Who defends adults?

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The articles of Cassandra Crossing I'm under license CC BY-SA 4.0 | Cassandra Crossing is a column created by Marco Calamari with the "nom de plume" of Cassandra, born in 2005.

Cassandra faces a problem we know well: remember Social yes, idiots no?

This article was written on August 27, 2022 from Cassandra

Cassandra Crossing 515/ Who defends adults?

Are the automatisms and techno-control that we also carry in our pockets dangerous? How? And what does “being a false positive” mean in practice?

There are stories that appear and disappear among the news, and which instead remain indelibly printed in Cassandra's mind, like her sins; prophecies that he enunciated, but not with enough force.

There are stories which fortunately have a happy ending, which however, when examined carefully, is not so happy, and which for this very reason have an evident moral.

There are stories that in the end also contain a second moral, well hidden and even more importantly, important for all of us.

This is the case with this news, which first appeared on August 21 in the New York Times and immediately taken from Slashdot, and which the very distracted national media have so far never considered.

The facts date back to February, and concern the story of two American parents whose young son got sick one day, but instead of the usual sore throat or stomach pain he showed a worrying irritation of the genitals.

What would you have done in their shoes? You would have called the doctor.

The doctor wasn't there, and the secretary, very appropriately, after having the problem explained to him, suggested sending a photo to the doctor so he could anticipate the diagnosis.

So they did, the doctor prescribed an antibiotic and everything was resolved in the best way. Only from a medical point of view, though.

Yes, because the photos of the child's groin and appendages were taken with an Android smartphone. The Android smartphone used cloud backup, which Google tries in every way to enable its users, who knows why.

The photos then ended up in the cloud where, in case you didn't know, they were scanned by a child pornography verification system. The famous “content filters”. Who knows, maybe an Artificial Intelligence.

The photos in question appeared as such, and were therefore subjected to manual verification. Probably to a very stressed "consultant" in a remote country where labor is cheap, a poor guy with a head full (for "professional" reasons) of rubbish. The poor guy didn't notice the skin irritation, he skipped the evaluation, and started the appropriate Google procedures.

The account was suspended with a threatening but generic email notice, and a copy of all account data was sent to the police, who began a criminal investigation. Meanwhile, parents, who had entrusted all their digital information to Google and only Google (big mistake!), suddenly found themselves deprived of their entire digital life.

After a month, let's say "fortunately", the communication of the ongoing investigations arrived with the relevant summons, which finally allowed the parents to present their reasons without continuing to bounce off rubber walls.

They had a doctor's statement prepared which immediately convinced the investigator; therefore, with due time, supersonic compared to the Italian ones, it was communicated that there was no need to proceed.

Happy ending? Certainly, considering the fact that if the investigator had been distracted like the Google employee, the parents could have their child taken away by social services, and even end up in prison, in solitary confinement, because it is not healthy to be among other prisoners with a reputation as child molesters.

No, no happy ending, just the least worst, for two good reasons.

The first reason is what Matteo Flora would aseptically call "reputational damage", i.e. the fact that the news leaked anyway, and the subsequent news that there was no point in proceeding will never spread with the same breadth.

The second reason, and this is the “hidden morality", is that Google has officially and adamantly refused to reactivate the account, despite incontrovertible proof that their reporting was totally incorrect.

The meager message informed that the account had been permanently deleted, and that Google's judgment is final.

When questioned again on this point, the finality and total cancellation of the account were confirmed.

That's all for the news.

Let's now see the lesson to be learned and the underlying "hidden" moral.

This is an excellent and unfortunately normal example of what users are for multinational IT companies.

Goods to sell, and in cases like these "false positives" of their automatic filters. Never human beings, let alone customers, let alone innocent victims of errors.

Therefore unworthy of protection, devoid of rights, "handcuffed" by tens of thousands of words of constantly changing conditions of use.

The only possibility for unwary parents (unwary from an IT point of view, due to the lack of backup, and the poor protection of their and their child's privacy) to get their digital life back was to ask the police, who are the only holder of a full copy of their account data.

And do you know the good news? Much more humanely than Google, the police have assured that they will do everything possible to help them.

Perhaps they feel slightly guilty for persecuting innocent people. Google, on the other hand, evidently does not, despite an ancient "Don't be evil”.

But this is completely natural, because multinationals obviously do not have a conscience.

They are non-human beings, whose sole purpose is to pay dividends to shareholders. They advertise a lot on the politically correct topics of the moment, but only as an investment in public relations; deep down they remain steamrollers, grinders of profits and, when it happens, of people.

The only chance to change something is in the hands of consumers/voters. They must use the same care when choosing cell phones and internet services that they use to shop at the supermarket or choose a car.

And demand to be respected as citizens, and not massacred by growing techno-control, laughably disguised as good intentions.

The European Union is going to do it with Chatcontrol 2, we should start there.

Marco Calamari

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