Evidence of Social Irresponsibility, Corruption by Google Inc.
Road to Hell Paved with Google Intentions
Google's Paradox: Using Technology to Set Back Civilization Fourteen Hundred Years
"Despite billions in discretionary income, Google refuses to invest in practices that would demonstrate that it takes at least some responsibility for the ways its products are abused for criminal harassment and stalking. A federal law, curiously misnamed The Communications Decency Act provides Google with immunity from liability. It would be hypocritical to criticize the National Security Administration for hypothetical violations of privacy Google's products routinely demonstrate. In the report that follows, I depict a defamation superhighway designed to anonymize the messenger while providing maximum (i.e. universal, timeless, and premium) exposure for the message. Freedom of speech? Perhaps. But is it in the spirit of freedom that a cyber-stalker imposes a prohibitive price on the freedom of a victim to blog or otherwise express unconventional or unpopular points of view? These are not freedoms per se, not the kind of freedom we're accustomed to in the flesh-and-blood world where people are limited by how far their voices or legs can carry them ... by the shelf life and circulation of print media ... and by the rule of (enforceable) law. Harassment laws go unenforced because local law enforcement lacks the will and the skill to chase down stalkers through layers of anonymizing technology. These are indecent liberties that Google supports with references to the First Amendment and referrals to the chillingeffects.org blacklist. The only practical solutions to cyber-stalking consist of regulations that target the problem at the level of the technology. And Google, as both a multi-billion dollar business with lobbying firms on Capitol Hill and as an unctious First Amendment ideologue, would never support it."
Covered In This Document
Google Embattled for Corporate Malfeasance
Google Services Cyberstalking; Web / Group Functions Used as Delivery Devices for Intrusion, Defamation
Citing Free Speech & Public Availability, Google Refuses to Remove from its Interface with Usenet Messages That Pose Risks to Reputation, Employment, & Safety, (i.e. Usenet)
Google Threatened to Blacklist at Least One Complainant by Turning His Complaint & Legal Documentation over to an Enemies of Free Speech Web Site
Within 2 Days of "Experimenting" with Unflattering Messages about A Google Staffer, One Victim/Complainant Discovered Google Made His Messages Disappear
Hypocritically, Google Terminates Employee for Posting to a Blog Information about Google Deemed 'Publicly Available'
Case of Cyberstalking Illuminates Google Search Formula
A Practical Demonstration of the Abuse of Google
Google's Defamation Superhighway
For months, Google was unresponsive to e-mails requesting it remove from its own Web and Groups archive Usenet messages from gangs of anonymous cyber-stalkers intent on using the search engine behemoth as a defamation delivery device. The effects of Usenet on the quality and integrity of Google's Web archive are well-known ("search engine vandalism"; "search engine pollution"), but you may be surprised by Usenet's role in thousands of cases of harassment and cyber-stalking. In this report, we discuss the anatomy of this cyber-stalking "machine" piece by piece. I am confident that once you’ve reviewed this report, you will agree that these web-based services and technologies are being hijacked to threaten civil rights, safety, reputation, employment, and mental health. We will talk about what makes Usenet different from other online communities / telecommunications media, and what it will ultimately take to neutralize the threat and bring relief to what Jim McDermott's office (D-WA) estimated as "thousands of victims."
What Sets Usenet Apart
The term "Usenet" refers to a collection of online discussion forums known as "news groups." Google, which purchased the Usenet archive from dejanews in 2001, boasts that Usenet is the "world's largest and most decentralized user network," and like McDonald's "billions and billions served," Google invites visitors to its Google Groups tab to browse billions of messages to these tastefully-named "news groups." Upon closer examination, we discover that unlike other online communities (e.g. Yahoo, MSN, AOL), close to 90 percent of these Usenet messages are incendiary messages designed to harass, intimidate, slander, or otherwise engage in altercation. This mindboggling statistic can be explained by Usenet's unique characteristics.
As the oldest network of communities, Usenet is the only one to predate the Internet. One might ask how a discussion forum could predate the Web. Usenet was designed by Duke University graduate students in 1981 as a medium through which computer professionals could share technical expertise. These professionals accessed Usenet not through hyperlinks as most users do today, but through UNIX boxes and telephone lines.
This means Usenet's original settlers were people of uncommon (and inestimable) technical skills. It did not take long for the medium to attract hacktivists and teen hackers and who enjoyed trading their high school principals' credit card numbers. I wonder if the hacker I knew in high school ever made good on his promise to ship a truck-load of toilet tissue to the home of our principal ... on the principal's credit card of course. I always wondered whether I'd ever reach a point where I was obliged to bring my friend's behavior to the attention of authorities, but soon thereafter he introduced me to the machete collection in his basement, and that pretty much settled that. So what exactly did this teen hacker do? He hacked what he called the CBI (Credit Bureau) satellite and proudly reported our principal's outstanding debts, prior residences, car loans, etcetera. This is precisely the kind of skills Usenetters have used to toy with the lives of bloggers who dare to share with the Usenet community some unconventional wisdom or criticism of an institution. Unlike Australia, which was originally settled by British convicts, Usenet does not appear to have risen above its origins.
But who can blame Usenetters for not resisting the temptation to, as we say in American football, "take what the defense is willing to give them?" The vast majority of news groups have no ownership and no oversight. No one owns them. No one is held responsible for the behavior of its users or the content of its archive. No one to mediate when one user attacks another, claiming "this news group" or "this all of Usenet" is not big enough for the both of us. Even most towns of the Wild West had a sheriff -- and someone to say "what in the name of Sam Hill ...?"
And Usenet's bad boys (and girls) are impregnably anonymous. No, I'm not talking about using pen names or handles. In most online communities, the header of the message contains a unique identifier which signifies the address of your PC, which makes you ultimately accountable to authorities should you do anything that would make them want to find you. The IP address also makes your identity available to just about anyone who wants to find you -- and anytbing you may have posted to various message boards under various aliases. (Just google the IP address). Web-savvy and tech-savvy veterans of Usenet know how to get around this. The Usenet collection of news groups supports participation through two classes of web-based services that anonymize the participant at the source, substituting another IP address for that of your own PC: (1) re-mailers and (2) proxy servers (also known as “free public news group posting servers” such as AIOE.org). Most of these services (and there are hundreds of them) were created by regular Usenet participants who want to erase their tracks and free speech ideologues who seem to think the First Amendment includes the right to remain unaccountable for one's words and deeds. If re-mailers and proxy servers weren't enough, the technically savvy belligerent of Usenet can simply spoof his header information.
In principle, there's nothing wrong with messaging this deeply undercover. However, most technically savvy belligerents utilize Usenet because Usenet messages are some of the most high-ranking results in a Google search of anything. Unlike other online communities, messages to Usenet get preferred ranking from search engines. Believe it or not, a false and unflattering flame in Usenet with your name in the subject line will on average rank higher in Google than messages from or about you in the Washington Post’s online message board – higher than even your autobiographical web site. This fact alone forces many victims to set aside the conventional wisdom that says "ignore your stalkers," because the only way to keep the results of a Google search on your name as clean as possible means you have to defend that name ... in Usenet. Many of the victims I talked to are not the willing participants they seem. They would like nothing more than to serve Usenet with a restraining order and be left in peace. But they feel that unless they counter defamatory messages in Usenet, their name becomes gang property. Knowing this, Usenet stalkers rebuke their victims for "hanging around" while knowing full well they have this hold over them. And voila -- another flame war is born! Some of these flame wars have lasted a decade and counting ... with a staying power even more puzzling than J*A*G.
So how do we explain this? After all, a Usenet message is not inherently web-ified, and Usenetters enjoy reminding "clueless newbies" (Usenet parlance) that Usenet is not the Internet. Well, these same Usenetters create “Usenet archives” (also known as “news readers”), web sites that automatically create (web) records of every new message in Usenet. Some of these archives are complete replicas of Usenet, while others archive a thematic subset of news groups (e.g. www.pahealthsystems.com/). Now some Usenet archivists are well-meaning facilitator extraordinaires who believe they're connecting the masses to valuable resources (e.g. www.laborlawtalk.com). Too many however are stalkers and voyeurs who think the world wants to eavesdrop on flame wars (e.g. news-reader.org, www.news2mail.com) and who want to tarnish the reputations of individuals whose opinions they do not like. Remember, Usenet predates the Internet. In Usenet's pre-lectronic history, alliances were formed so that, by the time Google and others plugged the Web into Usenet in the mid-1990s, there were many curmudgeons ready to leverage their technical skills -- and their alliances with others with technical skills -- to play with the lives of "kooks" and "clueless newbies" as if they were toys. Providing Web access to Usenet without modifying Usenet first is tantamount to allowing small mammals to evolve into human beings without first killing off the dinosaurs.
The sheer number of Usenet archives, news group posting services, and Internet Service Providers linking to Usenet, and the intrinsic hyper-linking among news groups within Usenet, is tailor-made for Google's search ranking formula.
The stalking apparatus is presented in the following process flow:
The infrastructure in the above diagram depicts a system designed to anonymize the messenger while providing maximum (i.e. universal, timeless, and premium) exposure for the message. Publishing to search engines is not only tantamount to putting something “in print,” but it is far more consequential. Unlike hard copy news papers and magazines, search engine data has an unlimited subscription base and unlimited shelf life. The first page of results on a search of your name is tantamount to a billboard along all major highways.
