What we really should be asking is why is google examining user data at all. They should not be in the position where they can even find out who is a terrorist.
Without reading into the details, I don't think that google arbitrarily examines all user files on Google Drive (and please correct me if I am wrong, but that's what I remember since the last time this discussion was had).
Google only examines files that were shared with other users or were made accessible to others through a shareable link. Which, sorta makes sense, because that's how a lot of people shared illegal content or streamed videofiles (sort of like a personal youtube). And if you don't share those files with anyone and just keep it as your personal cloud drive, I don't think they examine it.
>why on earth would they allow him to use gmail or android?
Google is essentially your mail service (gmail), video platform (youtube), cloud storage (gdrive), and tons of other completely separate services. In physical world, violation of terms of one of the services leads you to being banned only from that service, unless criminal law gets involved. If the law gets involved, then the law can get you banned from using quite a lot of services. But until the law makes the judgement, being banned from a grocery store cannot automatically and without any recourse get you banned from your bank, your car insurance, your mail service, and many other things.
I guess my point on the latter is that no private business (but law) should be able to prevent a person from using multiple completely unrelated vital services. Here are a few scenarios I thought of that would illustrate how it would work:
* An airline banning you for being an asshole on a flight by adding you to a denylist used by other airlines as well? That's congruent with my idea, because it is all within the same service (airlines), and it won't be done automatically.
*A judge completely blocking you from flying by locking you up for participating in terrorist activities? Sure, because the law did it after an investigation and followed proper legal processes.
*Wells Fargo closing down your account because you were an asshole at Kroger when shopping for groceries and got banned from that store? That would be crazy talk.
The only difference between the google scenario and the kroger+Wells Fargo scenario is that kroger+WF are not a part of the same company. But would it be acceptable for WF to close down your account if WF and Kroger were a part of the same parent company? In my opinion, it wouldn't be ok.
Your argument makes sense, and I share your feelings on an emotional level, but at this point, the whole argument can be reduced to "sharing video files streamed from google drive is an equivalent of hosting a video on youtube, so the same rules apply", and that's hard to beat.
If you want to store whatever material you want for personal consumption, you are welcome to. But if you enable sharing, that's when all those extra rules start applying, because you are effectively turning it into a personal youtube that is still hosted by google, and DMCA strikes and other stuff will apply just the same.
Similarly, you can make backup copies of a DVD movie for yourself by burning them onto writeable DVDs. The legality of it is dubious due to copyright law being plain awful at times, but you won't get prosecuted for that if you truly had it only for personal backup reasons. The second you start distributing those DVDs in massive amounts to people, you start inviting a pretty legal trouble to your doorstep.
Mind you, I absolutely disagree with the ban of both the historical footage, as well as the whole google account just because of that footage. However, I do believe that making video public via a shareable link or otherwise puts it in the territory where content rules similar to youtube might get reasonably applied.
Then logically, why should it be available ad free either?
I don't think so.
Lets say you and I opened a joint safe deposit box at the bank to share USB drives together with movies on it. If the bank found out, they wouldn't be required to drill it open and scan the drive to make sure none of the movies were copyrighted. This is google drilling open the safe deposit box because someone shared the keys, and they think there may be a movie they don't like there.
Legally, you are 100% correct. The law doesn't require the host to do anything until a DMCA strike is received. But YouTube has its own rules, which is fully legal as well, as long as they are more restrictive than the law (e.g., establishments prohibiting alcohol inside are allowed, even though alcohol is legal; establishments allowing crack cocaine usage inside are not allowed, because crack cocaine is illegal).
And YouTube decided to take proactive approach here. The reasoning for why doesn't matter to the point at hand. The fact of the matter is, YouTube took a stricter approach to DMCA moderation and tends to not always wait until the video receives and actual DMCA strike.
I actually think that not making a distinction between publishing to the world and sharing with a small group of people is the biggest source of unreasonableness in all of these debates.
When I'm interacting and sharing with a few people I know or who I just met, I expect companies and governments to stay out of it (unless there is a criminal investigation overseen by a judge). I don't think that's unreasonable at all. It used to be the status quo until not very long ago.
Everything from political activity to copyrights can be discussed in a far more sensible way if we make that distinction. As soon as we erase that distinction, which has sometimes happened because it's the default with some technologies, everything becomes essentially unsolvable.
E.g, I don't want to defend the right to anonymity of someone who directly and systematically influences entire populations just because I expect to be allowed to do the equivalent of talking to three strangers in a pub without showing ID.
Google knows how many different people access a particular piece of shared content. They should just set a reasonable threshold before unleashing their crude algorithms. 2 is not a reasonable threshold. How about 200?
But in this case it's just that walmart zoomed in on your notebook with a security camera, saw some arabic scribbles about allah on a tank drawing you were sharing with your friend, and decided you were a terrorist. Sure, they absolutely should toss you out the store if they think you are one, but they shouldn't have been zooming in your notebook in the first place.
Also, I get there are some black and white cases here. But there's plenty of grey also. I imagine a lot of terrorist videos aren't posted by terrorists, but rather by some disenfranchised/angry person who hasn't done anything illegal.
