Not a fan of that analogy. Walmart can't brick your home thermostat, voice assistant, tv box, cable service, federated logins to Uber, DoorDash, your email account, cloud storage account, and so on.
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.
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.
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.