The preceding Usenet characteristics not only facilitate anonymous harassment and libel, but also facilitate the formation of gangs, another distinguishing characteristic of Usenet. These are not your typical gangs (pre-existing gangs of urban youth who turn to Usenet), but rather gangs that form and fester from Usenet’s primordial soup. These gangs consist of digerati (i.e. people who work as network administrators and computer professionals), academics and professionals, corporate shills, and belligerents with criminal and psychiatric histories. Internet road ragers all! These are irascible "scholars" who defend their theory or discipline from unconventional wisdom and criticism. These are pharmaceutical marketing professionals who harass purveyors of anti-drug propaganda. These are antisocial types who need to fight about as much as they need to breathe. And as my research suggests, there are even some "computer chair potatoes" like you capable of being sucked into an interactive alternative to Jerry Springer. Ah, the spectacle of 50-year-old men claiming to "spank" and "own" one another.
As if Usenet's intrinsic alliance-building properties weren't enough, there's alt.usenet.kooks, a news group developed in 1993 as a central clearinghouse where Usenetters from various news groups can expose their “local targets” to stalkers Usenet-wide. This news group is the central nerve system of Usenet, elevating cyber-stalking to a cause célèbre by allowing stalkers to exchange enemies and organize into alliances built around one or more target. Recruiting and marketing by Alt.usenet.kooks is widely believed to have had a profound effect on the behavior and composition of broader Usenet. Once a hotbed for discussion among academics (i.e. university professors), the "news groups" may have once lived up to its name as an exchange of esoteric opinions from authoritative minds. But the association with Google and the Web introduced a dynamic -- a motivation -- that worked against the quality and civility of discussion and ultimately transformed Usenet into its own antithesis ... into a place where gangs of educated and uneducated bullies alike use harassment to censor idiosyncratic view points.
Usenet even has its own “culture,” complete with its own code and dialect (e.g. “peeps” for “people,” “figgers” for “figures,” “mebbe” for “maybe”). The acronym LART, which stands for “loser attitude readjustment tools,” is a shorthand and under-the-radar method of broadcasting Usenet-wide or news group-wide that a target should be subjected to traditional harassment practices. This may include the development and dissemination of a [INSERT YOUR NAME] FAQ, a digital dossier which discloses your accurate personal contact information while using false and/or unflattering information to depict you in a way that encourages lurkers to hit you where you live.
Google's Responsibilities
Legally, Google, which scans millions of pages of books into its archive of five libraries, has been relieved of the burden of having to do anything about criminal abuses of its service. Article 230 of the Communications Decency Act removed Google from the system of civic checks and balances that have limited the size and hubris of other for-profit corporations. Politicians gave Google executives everything but the high ground. By all moral and logical accounts, Google is responsible.
Ordinarily, I'd be sympathetic with Big Business shareholders and free speech ideologues who cheer every Google legal victory like so many battery-operated cymbal monkeys. But Google's role in the abuse of Google is hardly incidental. It’s not like the defamatory messages in Usenet just so happen to appear on the front page of results on a Google search of your name. When Usenet stalkers throw mud at a blogger or flame war opponent, they are taking aim at this Google page, much like the teenage vandal who blackens an eye on a highway billboard. In the words of one of my cyberstalkers, "he who controls Google controls the world." Within a day of having persuaded a Usenet archive web master to remove the page carrying the web copy of the Usenet message slandering me, my cyber-stalker cried foul. And within a matter of days there was “more where that came from.” Usenet stalkers google their victims semi-daily to determine whether more damage can be done and whether a high ranking web page portraying the victim favorably can be “bumped” by a defamatory message to the same forum with more search-optimizing eponymous keywords. Google is frequently apprised of such struggles, but does nothing to assist the victim. If the victim’s name is unique, the defamatory campaign is especially damaging, and it’s my opinion that Google could spare a lot of people a ton of grief by allowing victims to “opt their names out” of Google’s archive. Since when did I become property of Google?
More Than Just Defamation
I don’t want to minimize the importance of defamation on the Web. It’s conventional wisdom that search engines have turned us into a nation of domestic spies. I see people google their colleagues at work. Some employers “google” prospective hires. And many individuals use google to vet someone before dating them. No one wants their mother or coordinator of their high school reunion committee to see something false and / or unflattering about them. When Google gets a hold of something, it is difficult to remove but, unless removed, it’s there forever and available the world over. In the words of one Usenetter, “he who controls Google, controls the world.”
In effect, the self-styled "kookologists" and "net-koppers" vandalize the search engine databases so that when a target, his high school reunion committee, family members, or prospective employers type his name into the Google Web Search field, the first few pages of results are deluged with libelous, threatening, and vulgar messages from Usenet. Many news reader administrators conceal their name and contact information by using ICANN-skirting Domains by Proxy (a subsidiary of GoDaddy.com) to host their news reader to avoid having to field complaints from dozens of alleged kooks. In effect, unless the victims is willing to hire teams of attorneys and private investigators, they have to live with the knowledge that every responsible party remains anonymous. The authors of the messages in Usenet are anonymized by remailers and news servers, and the administrators of the news readers that link Usenet to the Web are anonymized by smarmy Domains by Proxy.
There was a time Google attorneys deflected the responsibility for search engine vandalism on to the news readers, urging complainants to appeal to the admins of dozens of news readers. If you thought managing this anti-personnel propaganda felt like plugging fifty holes in a dam with ten fingers, the problem just got a whole lot worse. Now it appears that in addition to feeds from the news readers, Google Web is making available to search its very own archived copies of Usenet messages ... right out of its Google Groups. Don't let the Google branding fool you. Even though you may have innocently wandered into the tastefully named "Google Groups" thinking it was just another collection of message boards, Google Groups is Google's own inhouse parlance for Usenet. The screen capture below serves as evidence that Google is indexing Usenet news groups.
So you are well within your rights to chortle when you hear Google's "Don't Be Evil" moniker, because Google knowingly supports this evil. Google is the ASP of evildoers the world over. But if you're thinking, "well, some of these people who posted idiosyncratic or critical views to public forums deserve what they got," this link is for you: it's a link to 215 messages designed to defame or disturb a woman who never posted a single message to Usenet. No, this is not tabloid gossip about Jennifer Aniston, naked photos of Paris Hilton, or your run-of-the-mill roiling of Donald Rumsfeld. It's the wife of a man who dared voice his criticisms of the scientific foundations of psychotherapy in a ... get this ... a science of psychotherapy news group. Not only was this purveyor of criticism attacked by complete strangers from outside the news group to which he posted his messages -- strangers recruited from (and then by) alt.usenet.kooks -- but all these stalkers decided to make the critic's wife the subject of relentless and profane derogation ... all of which ends up on the Web ... and all of which ends up ranking prominently in the results of a search on the wife's name. And there are actually more than 215 messages. If you search more broadly to include messages that include only her first name or that do not refer to her by name (only as her husband's wife), you would come up with more than 1,000. Does Google care? Yes, Google cares about preserving the free speech of the stalkers despite the fact they put this woman's (and her husband's) reputation, employment, and safety at risk.
Some of the more egregious messages are designed to disseminate illicitly obtained financial and personal address information about individuals harassed, threatened, and defamed by cyberstalking gangbangers in unmoderated "news groups." Wyatt Ehrenfels...
"I questioned Google's practice of providing access to these groups, because over 90 percent of the posts are off topic and amount to nothing more than hate speech and 'calls to arms' against individuals. I honestly can't believe that so many psychology bloggers and even psychology departments would include in its list of resources links to some of these unmoderated Usenet news groups. Here is what they are supporting. And if you keep flipping the pages backward in time, you will find more of the same going back 7 years. Some of these flame wars, and even some of the stalking of individuals who have long since abandoned this news group, have lingered 7 years! Google maintained that it does not have the resources to moderate its archives, but I think it also demonstrated that it lacks the interest as well, and I'm sorry, but when you would sooner defend one person's freedom to harm over another's right to safety, well, I think that's a pretty evil business model. If you have the time and the resources to scan millions of volumes from 5 of the largest public libraries, then you can make the effort to protect your own search from Usenet pollution. All this had me shredding my scalp for some time, but my bemusement burned off with the morning fog upon learning what ISS thought of Google's governance."
And the following is Google’s standard reply to complaints about Google Groups:
”Thank you for your reply. By their very nature, Usenet groups may carry offensive, harmful, inaccurate, deceptive or otherwise inappropriate material. Google does not endorse, support, represent or guarantee the truthfulness, accuracy, or reliability of any communications included in Google Groups nor do we endorse any opinions expressed in the groups.
In this case, the person or people you refer to are not associated with Google, and they did not use the Google Groups posting services to add this information to the Usenet. You may want to contact this person's ISP to report this abuse. Please be aware, however, that in most of these cases the message headers are forged so attempts to contact the ISP may not be successful.
If you feel that you or your family are in danger, please contact your local authorities immediately.
We are sorry we cannot be of more assistance in this matter.”
Curiously, I did not mention in my complaint to Google that I thought I was in any danger. No reference to any of the cyber-stalking methods. Just the defamation. Apparently, the reply from Google is a standard form letter that betrays what Google really knows about what goes on in its “Google Groups” … and what Google doesn’t know about the law. (Local authorities do not extradite for misdemeanors).