Unfortunately, google clearly has stated they think terroristic acts are happening. Once you indicate that you believe a counterparty is engaging in terrorist acts, you mustn't support them. Quite a few people have gone for prison for a very long time because a fed or informant who had zero interest in actually carrying out a terrorist act, made someone believe they were. And all the prosecutor needs to show is that Google _thought_ they were aiding someone making terroristic acts, and the prison sentences could be lengthy.
Remember the legal system doesn't have much room for nuance when it comes to criminal conspiracy. Even if somebody else gives you all the tools to do something horrible and eggs you on to do it, you are responsible if you make any act whatsoever towards what you believe will have that end, even if the person egging you on is actually a fed who knows all along the act isn't meant to ever happen and in fact you were only presented with the idea that an act could happen on false pretense so you could be tricked into going to jail.
And this brings me back to my original thought, which is that google is pretty dumb for even putting themselves in the position where they have a very dumb system for deciding if they're dealing with terrorist material. Because it opens them up to huge liability that they wouldn't have had if they simply allow their users to exist in privacy.
Terrorism is an INCREDIBLY SERIOUS allegation. It should be dealt with by law enforcement and the courts. And the penalties for _false_ accusations, which is exactly what this is, should be severe as well. It can be life-ruining.
Terrorism should not just be dealt with through the courts. If you think someone is committing violence against others your responsibility is to shut down all support of that person, you mustn't aid them in any way. There's no requirement that private entities wait for the courts before stopping commerce with suspected terrorists. If you are google, that means completely locking out all accounts that you identify as involved in terrorism.
The supreme court has held that when making statements of public concern, you haven't committed libel if you are acting without malice. It's pretty clear google wasn't acting with malice here, and that it is a great public concern if someone is actually amassing armored vehicles to use against others. And just because someone is a terrorist, doesn't mean you should or can act through the courts. If google believes someone is acting against non-US nationals in a foreign country, then there's very little the US courts could pragmatically do about it other than order entities in the US not to support them. Of course if evidence did emerge that google flagged that terrorist activity was happening, and they continued supporting that activity, I don't think that would look favorably during any prosecution.
Which, yet again, brings me to my original point, which is that google shouldn't even be putting themselves in the position to scan private data and open themselves up to the liability of having invade privacy and to suspect someone is engaging in crimes.
"If you think". What if you're wrong?
So if you're wrong, you merely didn't engage in commerce with someone you believe to be a terrorist. There's nothing wrong or illegal about that. The agreement for free services by google doesn't mean google can't end the service at any time, and I'd bet the boiler plate for any paid service has a pressure release valve to end the service if google merely suspects you of engaging in illegal activity. In short, Google owes you nothing, and they're not your slave to provide you service despite believing you're a criminal.
A legal team of 1,000+ at google is betting that you're wrong. I have a feeling they came to a pretty logical decision that liability of aiding someone flagged of terrorist activity is greater than liability of shutting down someone to whom you owe nothing.
Sony did this to me, they blocked my son account for 2 months,no reason why or a way to appeal. The good part is that I now have a reason to not buy Sony products again, the bad part is that until it happens to you , you will think that there are millions of users and only few are affected by this so for sure it will not happen to you.
>What we really should be asking is why is google examining user data at all. They should not be in the position where they can even find out who is a terrorist.
The solution I advocate for is they shouldn't be looking at our data. I don't want them evaluating who is a terrorist or who isn't, because as soon as they do that they need to take action on that information or be liable for failing to do so.
But I think you have found a very good solution with Sony, and maybe we should apply this to google and simply not use their service rather than get upset because they've chosen not to support those they think are terrorists. Again google is not your slave that must perform a service for you.
If you get banned from the entirety of Amazon marketplace by harassing sellers in the gardening equipment department, that seems fair. If you get your AWS account banned for doing the same thing that has nothing to do with AWS, that's a different story. One thing is a consumer goods store, the other is a cloud service provider.
Can you really say with a straight face that once google thinks they have a terrorist, they should just go on supporting that person in any way whatsoever? There can be very serious penalties for knowingly aiding terroristic acts (even if it turns out it was say a "harmless" fed or informant instead of an actual terrorist).
He was banned from all properties owned the malls parent company.
They say that they process all of your data:
> To provide services like spam filtering, virus detection, malware protection and the ability to search for files within your individual account, we process your content.
They also have some weirdly specific claim about advertising, which I don’t trust bc it sounds like they’re mincing words:
> We don’t use information in apps where you primarily store personal content—including Drive—for advertising purposes, period.
in your analogy the grocery store also has a gun shop next door they own, you're in the grocery store and they decide that you are buying something to poison someone so they don't let you, you go next door to the gun shop where they say 'hey, customer 2214 potential murderer of course you can buy the gun!' You buy the gun and go kill the person you were intending to kill.
When the law gets involved the company owning the grocery store and gun store will find it has a lot of liability.
Basically anything where you think the law will get involved and have to make a determination will mean you will have to shut down all services.
Notice the law getting involved banning is of course different than the you were an asshole banning.
on edit: I of course think it's ridiculous that this account got banned, but that doesn't change the fact that the argument put forward here about wait for the law to make determination just isn't going to fly in any situation, and think about it if someone was a terrorist, got banned in service X but used service Y to coordinate their big attack that killed thousands would you really be sitting here saying service Y was right not to ban them? Maybe you would, but the law and general public opinion probably wouldn't.