Google Catches Sex Offender with Gmail Scan, But Raises Privacy Concerns.
Recently Google’s automatic email scanning technology has tipped off authorities about a 41-year-old man in Texas who was allegedly distributing explicit images of children via his Gmail account.
It has revealed the identity of a user after discovering child abuse imagery in the man’s Gmail account in Houston, Texas, according to a local news report.
According to a local TV station news report, Google detected a Houston man using Gmail allegedly to send explicit images of a “young girl” to his friend.
The Mountain View, Calif., tech giant reportedly alerted the authorities, who then allegedly found more child pornography on the suspect’s phone and tablet after obtaining a search warrant, KHOU reported.
The suspect, identified as John Henry Skillern, is being held on a $200,000 bond, according to the TV report, which said Skillern is a registered sex offender.
The arrest raises questions over the privacy of personal email and Google’s role in policing the web. It raises the 
controversy: How did Google scan the man’s inbox for child porn? And more importantly, does this mean Google is scanning everyone’s inbox for child porn and other illegal materials? Is there some gross invasion of privacy going on here?
David Drummond, the chief legal officer for Google, has previously said that Google helps fund the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), which is tasked with “proactively identifying child abuse images that Google can then remove from our search engine”.
Google works with the IWF and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children extensively, he said, adding: “We have built technology that trawls other platforms for known images of child sex abuse. We can then quickly remove them and report their existence to the authorities.”
Google automatically scans email accounts to provide ads within Gmail, which has more than 400 million users worldwide.
In April, Google updated its terms and conditions to say: “Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.”
In April Google also stopped scanning more than 30 million Gmail accounts linked to an educational scheme following reports that the scans might have breached a US privacy law.
Google claims it doesn’t divulge information on individual queries or cases, and they remain adamant that this system is only actively searching Gmail for child pornographic content.
This occurred after a class-action lawsuit against the company over email scanning was dismissed earlier this year. At the time, Google said that “a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties”.
Google admits it scans your Gmail accounts for child porn to identify criminals
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