Why the Time Has Come for Telecommunications Reforms Legislation
Despite the fact everyone agrees Usenet is a public health and safety risk, Google and law enforcement have been passing the Usenet buck for years. And in his opposition to the original version of the Communications Decency Act (the version that was not a misnomer), Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) explicitly identified the “news groups” as forums in need of protection. Consistent with its efforts to regulate other social networks, Congress is taking a fresh look at Usenet. And with good reason.
Legislators have only recently been apprised of cost-prohibitive obstacles to the prosecution of cyber-stalkers under local harassment and federal cyber-stalking laws. Criminal investigators lack the funding, the skills, and the manpower to wade through the tall grass that is gangs of anonymous cyber-stalkers. The torch is easily passed from one mitigated cyber-stalker to another gang member, and news of an arrest disseminated in Usenet is also likely to incur the wrath of Usenet's counter-culture, First Amendment ideologues suffering from Intenet Road Rage who are willing to stalk a complete stranger on the word of a fellow Usenetter. The long arm of Usenet is considerably longer than that of the law. Only changes to Usenet and associated services and technologies can prevent cyber-stalkers from operating too deeply undercover and from networking in the kind of ways that support the recruitment of belligerents and the marketing of malicious propaganda. Obviously, if we wouldn't ask the criminal justice system of to do this kind of dirty work, why would we shift the burden to the victim to hire attorneys and private investigators? Not until the technological solution is implemented can the criminal justice system or civil court system work effectively for the victims.
As far as Web-based banes and scourges go, cyber-stalking is not an exotic animal. We all know we can’t trace the source of all known viruses or prosecute all spammers. And yet we still find e-mail and the Web viable tools. Why? In addition to legislating stiff penalties (that are impractical to enforce), we attacked the problem at the level of technology. Why should cyber-stalking be any different? The legislative directors for the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Internet Issues and the Committee on Government Reform is evaluating a list of proposed regulations designed to curb the abuse of social networks and other web-based services. The proposal, which paves the way for hearings in the Spring, was made available to fireflySun.com on condition of confidentiality.
The following is a sample of some of what I endured as a middle-of-the-road victim of Usenet-based gang cyber-stalking:
Cyber-stalkers obtained the credit card number of an associate, who was cyber-stalked because of his affiliation with me, and used that number to authenticate a fake negative review of my book in Amazon.com.
Cyber-stalkers use web-based caller ID spoofing technology to falsify the source of phone calls to my home (and the home of my associate) … despite the fact my number has always been unpublished, despite the fact I have changed unpublished numbers over the years … and despite the fact I opted out of every personal information search engine I could find (e.g. zabasearch.com, Intelius.com, ussearch.com). Verizon was unable to resolve the true source of these calls.
Cyber-stalkers illicitly procured and disseminated the names of family members, some too young to have been known through the Web or any other public database. How could anyone know this without electronic surveillance or hacking?
One of the gang members faked a cross-country trip and led me to believe their intent might have been murder. All along the way, the others cheered him on and at times pretended to plead with him not to go through with it.
Cyber-stalkers hacked into my free Yahoo e-mail account, rigging it so that upon login, I was directed immediately to a Contact List feature I never used before, which happened to contain a threatening reference to my wife (as if to say, “I know who you are behind the author pen name”).
Cyber-stalkers developed a disingenuous “FAQ” in the name of my associate and hosted it on multiple (i.e. “mirroring”) web sites to vandalize the results of a Google search on his name. His name (as the names of all their targets) became “gang turf” and their own personal property. There is no way to gauge the effect on reputation or employment of being vilified this way in search engines.
Cyber-stalkers enjoy using their numbers (and in some cases, even their credentials as therapists) to file joint spurious complaints of TOS violations to companies providing my hosting services (and my associate’s posting services).
My web host verified that there are constant attempts to gain access to my web site’s account (and I could witness in my web site’s raw access logs attempts to exploit a vulnerability in my web site’s php code).
Cyber-stalkers google my e-mail and IP addresses to track my activity on the Web (i.e. “cyber-dredging” and “truth-squading”). All my behavior on the Web becomes fodder for their malicious spin and speculation.
Even though I have a PhD in Psychology, I allowed my stalkers (most of whom have no affiliation with the field) to chase me from “their news group” 3 years ago. But they tracked and followed me into other news groups, where they intimidated anyone who engaged me in dialogue, forcing me to flee all of Usenet. As if this wasn’t enough, they used Google to search my computer IP address and track my activity in forums outside Usenet on the wider Web. If I added statements to my own web site that defended my book from their lies, they found them and punished me with more propaganda. When they noticed my web activities were restoring some sanity to the results of a search of my name in Google, they increased production of defamatory and hostile writings about me in Usenet. I was forced to stop participating in Web discussions and, recently, amorphous remarks about the children of two associates forced them to stop writing for this blog.”
The Top Down: Google Governance Cited as "Pretty Darn Evil"
With Google expected to join the S&P 500, influential proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) panned Google's governance practices, citing 21 weaknesses on route to assigning Google a rating of 0.2 out of a possible 100 (a rating as described as "pretty darn evil" by an ISS senior vice president, lending a modicum of credibility to Wyatt Ehrenfels's description of Google as the "evil empire"). Google's move to join the S&P 500 is consistent with its efforts to encourage the public to view Google as a 'public utility,' which would further insulate Google from accountability to complainants citing Google for criminal negligence in the management of its news groups, where it is used as a defamation delivery device and place of assembly for gangs of anonymous cyberstalkers.
Weaknesses cited by ISS included a dual-class capital structure giving effective control to insiders, too few outside directors, and a lack of stock ownership guidelines for executives and independent directors. Google was also faulted for loans to company insiders and a compensation plan that allows Google to reprice stock options if the stock price falls.
Google (GOOG: Research, Estimates) made a long-awaited initial public offering last Wednesday. Its shares closed Friday on the Nasdaq at $108.31, or 27 percent above their $85 offering price. The company's market capitalization now exceeds $29 billion. The Securities and Exchange Commission has started an informal inquiry into Google's offer to buy back 23.2 million shares it may have issued illegally. The SEC is considering a civil suit against the company's general counsel for securities law violations related to his prior job, and it is investigating whether Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page violated U.S. securities rules when they interviewed with Playboy magazine shortly before making their shares available.
Google sleuths and swallows competitors like it does every nook and cranny of cyberspace, buying on the cheap innovative companies with cutting-edge talent and technology before they win millions in venture capital and mature into rivals. In the words of Business2.com writer Om Malik (November 28, 2005): "Google's sales pitch to the startups is simple: Come work for us, score some Google shares, and see your big idea rolled out to more than half a billion users."
Google temporarily suspended efforts to create a universal digital library, stopping its scanning of books from university libraries after being cited for copyright infrigement by the Association of American Publishers. Arrogant Google officials not only never thought to secure authorization from publishers, but arrogantly shifted the burden on publishers with an 'opt out' policy in which publishers are required to present Google with a list of titles they did not want scanned. "Google's announcement does nothing to relieve the publishing industry's concerns," remarked AAP President Patricia Schroeder. "Google's procedure shifts the responsibility for preventing infringement to the copyright owner rather than the user, turning every principle of copyright law on its ear." Hmm. This raises an interesting question. When should Google stop mooning the civilized world with the raw hairy buttocks of Usenet -- AKA "Google Groups"? When complaints of menacing and libelous messages in their forums outnumber pages in all books in five colossal libraries. Months ago I made a brief habit of requesting of Google officials that they tend to malicious abusers in their "news groups." And every time said officials reply that no one organization can be expected to manage all the abusive messages in these forums. You do the math. They can scan every page in every volume of the New York City Public Library (not to mention the collections of four major university libraries). But apparently Usenet is too much for them. Sheesh!
In the paragraphs below it will become evident that Google has a habit of dumping responsibility for the consequences of its business on those adversely affected.
Social psychologist Wyatt Ehrenfels attributes Google's indifference to an abysmal lack of ethics at the top, anticipating that "load-bearing pillars of Google's business model," as it relates to both its web search archives and its archives of the largest and most decentralized user network [Usenet], will likely be criminalized by new state laws, such as one recently passed in California, designed to provide relief to victims of cyberstalking:
"I expect cybergluttoning-turned-money-grubbing Google to resist these laws in the name of freedom, when in actuality, it will resist them in the name of its own self-interest. Google materially benefits from indiscriminately expanding the scope of its content beyond what it can monitor or modify, which may explain why Google, in compiling a proud list of posting firsts in Usenet history (e.g., "first reference to Microsoft"), practically declared Usenet a historical landmark. Such a posture is likely to shore up the company's network of forums against emerging laws designed to curb cyberstalking. But if that isn't enough, get a load of a defiant Google's brutal Terms of Service:
Like a voodoo incantation, this disclaimer hopes to ward off any responsibility for the casualties of war in Usenet news groups that look more like Beirut than the broadcast room of the Associated Press. Google warns the sources of objectionable material, knowing well the prohibitive cost to victims of tracing and stopping the messages. And while Google has the temerity to warn people exposed to objectionable material (i.e. bystanders), what of those about whom or against whom the objectionable material is written? What about those cases in which a person is objecting to messages that threaten them? Libel them? Harass them or follow them around the news groups?
