Google’s refusal to block grotesque child abuse websites is matched by the refusal of ministers to intervene.

But why is the Government so strangely reluctant to tackle the internet search company?

Google barely pays any tax and merrily snoops on Britons with its notorious Street View cars, so it is not as if ministers lack any provocation.




Google has been allowed to carve itself a reputation as a big friendly giant of the corporate world, brimming with ethical compassion and coolness.

Gradually, the corporation’s ruthless streak is being exposed, but actually confronting the internet mammoth seems to be the last thing on the minds of ministers.




By stunning coincidence, the cosy links between Google and the upper echelons of the Conservative Party could scarcely be more entangled.

On a beautiful summer’s day at a society wedding in Oxfordshire last year, the nexus was all too clearly illustrated.

David Cameron, accompanied by his wife Samantha and their daughter Florence, was among the congregation clapping enthusiastically outside a pretty Cotswold church.



The bride was Naomi Gummer, 29, a senior Google executive with the brief of ‘public policy’.

She was previously a political adviser to Jeremy Hunt when he was Culture Secretary in charge of internet regulation – so he was in attendance too, resplendent in his morning suit.

The wedding guests quaffed champagne in the sunshine and congratulated proud father-of- the-bride Lord Chadlington, 70, who happens to be the president of Mr Cameron’s local constituency association.

He is also a PR adviser to the Conservative Party. But Miss Gummer is far from the most senior Google executive to bask in the collective adulation of the British Government.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/05/31/article-0-006F463100000258-286_306x423.jpg

Former employee: Rachel Whetstone, Google's top global spinner, was a Number 10 aide and was director of communications for Conservative leader Michael Howard. The pair are pictured together

Rachel Whetstone, Google’s top global spinner, is a former No 10 aide and was Michael Howard’s director of communications when he was Tory leader.

She is married to Steve Hilton, the T-shirt-wearing guru who is Mr Cameron’s close friend and former director of strategy at No 10.

The power couple are regarded as key members of the Notting Hill set of Conservatives who propelled Mr Cameron to Downing Street, and at one stage Miss Whetstone was known as their queen.

Meanwhile the Prime Minister is godfather to Miss Whetstone’s younger son, and Mr Hilton was godfather to Ivan Cameron, the late eldest child of David and Samantha.

The links do not end there, for Google has been assiduous at forging close ties at every level of Government.

It is not just a case of former government policy wonks exiting through Westminster’s ‘revolving door’ to Google – it works the other way too.

Amy Fisher was once Google’s PR chief for European affairs, but now she has bagged a job advising Justice Secretary Chris Grayling.

And nor is it just Conservative politicians to whom Google offers the bosom of friendship. Sarah Hunter, the internet giant’s head of public policy in the UK, is a former media adviser to Tony Blair.

And a lobbying veteran named D. J. Collins – a close friend of David Miliband and well-connected in New Labour circles – has in recent years been Google’s European director of communications.

Google spends a fortune on political lobbying, and politicians from all parties lap up the Google brand, delighted to be associated with its hip image.

Before becoming Prime Minister, Mr Cameron spoke to the annual Google Zeitgeist conference in 2006 and 2007.


http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/05/31/article-0-19F049ED000005DC-651_634x370.jpg
Powerful: Google boss Eric Schmidt is a trusted member of David Cameron's council of business advisors

Since the 2010 election, Mr Cameron has met Google executives three times, while Chancellor George Osborne has held four meetings.

Culture minister Ed Vaizey has met the firm’s staff seven times, and universities minister David Willetts has held at least one meeting.

The symbiotic relationship was on show again last year when the Chancellor agreed to open Google Campus, a hi-tech centre in East London for start-up technology firms.

With Google’s chairman, Eric Schmidt, a trusted member of Mr Cameron’s council of business advisers, critics wonder if there is any chance the PM will take steps to rein in the internet giant.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2334163/Revealed-The-incredibly-close-links-Google-politicians-refuse-step-porn-row.html

OK. So we have senior Tories and Google executives wearing BFF necklaces and having sleepovers.

We have Google dodging tax - a heinous crime in the eyes of the Tories.

They haven't done anything about that.

We have the DM noting that Google Cars spies on the British public. They seem to have forgotten that Google also "accidentally" captured all sorts of wi-fi information which they claimed they would delete.

Now we have some Tories refusing to involve themselves in the banning of child porn search results row.

And we have Google spying on the British public.

We have Google demanding you log in and connect all your social media accounts all over the place.


And we have Google spying on the British public.

And we have the Tories giving their sleepover partners a free pass.

And we have Google demanding you add your phone number to your gmail account to "aid password recovery" - the gmail account that they asked be connected to your youtube and twitter and FB and pinterest.....


And we have Google spying on the British public.

And we have the Tories letting them off with tax dodging and refusing to force them to act on child porn.

http://www.williamarmstrong.com/brain/Connect%20the%20dots%20puzzle.gif

Now go and read this thread just posted by Mr A Anderson.

Extract:

Some European countries have been going after Google, complaining that the search giant is invading the privacy of their citizens. But tax inspectors here have turned to the prying eyes of Street View for their own purposes.

