MP Attacks Google "Hypocrisy"

Thursday, 10 July 2008

An MP has accused search engine giant Google of double standards this week as the row over its new 'Street View' service continues.

John Pugh, Liberal Democrat MP for Southport, is today asking how the company can claim to be able to 'moderate' the millions of photographs being taken for Street View, whilst arguing that the same cannot be done for the videos uploaded to YouTube - the video sharing site wholly owned by the company.

Dr Pugh has been involved in a long-running campaign to force Google to take steps to stop Youtube being used for so-called "cyber bullying". The MP put forward an early day motion last year calling on the company to take action after a raft of stories about schoolchildren being targeted with malicious videos either instigating or recording horrific acts of violence.

He was told at the time that the sheer number of videos uploaded to the site made moderation "impractical". Now however, the company claims to have developed software capable of automatically moderating the vast number of photographs currently being taken for Street View.

Google this week deployed a fleet of camera cars to photograph Britain's streets in a move that has angered privacy campaigners. In their response to the campaigners criticism, the company claim that this innovative new software will automatically protect the identities of anyone inadvertently snapped by the vans - a stance which has confused Dr Pugh:

"I find it strange that when people raise legitimate concerns about their privacy being breached by the millions of photographs currently being taken by Google, then they claim their software is capable of ensuring that this doesn't happen. And yet when people complain about the deeply disturbing material regularly posted on YouTube, then suddenly the amount of material in question is far too vast to be moderated, and Google absolves itself of all responsibility.

"Either they can develop software to moderate vast quantities of data, or they can't - which is it?"

Dr Pugh also drew attention to the recent court-order which forced Google to release details of users who have uploaded copyrighted content to YouTube:

If Google can identify the millions of users who have uploaded clips of their favourite TV show, then is not fair to assume that they could also identify everyone who has uploaded a video of bullying? Or assault? Or animal cruelty? Or any other of the countless heinous acts that they are happy to have broadcast to the world via YouTube?"

"It seems that if you are a multi-national corporation trying to protect its assets, then Google will bend over backwards to help you. If however you are simply an ordinary person trying to take a stand against a company profiting from the exhibition of human misery, then they could not care less."

"For a company that seems so confident in it's ability to safeguard our privacy via technological solutions, Google seem astonishingly reluctant to employ this ingenuity to tackle some of the problems caused by Youtube. It just doesn't add up."

PHOTO: Views from a town in Florida using Google's Street View.