Another disclaimer of interest is the following: "Google is not affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its content." More interesting than the statement itself is where you find it ... in the header of Google's cached copy of a web page.
"G o o g l e's cache of [URL] as retrieved on Dec 19, 2004 19:23:45 GMT. G o o g l e's cache is the snapshot that we took of the page as we crawled the web. The page may have changed since that time. Click here for the current page without highlighting. This cached page may reference images which are no longer available. Click here for the cached text only."
Talk about having problems letting go. Long after you successfully lobbied to have the administrator of a web site remove or alter a page that contained libelous information about me, or perhaps sensitive information that could spell trouble in the hands of stalkers or adversaries, Google maintains a copy.
You can click on the link, which will turn up nothing because the page has been removed or altered by the web administrator, but if you click on the link titled Cached for that entry, you can see the illegal or damaging content in all its original glory. And Google denies responsibility for this. Well, if Google is not responsible for its own cached copies of deleted web content, who is? I wonder if Google officials would remain unshakably devoted to their policies if someone like myself disseminated web pages containing personal contact information and family data for one or more Google executives. I wouldn't have to hire a private investigator or cozy up to a Desperately Gossiping Housewife in the neighborhood. I need only turn to another one of society's legalized stalking outlets: the sleazy people data service. Surely, you've heard of 1-800-U.S. Search? Well it would that the people information service industry (what DO they call this industry anyway?) has grown quite competitive in recent years. "Companies" like PeopleData.com, Intelius.com, and USAPeopleSearch.com are cropping up like new strains of that virus known as 1-800-U.S.-Search. And they are legally permitted to make available to the public for a fee your current address, your history of addresses, your date of birth, and your criminal background. Yes, it's all legal. In personal correspondence with Senator Warner (R-VA), I learned that this industry has been given broad authority to regulate itself. Does it surprise you at all that opponents of the Patriot Act have not cried foul about this encroachment on their privacy? (I guess the Patriot Act is opposed on partisan politics rather than on principle).
Because for an increasingly low price, any stalker can use this information not only to locate you, but to generate a list of individuals with whom you've shared residences, and to identify and locate family members. It could even be used to corroborate or expand what can be learned about you in a search of your name, e-mail address, or IP address in Google. PeopleData.com is even making available a list of your magazine subscriptions. And all for the low low cost of ... well ... this information used to retail for $49.99 but is getting more affordable by the month. Perhaps an honest citizen can use these services to compose a web page about one or more Google execs.
While Google does not index the messages to its web search, Google officials are well aware that those who use Usenet/Google Groups as a defamation delivery device create Internet-based news readers that archive each post to the web, thus making the libelous messages available to the search engines indirectly. Some stalking gangs even join forces to create news readers under the pretense of providing access to support forums. As the news readers proliferate, so do the number of high-ranking links to menacing and libelous messages about a target in the results of a Google/Yahoo search of that target's name. Usenet/Google Groups makes available an x-no-archive posting option to protect those who want to materially threaten (as opposed to libel) a target. This allows stalkers to maximize intimidation while reducing their liability and risk of criminal prosecution. Like the self-destructing pre-recorded mission statement to IMF team leader James Phelps (Peter Graves) (Mission Impossible), a message above the text of the post to Usenet/Google Groups reads "The author of this message requested that it not be archived. This message will be removed from Groups in 6 days." (The complete Axis of Evil from stalker, Usenet (Google Groups), news reader, domains by proxy, is detailed in the report of cyberstalking in sci.psychology.psychotherapy.
Google as Public Detective, Prosecuter
Whenever I want to find the web site of a legitimate company, I use Yahoo. The company I seek is usually first in the results of a search on the company's name (which is only true about half the time with Google). When I want the dirt on someone, I go to Google. If you've ever posted to a message board, it will show up in Google along with your e-mail address and/or computer's ID number. Searching on a person's e-mail and IP addresses in Google will turn up just about everything that person has ever written on the Internet. Even if you wised up and began posting under an assumed name, the address of your computer will give you away all the time, tipping the balance of power in favor of your cyberstalkers, who are often savvy enough to create a true alias by forging their IP addresses or re-routing their messages. This kind of power is regularly enjoyed and exploited by cyberstalkers using Usenet's news groups.
How does the defamation work? The cyberstalkers not only know how to dredge historical and personal information about their victims, but they also know to re-package and present this information to the general public, to those who may not be inclined or able to invest the time to cybersleuth you. For this general audience, the cyberstalkers create a dossier about you known as an "FAQ" (for frequently asked questions). This dossier is the one-stop-shop for all the dirt dredged from the bowels of Google, and while the data on your physical addresses, phone numbers, and current affiliations (including friends, relatives, and employers) are usually current and accurate, the message usually contains libelous fabrications and innuendos that present you in a light that encourages lurkers and stalker-associates to use the address information to your material detriment. Even when the threat is not real, it accomplishes its purpose by making the victim feel as though he or she lives under a cloud of clear and present danger for as long as the information remains public.
So if Google does not archive news group messages to its web search archive, how do these messages become public domain? The stalkers are well aware that the news group messages are archived to the web through web sites known as news readers (providing access to a thematic subset of news groups). One nefarious news reader known as "Support Talk" (www.supportalk.com) provides access to news groups sci.psychology.psychotherapy and soc.support.depression.treatment. In a search of my own name in Google, I find messages from these news readers cropping up all the time. Supportalk.com closed up shop shortly after release of this report.
Believe it or not, the above screen capture of the two supportalk.com web pages is taken from the first page of results of a Google search on my name. This one belligerent's verbal incontinence once ranked # 4 and # 5 in a search of my name. Cleaning up the first page of "Wyatt Ehrenfels" search results has become a weekly chore about as tedious an inevitability as cleaning my cat's litter box. This means I have to contact the news readers...Many of which have to be threatened legally...Many of which have no valid contact information...Many of which are managed by stalkers. (They respond only after I publicly flog them on my own web site). If I let my chores slide, I suspect that within a matter of weeks 17 of the top 20 (and likely 30 of the top 50) results of a search on "Wyatt Ehrenfels" would consist of this news-reader-relayed junk from Usenet. If you've ever rented a midtown Manhattan apartment (and had cockroaches living in your dishwasher and under your range top) -- or for you suburban stalwarts, if you've ever had a dog with fleas, you're capable of understanding this problem.
In some cases, when stalkers grow frustrated with their failure to permanently defile a target's image in Google's archive, they create their own news readers (with bulletproof hosting from Domains by Proxy). I find it quite coincidental that many of the brand new news readers to crop up in recent months use Domains by Proxy and provide false contact information for domain registration web sites. Due to the high traffic and interlinking associated with these news readers, its records of news group posts rank highly in Google's web archives.
With a beancounter's chest-thumping, Go Ogle boasts on its main page that it is "Searching 4,285,199,774 web pages." Vying for the title of the "McDonald's of Internet Search Engines" ("billions and billions served"), Go Ogle is more than willing to defend the freedom to harm over minimum standards of public safety, as evidenced by its most novel claim-to-fame, a database of 845 million posts, precisely 845 million of which no one wants contaminating their search results like so much medical waste. In response to an e-mail in which I requested Google remove a post threatening me with identity theft, Google issued this response:
The e-mail expresses GoOgle's intention to forward any legal document you send them to a free speech clearinghouse, clearly including among our free speech rights the right to harass, libel, and generally invade the privacy of others. This is the best evidence to date of Google's complicity with cyberstalking gangs nesting in Usenet's unmoderated news groups.
This is GoOgle's way of intimidating individuals who complain about having been a victim of perpetrators using their service for criminal harassment or identity theft. It is their way of saying, 'look, if you're going to force us with some legal document to alter our archives by removing someone's post, however illegal, hateful, or harmful that message might be, we will have your name and your document posted publicly to a list of enemies of free speech.
But then how good is Google at protecting free speech within its own walls. CNN.com reported (03.07.05) that Google fired employee Mark Jen over a blog that discussed life at the company. Despite Jen's claim the information he disclosed about life inside Google is "...all publicly available information and my personal thoughts and experiences," Google refuses to act on requests from individuals complaining about the malicious disclosure of their residential addresses in Google Groups. Google defends the practice on the grounds the information is 'publicly available.'
GoOgle is operating with a "if you build it, they will come" mentality, oblivious to the fact that having built such an enormous structure, every individual in the free world now finds himself (or herself) on Google property. (Google's only-slightly-less-offensive interpretation is that every square foot of cyberspace, unlike the brick-and-mortar world, is public property). I recently posted to a support group for victims of cyberstalking to tell my relatively tame but enlightening story, and within a matter of days, this post was public knowledge to those stalking me. You see, my stalkers regularly search on my name in Google as a means of keeping tabs on my activity on the Internet and sleuthing details about me they can exploit for purposes of libel or stalking.
