Google reports man for 'sending child porn'
Man arrested after Google flagged images of alleged child abuse sent from his Gmail account

Google has revealed the identity of a user who allegedly sent images of child abuse from his Gmail account, raising questions about email privacy and the role of technology companies in policing the web.
Google discovered the images in an email account in Houston, Texas, and notified a child protection agency, which in turn notified the police, local news agency KHOU 11 reported.
Police say that Google's software detected explicit images of a young girl that 41-year-old John Henry Skillern was attempting to send to a friend. The company then contacted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
According to reports, Skillern is a registered sex offender who was working as a chef at the US restaurant chain Denny's at the time of his arrest.
"He was trying to get around getting caught, he was trying to keep it inside his email," said Detective David Nettles of the Houston police. "I can't see that information, I can't see that photo, but Google can".
Emma Carr, a senior member of the privacy lobby group Big Brother Watch, told the BBC: "With the rate that Gmail messages are scanned, and the fact that all US companies are bound by US law to report suspected child abuse, it is hardly surprising that this individual has found themselves on the wrong side of the law. However, Gmail users will certainly be interested to know what action Google proactively takes to monitor and analyse Gmail messages for illegal content, including details of what sorts of illegal activity may be targeted."
According to the BBC, Google doesn't monitor its email accounts for either piracy or hate speech. The company does, however, proactively search for child porn being sent via Gmail.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Last year Google announced that it would spearhead the creation of a new sharable database that would make it easier for investigators to identify and remove images of child sexual abuse, PC Mag reports.
In November 2013, the company also promised to crack down on attempts to access child pornography through its search engine. "In the last three months [we] put more than 200 people to work developing new, state-of-the-art technology to tackle the problem," Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt wrote in an op-ed at the time.
-
How clean-air efforts may have exacerbated global warming
Under the Radar Air pollution artificially cooled the Earth, ‘masking’ extent of temperature increase
-
September 14 editorial cartoons
Cartoons Sunday’s political cartoons include RFK Jr on the hook, the destruction of discourse, and more
-
Air strikes in the Caribbean: Trump’s murky narco-war
Talking Point Drug cartels ‘don’t follow Marquess of Queensberry Rules’, but US military air strikes on speedboats rely on strained interpretation of ‘invasion’
-
South Korea's divide over allowing Google Maps
Talking Points The country is one of few modern democracies where the app doesn't work
-
Google avoids the worst in antitrust ruling
Speed Read A federal judge rejected the government's request to break up Google
-
Is AI killing the internet?
Talking Point AI-powered browsers and search engines are threatening the death of the open web
-
Unreal: A quantum leap in AI video
Feature Google's new Veo 3 is making it harder to distinguish between real videos and AI-generated ones
-
Google's new AI Mode feature hints at the next era of search
In the Spotlight The search giant is going all in on AI, much to the chagrin of the rest of the web
-
Is Apple breaking up with Google?
Today's Big Question Google is the default search engine in the Safari browser. The emergence of artificial intelligence could change that.
-
Google ruled a monopoly over ad tech dominance
Speed Read Attorney General Pam Bondi hailed the ruling as a 'landmark victory in the ongoing fight to stop Google from monopolizing the digital public square'
-
Is 'AI slop' breaking the internet?
In The Spotlight 'Low-quality, inauthentic, or inaccurate' content is taking over social media and distorting search engine results