Houston police arrested a registered sex offender on a tip received by Google after the tech giant discovered three child abuse images in the email during a scan.
Google is playing the vigilant here by fighting crimes with its biggest weapon, technology. The Mountain View, California-based internet titan's email scanning practice is no secret. But that snooping activity helped cops stop a potential crime by arresting a registered sex offender.
Google alerted the cops after finding a Houston man in possession of explicit child abuse images in his email. John Henry Skillern, 41, was arrested by the authorities with charges of possession of child pornography and promotion of explicit content, police told KHOU-TV. Google found three images depicting child abuse in Skillern's email using its automatic image scanning technology used to fight child exploitation.
The police obtained a search warrant and discovered child porn on Skillern's phone, tablet and also text messages and emails pointing towards his interest in children. The police said Skillern worked as a cook for a restaurant in Pasadena and his shameful behavior extended to taping young children visiting the restaurant with their families. The police held him on a $200,000 bond.
"We're in the business of making information widely available, but there's certain "information" that should never be created or found," Google said in a 2013 blog post, showing its commitment towards fighting digital child exploitation. "We can do a lot to ensure it's not available online-and that when people try to share this disgusting content they are caught and prosecuted."
Google also updated its Terms of Service in April to clearly explain its automated analyzing of content, which includes emails. The change was made after it was slapped with a class-action suit for email scanning. Google analyzes Gmail content for both security and targeted advertisements, so it can bring more relevant content to online users. It clearly said the analyses occur at all times, when users share, receive or store content on Gmail.
Read more: Google Says No To Porn On Chromecast