GoOgle's web search database not only picks up posts to these news groups, but due to what I can only surmise is unscholarly search criteria, of the 1,050 search results returned on a search of "Wyatt Ehrenfels" in Google, my post to the cyberstalking forum was ranked #2. Anyone want to guess what was ranked #1? No, not my web site, created by me and on which my name appears a few hundred times. No, not a reputable magazine that published one of my articles. No, not the web site of my publisher or the cable access providers broadcasting my program. #1 on the list is my participant profile for this cyberstalking forum which, incidentally, I left blank. Before a few of the news readers responded favorably to my request to manage their archives, in the results of a search on my name in Google, 6 of the top 10 and 14 of the top 20 results were Usenet posts baring false -- no -- bearing fabricated -- information about me.
Update: Within 2 days of having written Google to critique its search quality, fireflySun.com topped the results of a search on "Wyatt Ehrenfels." Moreover, within a day of having been contacted by The Washington Post about Google's role in the cyberstalking, a number of defamatory anti-Ehrenfels posts recorded by raunchy Usenet news readers (e.g., ChataboutHealth.com) disappeared altogether from the Google search results. I am deeply gratified by the accommodation and concede that Google needs time to assess the impact of these issues on its business model before taking further steps toward solutions.
When someone protests the erosion of civil liberties under the Patriot Act, he or she is protesting the incursion of government into private affairs (as when the government receives a list of names of individuals who checked out a book on bomb-making or terrorism from a public library). What many people do not as yet realize is that Google is a much greater and more proven safety risk than any Patriot Act. And some really skanky individuals sitting atop the Google ladder are profiting off the privacy-invading scheme hatched in a college dorm room. How else could this possibly be construed? Any company whose mission is to materially benefit from mapping the universe of web records must know that it is invading your privacy and putting you at risk, but all they offer when a complainant requests a web record be removed from their archives is "We sympathize, but [this federal law exempts us from any culpability]. If you think you're in danger, we suggest you contact local law enforcement." Google might believe they are protected from federal law, but I'd like to see Google challenged in the same way recording companies want to hold file-sharing services responsible when their customers illegally swap songs and movies. Mike Banks Valentine explains why Google's reverse telephone number lookup system crosses the line.
If you've reported abuse to Google recently, you receive two form letters: the first of which I will display shortly but the last of which will inevitably look like this:
The message goes on to say "If you feel that you or your family are in danger, please contact your local authorities immediately. We are sorry we cannot be of more assistance in this matter."
Shades of those ever-aggravating Capital One commercials where David Spade abuses customers (and a trainee) with the company's across-the-board "say no" policy. Oh, such is the faux microphone Google's customer service desk presents the world.
In case you missed it, Google's standard reply also contains the text "Google does not support, endorse ... ". Uh, what do you call that super-conspicuous link on the main page to Groups? Google doesn't disable links to offending news groups, the ones where 98 percent of all messages are off-topic and ad hominem flames. It's this kind of publicity that inspires and legitimates this nonsense. But far be it from me to make light of any user network that features such "news groups" as alt.fucknozzles and and alt.brad.jesness.die.die.die. Sheesh! What a way to sell out the civilized world.
And how did they guess I might feel as if I were in danger? I didn't say anything about danger. But then, this is a standard form letter. The letter linking Usenet to “danger” is standard! What does that tell you about what Google knows about its Groups? Moreover, the reference to local authorities is laughable. Local authorities do not extradite for misdemeanors and do not respond to cyber-stalking. If you do not want to call your local law enforcement to verify that, just ask your cyber-stalker. He knows. I don't think it's reasonable to expect law enforcement at any level to deal with a problem as unwieldly as gangs of anonymous cyber-stalkers. The only way to neutralize the problem is to enact broad legislation that regulates the problem at the source technology (Usenet or its relationships with the Internet).
The following is a sample of some of what I endured as a middle-of-the-road victim of Usenet-based gang cyber-stalking:
Cyber-stalkers obtained the credit card number of a kindred victim and used that number to authenticate a fake negative review of my book in Amazon.com. I was targeted largely because I refused to remove from my blog a page that portrayed in a favorable light an individual who I learned subsequently was on this gang's enemies list.
Cyber-stalkers use web-based caller ID spoofing technology to falsify the source of phone calls to my home … despite the fact my number has always been unpublished, despite the fact I have changed unpublished numbers over the years … and despite the fact I opted out of every personal information search engine I could find (e.g. zabasearch.com, Intelius.com, ussearch.com). I could keep shredding my scalp over how they found my telephone number, but I suspect only my old high school teen hacker buddy could answer that question.
Cyber-stalkers illicitly procured and disseminated details about my life they could not have otherwise known without electronic surveillance or hacking?
Cyber-stalkers hacked into the free Yahoo e-mail account of my associate, rigging it so that upon login, he was directed immediately to a Contact List feature he never used before, which happened to contain a threatening reference to his wife (as if to say, “I know who you are behind the pen name”).
Cyber-stalkers developed a disingenuous “FAQ” in the name of a kindred victim and hosted it on multiple (i.e. “mirroring”) web sites to vandalize the results of a Google search on his name.
My web host verified that there are constant attempts to gain access to my web site’s account.
Search engines are also used by stalkers to track their victim’s activity on the Web (i.e. “cyber-dredging” and “truth-squading”). I allowed my stalkers to chase me from “their news group” 3 years ago. After following me into other news groups appropriate to my subject matter expertise (I am a PhD in Social Psychology and a Jungian scholar), they intimidated anyone who would engage in any dialogue with me, forcing me to flee all of Usenet. As if this wasn’t enough, they used google to track my activity in forums outside Usenet on the wider Web. They began compiling dossiers of my activities, punishing me for using the Web and in some cases directly interfering in my discussions in these forums. And when they noticed my web activities were restoring some sanity to the results of a search of my name in Google, they increased production of defamatory and hostile writings about me in Usenet. It became clear I could not engage in discussion or dissemination anywhere on the Web.
Cyber-stalkers enjoy using their numbers to file joint spurious complaints of TOS violations to companies providing my hosting services (and the posting services of kindred victims).
I mean, one of the check boxes on Google's Report Fraud page is designed to identify duplicate sites. And yet the first four (and many many more after that) results of a search on one victim's name ("Brad Jesness") are web sites with the same Underworldian (chthonic for you literature majors) clones of the defamatory anti-Jesness dossier decorated in green text over black background (see below). Can't get more duplicated than that. Only antisocial or anger management types desensitized by years of R-rated video gaming would feel at home in this urban apocalyptic color scheme. All those years of wandering through the streets of dystopic and crime-ridden Detroit (Robocop, 1987) and Mega City (Judge Dredd, 1995) must have wetted their appetite for an X-box adaptation of 28 Days Later (2002). (UPDATE: Just days after these screen captures were added to this report, the stalkers released a new version of their dossier decorated in pseudo-civilized grey and white).
And opening at # 1 in a Google search on "Brad Jesness" is a copy of this dossier housed on a web site registered in the name of the victim himself (i.e. bradjesness.com). Talk about your mischief. Now this is abusing the search ranking formula. But Jesness writes that efforts to persuade Google to penalize such web sites, as Google advertises it now does, have been ignored or met with the standard form, and what about e-mails to Google requesting Google at least moderate the messages it is archiving directly to Web Search (the ones that show up groups.google.com in the results of a Google Web Search? ... Google does not even respond to these requests. Spamming web masters aside, I think Google might perhaps be the most fraudulent web master of all.
In my opinion, if Google acknowledges Usenet (and any web page originating as messages in Usenet) are by nature as foul as the backwash out of post-Katrina New Orleans, and if they acknowledge that they can't manage or monitor all this flaming sewerage, and if Google routinely disowns Usenet in responses to complaints ("that's not my kid"), then why does Google collect all this stuff in the first place! The only thing more undignified than managing a Sewerage Authority is mismanaging one. Why does Google want to own the gates to this landfill? There is a variation of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) known as hoarding defined by Frost & Hartl's (1996) as the acquisition of, and failure to discard, a large number of possessions that appear to be of useless or of limited value; living spaces sufficiently cluttered so as to preclude activities for which those spaces were designed. Hoarding & saving symptoms are found in 18% to 42% of OCD patients and 75% to 90% of Google executives. Oh, there's something I haven't indexed. And if it's not already in electronic form, scan the damn thing! Google must have some deal with the North Georgia Crematorium to take the road kill from its defamation superhighway.
In the days prior to making its shares available in a Dutch auction, Google finally replied to an e-mail Ehrenfels copied to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. "I was shocked. After weeks of having been stiff-armed by a standard automated reply that did not seem to address the content of my e-mail (tack on 15 yards for a face mask of the personal foul variety), I finally got some attention. But after reviewing the messages I cited, Google did nothing. Again I had to track down a Google representative for a follow up, at which time one flaunted the crib notes version of a federal law that absolved them of responsibility for the posts. As quarterbacks in the game of customer service, this is the only play on their wristband. And the law they were flaunting was article 230 of the Communications Decency Act
This federal legislation assigned search engines to a special class of telecommunications platforms that absolves them of responsibility for the Web content. By assigning Google the same “conduit” status reserved for the telephone company, in effect treating Google like infrastructure, Google is relieved of its responsibility for expanding a staff of customer service, quality assurance, or complaint representatives to keep pace with its growing content. In effect, Google’s product (and profits) can grow unchecked by the slightest regard for civic or quality standards. Google is thus able to deflect the blame for Web content on to the original authors of Web content and to anyone who distributes the content (i.e. secondary publisher or republisher). In the context of the Usenet-based cyberstalking, the liability falls squarely on the shoulders of the anonymous and, for all practical purposes, untraceable belligerents with the tools and methods to conceal or distort the address of their computers in the headers of their messages to the news groups. The liability also falls squarely on the shoulders of “news readers,” Web sites that auto-generate Web records of news group messages for indexing by search engines. As you’ve read above, the owners of these Web sites usually elude or complicate identification by registering false data for their domains or by using the privacy services of Domains by Proxy or the registrar notorious for its faux address for processing abuse complaints (Go Daddy.com).
But the legislation makes no sense from any non-political angle. Cyberstalkers would not have the impact if it were not for Google. Google is the modus operandi and modus vivendi of cyberstalkers who want to spy on their adversaries, compose malicious dossiers, and abuse Usenet and the Web to tarnish how some victim is viewed through the eyes of a search engine. In other words, Google supplies the motivation and the means for many cyberstalkers. So then why should the law treat Google, which in a manner of speaking re-publishes content to the Web, any differently than it treats Web-based news readers? Perhaps the answer lies in the lobbying firm Google hired to work its will on Capitol Hill.
Some pundits point to the aegis of terrorism as the reason for public disinterest in the wiretapping of citizens by the National Security Administration. But I suspect that the reason why you’ll never see any groundswell of opposition is a culture of tolerance engendered in part by Google, which seduced the American public into waiving its right to privacy by giving their citizens the power to spy on their neighbors.
"In sum, clearly all posters of defamatory material, as 'information content providers,' can be liable and 47 USC Section 230 does not change any of that liability. What the Court stated was that those who repost materials written or created by others can be held liable for defamation if they know or have reason to know of the defamatory nature of the materials. These 'distributors' are not shielded from liability under the provisions of 47 USC Section 230. Further, once an interactive computer service, which includes but is not limited to those who host chat rooms, lists, newsgroups and host sites among other possible interactive computer services, learns of an allegedly defamatory posting, it too can be subject to liability and is not shielded from liability under this section unless they act 'reasonably' with regard to the same."
According to common law, the original author of a post that meets standards of defamation and malice (which is to say that the statement contains material that cannot be attributed to "subjective judgment"), is subject to the strictest standard of liability. This would include those posting x-no-archive to Usenet. (Rest. 2d of Torts, § 581, com. c; Prosser & Keeton, The Law of Torts (5th ed. 1984) § 113 at p. 810.) The administrators of the news groups, distributors like Google, and any poster who republishes the original post by way of responding to it "may be held liable as secondary publishers" and "subjected to an intermediate standard of responsibility...if they know or have reason to know of the defamatory nature of matter they disseminate." Conduits like telephone companies and ISPs, which cannot be aware, are immune from liability. In the judgment of some legal analysts, Google may be considered a distributor with respect to its web search database (as opposed to a conduit) once they have been alerted to the defamatory posts in question.
It was at that time I realized Google was too sleazy for the street and had the civic compass of a dot.com hatched in a college dorm room. Together with Usenet (hatched at Duke University in the early 1980s), Google makes quite an evil empire. Of course, if we're talking about an axis of evil here, you have to include the heathing fleshy mass of "offshore" (metaphorically speaking) news readers, whose sole purpose appears to be to create web records of Usenet posts so as to make them available to Google's web search database, junking up the body of web pages with malicious and menacing posts no one wants to read, juvenile posts from belligerents that violate criminal harassment laws and civil laws relating to defamation."
Ehrenfels has faulted Google for providing cyberstalkers with fresh supplies of victims, audiences, and impetuses. Google provides prominent access to Usenet under its own branding. I mean, they call the news groups 'Google Groups,' and so when you traipse across this tab on Google's main page and you are unfamiliar with Usenet, you think it might be a pretty good idea to participate in some of these forums. You presume Google is monitoring, managing, and moderating these forums, or at least serving as a last-line recourse for minimum standards of civility, but alas, when you issue a complaint to Google, you get the 'ol "oh that's not us, that's Usenet routine." One moment I have that down home feeling of being in Google Groups and the next ... the curtain closes on the stage and reopens to some place called Usenet, and an off-stage chorus of narrators yelling 'Gottcha!'. It's a lot more deceptive than having someone slap duct tape over my mouth after stuffing my oral cavity with lighted firecrackers.
There's always the "Report Abuse" links Google added to each message. Wait! What's this?!:
Thank you for your note. Google does not regularly monitor or censor postings sent to Google Groups, but we do try to prevent wide-scale spam and other forms of Usenet abuse. Please be assured that the information you sent to us is being collected and taken into account. While we
understand how annoying off-topic posts can be, we aren't able to pursue most complaints we receive about them. We are using the information you provide to make large-scale improvements in preventing abuse. We appreciate your help in our efforts to increase the quality of Google Groups.
Replies to this email address will not be received. If you have a general
Google Groups question or wish to report a post that you suspect is illegal, please write to us at groups-support@google.com
Oh, yes. Almost forgot.
Google lazily links to Usenet as part of its comprehensive hoarding of all things accessible without any concern for the broader implications. It embraces Usenet as Google functionality, but quickly severs its ties when asked to deal with criminal behavior on Usenet. The problem is not insurmountable. A cyberstalking gradient as strong as any gravitational force pulling a wingless object to earth, is created by an inequity between two groups of individuals: those with the resources to anonymize posts through forgery or re-routing and those without such resources or inclination. Using an alias is not sufficient protection. Every post comes baring the IP address of the source, except for a class of individuals who find a way to create posts with this legally required piece of information either missing or fraudulent. Google jumps on the populist
anti-SPAM bandwagon, SPAM being principally characterized as e-mail with a fraudulent and deceptive sourc, and yet Google looks the other way when it comes to these activist gangs who nest in one of the news groups and who use the force of their combined anonymity to smear, harass, and intimidate. Since its business consists of serving up other people's content, Google has been able to avoid being stained by its association with any of the content it makes accessible, including Usenet."
After months of wasted efforts to persuade Google to assume responsibility for the Usenet posts it allows into its Google Groups archives, Google finally offered to review a list of posts and remove those they deem criminal. But just when it seemed Google had a conscience, a Google representative defended its decision to preserve the malicious posting of the physical addresses of unpopular individuals in Google Groups:
"Thank you for your reply. When we reviewed the messages you mentioned, we found no personal financial information such as credit card numbers or bank account information. The two messages which contain map links pointed in one case to an address that is publicly available elsewhere and in the other case, pointed to a city, but no specific street address. Again, we urge you to contact your local police if you feel you or anyone else is in physical danger. We're sorry we can't be of further assistance in this matter" [END COMMUNICATION]
First of all, I am unlisted. So the posting of any of MY address info, even if it just a map with an arrow pointing to the street, is illegal. Secondly, in the case of one other victim, while her information was public, that does not mean someone who does not have access to a local phone book (let's same someone residing in another state) can publicly access that information. They can call directory assistance and obtain a phone number, but they can't obtain an address. By allowing this post to remain in the archives, Go Ogle makes it possible for dozens of lurking belligerents to find a full set of contact info on a target easily at no cost, no risk, and with the bare minimum of effort. And why would Google approve posts whose sole purpose (it's not as though the post is on topic) is to provide information people need to harass, stalk, and potentially harm and to do so in a hostile environment in which individuals with criminal and/or psychiatric histories are soliciting aggression against a target? (And Google is well aware these individuals operate under aliases and anonymized IPs that can pose a cost-prohibitive challenge to local law enforcement). I am fortunate to reside in a city where local law enforcement is willing to investigate the identities of individuals who've commited the minimum misdemeanor. But most are not. And besides all the known stalkers, who knows who else may be lurking on Usenet, having never posted or declared their hostilities, but who can concretely act on the information to the material detriment of the victim. Is such a crime even traceable? Why would Google err in the direction of preserving the freedom to harm over another person's right to minimum standards of public safety, privacy, and peace? I posed the question to Google, and I am still waiting for a reply.
Even if this information were publicly accessible, why would Google approve posts that call on anyone (and besides all the known stalkers, who knows who else is lurking on Usenet?) to harass and stalk? These are not dangers one could always estimate or anticipate. You simply have to live with the unknown quantities in your life, all so Google can make a buck. Google is materially benefiting from putting people at risk. It's absurd. But then, you know that. I know that. Even Google knows that.
Google also defends a post featuring a map of another person's neighborhood. While it is non-specific, an onlooker interested in finding the person could identify the apartment complex in which the person lives! A sensible inquiry with the apartment manager, or a diligent canvassing of the property could narrow the search down to an apartment. Again, the post has absolutely no relevance for the forum. It's not even embedded in a larger generally on-topic post. So why defend this? Google?
And what of a post like this...
That bloom's been off that rose for some time now. This stalking target is regularly contacted at home from payphones, although the male figure in a photograph of a married couple originally alleged to have been the target has been discounted as a friend of the family. (The wife received some unnecessary exposure however).
...which included the following link to a satellite image of the target's home. (The target's address had been provided and discussed at some length in a previous post).
Given the choice, why would Google protect the freedom of malicious posters over the safety and privacy of their law-abiding victims? Given the choice, why would Google help to foment hostility rather than protect the peace and quality of the forum? Why does Google feel it needs legal justification for removing from its own archive posts which are not only malicious but that are completely off-topic (i.e. that have no relevance whatsoever for the topic for which the forum was created)? I am beginning to think Google may not fully understand its role in maintaining and promoting criminal harassment.