After Google's car-borne cameras were driven through the Vilnius area last year, the tax men in this small Baltic nation got busy. They have spent months combing through footage looking for unreported taxable wealth.

"We were very impressed," said Modestas Kaseliauskas, head of the State Tax Authority. "We realized that we could do more with less and in shorter time."

More than 100 people have been identified so far after investigators compared Street View images of about 500 properties with state property registries looking for undeclared construction.

Two recent cases netted $130,000 in taxes and penalties after investigators found houses photographed by Google that weren't on official maps.

http://vnnforum.com/showthread.php?p=1557205&posted=1#post1557205

And if you use Google Earth you can see what people have in there back gardens and see if they have built extensions on their homes without planning permission.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2334163/Revealed-The-incredibly-close-links-Google-politicians-refuse-step-porn-row.html

OK. So we have senior Tories and Google executives wearing BFF necklaces and having sleepovers.

We have Google dodging tax - a heinous crime in the eyes of the Tories.

They haven't done anything about that.

We have the DM noting that Google Cars spies on the British public. They seem to have forgotten that Google also "accidentally" captured all sorts of wi-fi information which they claimed they would delete.

Now we have some Tories refusing to involve themselves in the banning of child porn search results row.

And we have Google spying on the British public.

We have Google demanding you log in and connect all your social media accounts all over the place.


And we have Google spying on the British public.

And we have the Tories giving their sleepover partners a free pass.

And we have Google demanding you add your phone number to your gmail account to "aid password recovery" - the gmail account that they asked be connected to your youtube and twitter and FB and pinterest.....


And we have Google spying on the British public.

And we have the Tories letting them off with tax dodging and refusing to force them to act on child porn.

All of which reminds me that I must start to disengage from this obvious front operation.

I'm sick n tired of 'google' changing perfectly functioning systems into confused and less efficient ones which require ever more personal information from the end user and this, with other signals received, leads me to believe that we may not be the 'end user' after all.

All of which reminds me that I must start to disengage from this obvious front operation.

I'm sick n tired of 'google' changing perfectly functioning systems into confused and less efficient ones which require ever more personal information from the end user and this, with other signals received, leads me to believe that we may not be the 'end user' after all.

That's the conclusion I've come to.

Chuck in a bit of something about the Snooper's Charter that the Tories were having wet dreams over and it all adds up to summat not rayt.

When someone has to provide everything but their blood group just to click "like" on a music video, it's gone too far.

And if you use Google Earth you can see what people have in there back gardens and see if they have built extensions on their homes without planning permission.

And "Yay!" say the people because we'll be able to catch "slum landlords" who have 15 Somalians renting the outside privy...... ;) :rolleyes:

That's the conclusion I've come to.

Chuck in a bit of something about the Snooper's Charter that the Tories were having wet dreams over and it all adds up to summat not rayt.

When someone has to provide everything but their blood group just to click "like" on a music video, it's gone too far.
It looks like they slaughtered this....


Scroogle

Scroogle was a web service that allowed users to perform Google searches anonymously. It focused heavily on searcher privacy by blocking Google cookies and not saving log files. The service was launched in 2003 by Daniel Brandt. After 2005, the service encountered rapid growth before running into a series of problems starting in 2010. In February 2012, the service was permanently shut down by its creator due to a combination of throttling of search requests by Google and a denial-of-service attack by an unknown person or group. Before its demise, Scroogle handled around 350,000 queries daily and ranked among the top 4,000 sites worldwide in traffic......

Read more (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroogle):

And "Yay!" say the people because we'll be able to catch "slum landlords" who have 15 Somalians renting the outside privy...... ;) :rolleyes:

And "Yay!" will say the sheeple, when google and the ISPs start censoring the web so people can't find child pron, and then continue by censoring suicide discussion sites, neo-nazi sites, holocaust denial sites, anti-semitic sites, hate sites, BNP sites, EDL sites, UKIP sites, and so on.

Can you find child pron from google? I've never looked, but I assumed it would be hidden from search engines. Maybe you can't - maybe that's just the lever to get google to start censoring, to establish the principle that "censorship is good, m'kay".

It looks like they slaughtered [scroogle]

Yes, scroogle is gone :(
https://duckduckgo.com/ is good
https://startpage.com/ is okay
I'm sure there are others.

And "Yay!" will say the sheeple, when google and the ISPs start censoring the web so people can't find child pron, and then continue by censoring suicide discussion sites, neo-nazi sites, holocaust denial sites, anti-semitic sites, hate sites, BNP sites, EDL sites, UKIP sites, and so on.

Can you find child pron from google? I've never looked, but I assumed it would be hidden from search engines. Maybe you can't - maybe that's just the lever to get google to start censoring, to establish the principle that "censorship is good, m'kay".




Exactly. Like I said in another thread, the average Brit would happily sign up to sign their own death warrant if the right amount of spin and reasoning was put upon it. They start by offering us something good like the banning of child porn or mad muslim extremist sites and then a precedent is set.

I don't know if you can find it or not, I've never looked and for the benefit of future threads/before the spinners start, I think it should be banned.

It looks like they slaughtered this....

There's a surprise. :mad: