Google’s image-scanning illustrates how tech firms can penalise the innocent

theguardian.com:

Here’s a hypothetical scenario. You’re the parent of a toddler, a little boy. His penis has become swollen because of an infection and it’s hurting him. You phone the GP’s surgery and eventually get through to the practice’s nurse. The nurse suggests you take a photograph of the affected area and email it so that she can consult one of the doctors.

So you get out your Samsung phone, take a couple of pictures and send them off. A short time later, the nurse phones to say that the GP has prescribed some antibiotics that you can pick up from the surgery’s pharmacy. You drive there, pick them up and in a few hours the swelling starts to reduce and your lad is perking up. Panic over.

Two days later, you find a message from Google on your phone. Your account has been disabled because of “harmful content” that was “a severe violation of Google’s policies and might be illegal”. You click on the “learn more” link and find a list of possible reasons including “child sexual abuse and exploitation”. Suddenly, the penny drops: Google thinks that the photographs you sent constituted child abuse!

Never mind – there’s a form you can fill out explaining the circumstances and requesting that Google rescind its decision. At which point you discover that you no longer have Gmail, but fortunately you have an older email account that still works, so you use that. Now, though, you no longer have access to your diary, address book and all those work documents you kept on Google Docs. Nor can you access any photograph or video you’ve ever taken with your phone, because they all reside on Google’s cloud servers – to which your device had thoughtfully (and automatically) uploaded them.

Shortly afterwards, you receive Google’s response: the company