Originally, people defended Google against the complaints and cautions I widely circulated on financial boards. I mean, I had an initial public offering of my own, and it was famously less than popular. For a few days, Google was everyone's darling. I knew at the outset of this campaign I would get about as far criticizing Google as I would Judy Garland's 'Dorothy.' I mean, it was sacrosanct. But as the very vindicating ISS report demonstrates, Google's facade is not impenetrable. The report gave people pause, and cause to look up the 'much-maligned who-dat' who slogged through the initial days as party crasher, American icon basher, and all-round public enemy number 1. Now I look like a prophet when all I did was keep close enough to Google's organization to learn something about its way of doing business. The top remained a bit of a black box, but I had every reason in the world to speculate that this organization was arrogant and morally deficient at or near the top, suspicions butressed by the news of the Playboy interview and all the other legal entanglements. I weathered the initial hype that was Google's coming out, its prom, its debutante ball.
Within 2 Days of "Experimenting" with Unflattering Messages about Google Staffer, Complainants Discover Their Messages Disappear from Google Groups (i.e. Usenet)
I had always wondered what might happen if a Google Staffer should learn that he or she has become the subject of an unflattering message in Usenet (i.e. Google Groups). Many "private citizens" have turned to Google for relief from messages that libeled them or disseminated their contact and residental address information. Most complainants were astonished to learn that Google defended the messages, claiming the information was public. Just ask Dorothy Harris: "My address and phone number were unpublished. But as long as you can pay 1-800-U.S.-Search for the informnation, it was considered public. And Google refused to remove it."
But Google played right into the hands of one complainant, who set a trap for Google by using an anonymous remailer to submit similiar messages about a Google employee. It wasn't hard to find a Google employee. Common Google employees, from the software engineer right down to the janitor figure themselves for celebrities. The self-styled pundits and life coaches among Google employees are legion. There is simply no shortage of Jon Stewart impersonators among Google employees, who assume you are chomping at the bit to know what they think about everything from women-in-the-workforce to the War in Iraq. Access Hollywood is not yet crashing their weddings, and ABC has yet to broadcast a single awards ceremony for employees of search engine juggernauts. They probably would have carved their names into the chairs reserved for guests of Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect, if the show were still on the air. We have yet to hear the words "my craft" off the lips of Mountain View residents ... but it's coming. Mountain View is expected to raise taxes for a walk-of-fame for Google employees, and the public will support it until such time as the trappings of celebrity force development of planned communities for the employees of Google Inc. And that's what they'll be called at first ... planned communities ... though the name should evolve in time into gated communities followed by compounds. Yes, sir. Mountain View is rapidly morphing into Martha's Vineyard.
And the public is complicit. Google staffers are the darling Dorothies of this new Oz, and marching on Mountain View to request removal of some harmful propaganda will meet with more crabby indifference from these Google staffers than from your run-of-the-mill faux wizard. Would it surprise you to know that some Google staffers are among the most prolific participants in their own news groups (i.e. Google Groups AKA Usenet)? Incurring no less risk of malice and mayhem than your "private citizen," Google staffers sound off with an officious screed that would bring a blushing glow to the cheeks of Usenet's Knights Templar, the self-appointed kookhunters in alt.usenet.kooks. Quite simply put, all things being equal, you don't thrust this kind of in-your-face activism in Google Groups without tripping the triggers of at least a half dozen mentally unstable flame warriors. In a manner of speaking (i.e. and this will be lost on the metaphorically challenged), if you want to have unlimited sex with strangers, you're going to contract a disease or two. But all things are not equal. Our researchers uncovered no record in Google Groups of any vitriolic reactions. No threats. No unflattering lies. Not even a feeble jab from an amateur shock jock. No references to them being *SPANKED.* No references to their *NUTSACKS.* No citizen's-arrest by a kook-ologist alleging self-promotion, arrogance, or abuse. Just praise. And the results of a Google Web or Groups search on the Google staffer names returns a disproportionate amount of adulation from the public, including passing references to statements ranging from "if-I-were-gay" to "too-bad-she's-married" from adoring citizens of the same sex. Google searches on the names of Google staffer-activists is a mutual admiration society guestbook. Hell, I Googled a few Google staffers, and I was briefly overcome with a case of the munchies for shares of the company!
But is this real? Or is their some manipulation involved? A few months ago I challenged the world to submit unflattering messages about Google staffers in Google Groups AKA Usenet. I had one taker. One person willing to assume the risk of defaming a Google employee for a day. I didn't think the would-be assailant had anything to worry about. After all, the messages would fit into the quilt of hate speech that blankets Google Groups AKA Usenet. Any of you who have wandered too close to Google Groups AKA Usenet know what I'm talking about, because you can't get too close before you're cut down by the stench of verbal landfill. Moreover, the author of the messages is actually slandering through flattery, which is to say, she composed flattering messages about the life of the Google staffer as if they were composed by the Google staffer himself ... drumroll please ...
... each and every copy of the unflattering message mysteriously disappeared from the archive. No traces in Google Groups. No traces on the Web. The 401K is not the only benefit of working for Google. So ... if I complained to Google, put together some verbal cocktail that contained excerpts from some of their favorite passages in the First Amendment and intellectual property law ... references to free speech and to the sanctity and integrity of the archive ... do you think they'd be sympathetic? Do you think they'd turn themselves in to chillineffects.org?
Profiting Off Invading Your Privacy, Version 2.0...A Kinder, Gentler Threat to Your Safety
But the campaign against Google may finally be showing some traction. A day after I widely circulated my report, Google posted a link to a sneak preview of version 2 (beta) of Google Groups, presenting a catalogue of groups individuals can create and moderate outside Usenet.
Usenet is consigned to a less prominent place at the bottom of the V2 page (let's all wave and mockingly say hello in falsetto), and a user would have to click on Usenet to drill down into its catalogue of "news groups" (which now have a second-tier status). However, while Google's graphic user interface puts the sewer in its place, at the bottom of the page, its Groups search criteria favors Usenet groups. If you perform a search in V2 Google Groups, you will notice the results are stratified, with all of Usenet's "news groups" and its posts appearing in the list before you reach a single post or group from its non-Usenet directory. I sincerely hope that before Google releases V2, that it tweaks its criteria to return Google Groups names alphabetically or by keyword relevance. And Google's expanded groups does not absolve it of its moral and legal responsibility to minister to requests to delete offensive Usenet posts from its own archive.
Google has a responsibility to remove the offensive posts, which are not only defamatory in their manufacturing of absurd lies and tales, but which are hate-mongering in their effort to solicit similar defamation from others in SPP and recruit stalkers from other "news groups" including alt.satanism, alt.hackers.malicious, alt.pizzadeliverydrivers, alt.brad.jesness.die.die.die, and alt.usenet.kooks, a forum devoted to the defamation of those who do not stop posting after their messages have been deemed "kooky" by one or more Usenet stalwarts. Bear in mind here that Google has chosen an inappropriate user network for its "Google Groups." Usenet has been around since 1981, years before the Internet, and it features within its caste system a venerable class of technically precocious savants (many hacker-types among them) who hinted at a technological age yet to dawn and who accessed Usenet the only ways it could be accessed, through UNIX boxes and phone lines. This was the primordial soup out of which life in Usenet evolved, and unfortunately we have seen very little in the way of moral mutations to support a bona fide public presence. This is a vast array of malcontents, ranging from self-styled public enemies to iconoclastic anarchists and even evangelical satanists, everything a growing Gnostic needed to feed his belief in the world's evil primality. Well, these folk have been forging alliances with one another for a number of years before the birth of the Internet. And they do feel as though they exercise a prior claim on any 'news group,' a right to claim this or that group, or Usenet in toto, as 'home,' which gives Usenet a distinctive feel as the 'hood,' as the cyberequivalent of wandering into Fallujah or Chicago's 'Cabrini Green' (and to a lesser extent, Chicago's 'Rogers Park').
When Usenet was mainstreamed by various ISPs, upstanding members of the citizenry naively wandered into these groups oblivious to the fact a gang of Opera Phantoms reserves the right to deem them trespassers. At this point they could expect to encounter a form of anonymous gangbanging and hate-mongering not indigenous to message boards hosted by Yahoo, AOL, Topica, and grungy MSN. And when they got into trouble, they may have consoled themselves with the thought that some authority, perhaps the ISP hosting the news groups (e.g. Google), could intervene at a moment's notice to monitor or mediate any egregious activity. Not so. But in all fairness to the innocents, they could be forgiven for taking an uncautious view on what are tastefully-named "news groups" hosted by mainstream services (e.g. Google). There were no disclaimers! No warnings! No clues for earth-dwellers that the sidewalk grate over which they were walking could not support their weight and might collapse beneath their feet. By contrast, America Online must frustrate the handful of users looking for access to Usenet by burying its user-unfriendly link to the "news groups" at the bottom of one of its many menus. Civic-minded AOL even provides a warning to those thinking of subscribing to one of the groups. The text eludes me now, but it is something in the spirit of "hey, do you really want to go through with this?"
