting potential violations to law enforcement.
As for Google, you may already know that it scans emails to better target ads that it “serves” to its users. This process occurs after the message is sent, when it reaches its destination and is stored in the cloud.
If you have a Gmail account, you've already accepted it, since the company states it in its Terms of Service. So it's no secret that Google scans your content. An automated system gathers the keywords and then creates a kind of profile that includes the things you like.
The same goes for images in emails that pass through Google's servers. We all know that Google has quite advanced technology for recognizing photos and more.
Of course, many have wondered in the past week whether Google has the right to scan personal data. Emails are private and only we should have access to their content if we want to talk about privacy.
Google and other major tech companies, however, seem to put children's safety above privacy. The company has never hidden the fact that it is trying to eradicate child pornography. For the past eight years, it has even worked with British authorities in the hope that this kind of sick content could one day be eliminated.
Although the measures taken by tech companies are controversial, even the biggest privacy advocates should start to appreciate the concrete results (once they get over their ambivalence).
Monitoring companies for child pornography and child abuse should be an exception and find us all in agreement. But is that so? Who ensures that Google and every Google will stop there? Who defines the fine lines that make monitoring necessary and acceptable?
We must repeat once again: The Internet cannot be a place to store personal data.
Information exposes the public to companies that see dollars and to governments that aspire to power. Consumerism and imperialism have the first say in the globalization that the Internet offers.