I was pleased to learn that this work will be the subject of a Headline News feature segment (26 April, 2005 9:15 PM), especially in light of the fact I recently mentioned the book in a Google-related news tip to Headline News.
In light of all this, Google has a civic duty to delete ill-tempered posts by its public enemies and mold behavior in Usenet into a form more palatable to the community and more constructive with respect to on-topic dialogue. Google even has the opportunity to, for as long as necessary, disable access to sci.psychology.psychotherapy for the purpose of viewing or posting. Put the message board on probation. What does Google have to lose besides one right margin worth of paid advertisements? (Well, much if we consider the stock value outpaces earnings by a factor of 50). Google could stand to clean up its image by insisting on minimum standards of public decency and, let's not forget relevance. Over 90 percent of the SPP archive has nothing whatsoever to do with psychotherapy except perhaps to provide an intriguing look into what happens when a group of distressed or disturbed individuals define and enforce what is 'normal' for their community. In nearly all endeavors, freedom has to abide by a rule of law or be tempered by the rights of others. In Google's vision for a Barbarian World, one person's freedom to distress or disrupt another is balanced against the other's freedom to respond in kind. Way to go, Google! Way to use cutting edge technology to set back civilization fourteen hundred years!
Cyberstalking Case Illuminates Google's Search Formula
Google's search formula is slightly more introverted than that of Yahoo in that it does not appear to reward external linking as much as it does the internal consistency of web content vis-a-vis repeated words. After having been penalized for use of invisible text, the network of libelous dossiers depicts one victim as a cartoon supervillain (i.e. spammer, pedophile, maritally submissive loser) regained the top spots ...
... after using legitimate methods of loading their text with the victim's name ...
Notice that among the keywords is the name of the victim's spouse (i.e. Renee Jesness). If you're a prospective employer, business associate, or high school reunion coordinator Googling her, you will be swamped with the incendiary hyperbole and harassment of her husband.
As with any search engine, external linking remains a factor, as illustrated by members of a stalking gang who cross-link the web sites housing the same content. In the web sites captured below, notice the URLs in the address bar. These are different web sites, but the inter-linking of equivalent content created a tide that raised all boats. All of the web sites below rank in the top 10 and two of which hold the top spots. If you search on the victim's name, you'll discover that the cloned dossiers rank higher than even the victim's own web site and higher than more authoritative web sites with benign or professional references to the victim's name. And many more copies of this dossier managed to find their way in the top 20.
Moreover, all of these web sites were bouyed by links from the domain registered in the name of the victim, which opened (i.e. debuted) at # 1 in the results of a search on the victim's name:
But what really solidified the privileged rankings of the defamatory dossiers was the smutty glut of links to these web sites embedded in messages cross-posted on multiple occasions to multiple news groups.
While most conventional web sites are archived to the Internet only once, messages in many Usenet news groups are archived to the web to an extent determined by the number of news readers that provide access to the news group via the web. Talkabouthealth.com, chatabouthealth.com, outsupport.org, and pahealthsystems.com are just four of dozens of sites belonging to this special class of web sites known as news readers. News readers function as mirrors for news groups, providing access to the messages and making these messages available to search engines like Google. Since any single news group message has a (different) URL for each news reader that hosts it, search engines interpret these same messages as discrete entities. In spite of the distinct addresses, Google appears to make a good faith effort to avoid archiving more than 2-4 exact replicas, but the stalkers create slight variations by republishing their dossier on a regular basis with titles that distinguish the message. One message might be prepended by the phrase "updated 6/19" and another by the phrase "updated August 10," and these messages are registered by the search engines as unique items whether or not the content of the message that follows is actually different (or has actually changed).
Here is an example of a benign but stupid message that once cluttered the results of a search on "Wyatt Ehrenfels." Even after days of persuading news reader administrators to delete copies of this message, a few still remain.
Google's ranking formula assigns a weight to these messages reflecting the number of news readers creating independent copies (i.e. URLs) for what is essentially the same message in Usenet. Given that over 95 percent of the messages in some of these unmoderated news groups comprise a vulgar flame war, one realizes that it becomes meaningful to speak of how search engines can be "polluted." For some reason, Google is more susceptible to pollution by Usenet than Yahoo. Below is a sample of a news reader having archived a message containing a link to the dossier-bearing web sites.
Google's Image as a Public Utility Insulates from Rising Anti-Google Sentiment
A search on "Google" in "Google Groups" revealed a litany of complaints from individuals in various stages of correspondence with Google over the flaming, stalking, and defamation.
In the dialogue depicted in the third exhibit, one individual mocks the complainant for attempting to sue the 'power company.' By treating Google as a public utility rather than a corporation, this individual would excuse Google from civic standards and direct accountability to the public.
There But For the Grace of God Goes Google
A Modest Demonstration of Cyberdredging
For a cyberstalker, tools Google Web and Google Groups are coordinated cogs of an effective attack, much like a football team's running and passing games. You threaten in Google Groups. You dig up the dirt in Google Web. Then you return to Google Groups to put your own spin on a dossier. Why pay the $10 to search services like 1-800-U.S. Search, peopledata.com, or Intelius.com for an address of a target when that information may already be available for free through Google Web. Allow me to demonstrate. I went through my web logs and randomly selected the IP address of someone visiting my web site. At 5:20 EST she accessed my report "Who's Reading fireflySun.com?" When I typed her IP address into Google, I learned that she worked for a law firm in Alexandria, Virginia.
This is just an excerpt from the litany of results from a search on the IP address. It's not difficult to find one's IP address. It's in the header information of just about everything you post to the Internet. It's in the access logs of every web site you visit. In fact, from the results of a search on this IP address, I could put together a list of the web sites this woman has visited, the pages of the web site that she visited, and the date on which she visited them.
I would never divulge the name or address of her employer (where you could find her between business hours). Why not? There but for the grace of God (and Google) go I. Now...what else but for the grace of God (and Google) will I not be revealing about this decent citizen? How 'bout her name?
I smudged out the identifying information, which includes the text in the section marked "comments." After all, by searching on idiosyncratic phrases in the text itself, you may be able to track this decent woman down. And I can't have that on my conscience. Do you think Google representatives have that on their conscience? Notice also that where once I had only her IP address, I now have her name, her e-mail address, the name of the company in the e-mail address, and anything else? Yes, her phone number. I also know she belongs to a book club. I wonder what she's been reading this month. Oh, that's right, I don't have to wonder. As a stalker, if I wanted to stage a serendipitous encounter with the woman so as to get my foot in the romantic door, I might visit on or near her place of business so that she saw me sporting a copy of the book she's reading. What an age we live in.
Just when you think it can't get any worse...
I have to stop here. With a few more examples, I could really do some damage. But I would never do such a thing. And why not? There but for the grace of God (and Google) go I.
The worst part about all this is that this woman may not even know this information is available on the Internet. Each web site making this information available to Internet may not know that search engines like Google (and especially Google) make it possible for complete strangers to triangulate all sorts of facts about a person (including their whereabouts) and write a tell-all biography of the person. When you contact Google to express your concern, Google places the legal responsibility with the web sites. "You have to contact the web sites," Google tells me. Why? Something about a law protecting Google from liability. At least that's what Google tells me. Okay, so I have to contact the administrators of the web sites. That's a lot of web sites. And what happens when a web site isn't amenable to your request to remove the information? Apparently, I could sue the web site. At least that's what Google tells me. That's a lot of work and expense. And that's just for one web site. One woman, a psychologist, informed me that a patient tracked her down from the web. The reason for contacting her therapist? To discuss the therapist's review of a book on Amazon.com. Apparently, Google indexes these things. The therapist was unlisted but the patient got her phone number off the web, where it exists to this day because the administrators of the professional listserv to which she posted the number, spouting some babble about intellectual property and purity, refuse to remove it. Get this. It's a Gestalt listserv for psychologists. You think that with all the references in the APA ethics code to confidentiality and what not that these psychologists could delete the post from its archive. But they won't. According to the therapist, the listserv admins tell her that if they grant requests to remove posts, the organized body of literature that is their archives will be not so organized, not such the pure record of intellectual gravitas it once was. Note to admins: it's a one sentence message followed by the poster's signature and her phone number. In confidence, a therapist uses a listserv for an opportunity to consult with a colleague. Now but for the grace of God, Google, and a Gestalt listserv, goes her privacy!
Now if I did what Google recommended (or said I'd have to do if I want to remain a private citizen), I'd have to regularly visit Google's archive to monitor what information is being made available about me to anyone who searches on my name, my e-mail address, or my computer's remote address. My life would have to revolve around Google (or at least tilt a tad on Google's axis). Of course, all this means more advertising dollars for Google.
I did in large part do what Google recommended. Google gave me no choice. Now will Google do what I recommend? I recommend not allowing anyone to search on an IP address. IP addresses have a certain structure to them. I can't think of anything else you'd want to search on that has a similar structure. How about prohibiting IP address searches? How about e-mail addresses? Perhaps I should receive an error message when I attempt to search on anything with an @ character in it. And how about suspending the practice of indexing web usage directories? Do I really have a right to know who accessed what web sites? If Google wanted, it could help advocate for legislation prohibiting such searches so as to avoid being at a competitive disadvantage to search engines willing to offer it to would-be mudslingers and amateur PIs.
