Today on the official Google blog, A common sense approach to Internet safety. Elliot highlighted many resources that Google has championed to help ensure internet safety. The list is exetensive and includes Google’s safe search option, beatbullying, and the BeNetSmart initiated by Google India. You can read the full blog post here before you hear what I am going to say.
The information age is still galloping and everyone simply has to go along for the ride. As a pediatrician, it is very disheartening how children are harmed everyday with the internet. Child predators are also on the rampage. There are many moves to limit these predators, but the big internet companies can do a lot more. The internet should be a safe place, or at least as safe as our society in real life……how safe is safe? Well, it is rare in modern western society for an adult to be involved with a minor in public in a manner with sexual connotations.
The internet is a public place and it is common knowledge that everything we do on the internet is in the public domain. Most of the initiatives by Google are laudable, however, with the advent of modern technologies that are being used to track international terrorists, Google could use its powerful search engines, robots and other software we do not really understand to track dangerous people. This should be possible either via IP address or internet behavior. I am no expert, but I know email addresses could be tracked and if an internet registered minor logs into a dangerous site, alarms would be triggered. The sites where predators hang out can be blocked. IP addresses of predators can be used to track them before they strike the next child victim.
Some of these projects will be much more costly that financially rewarding to Google. Is that why they are not doing it? Is that why software are not under development to track online predators? I think so. Google should be more upfront in this fight, afterall, Larry Page got married recently and may soon have kids too. Google can do more to battle child abuse on the internet. If children were wise enough to use the so-called ‘common sense‘, they will be adults![digg=http://digg.com/tech_news/How_Google_refuses_to_eliminate_internet_risks_to_children]
This post is tagged child predator, common sense, Elliot Schrage, Google
6 Comments
Agreed… but how much of it is google’s responsibility. Plus you have to acknowledge (not agree with) the reality of the situation – every time a slight move is made towards a big-brother type registration/monitoring of the net, all the 1st amendment pushers come out of the woodwork. Not that I don’t agree with them, but the anonymity of the Net will never go away. Thus, children will always be allowed to wander… that is, unless their parents woke up and realized they have a job to do. If parents knew what their kids were doing and monitored their activity, there would be no issue to discuss. That goes for predators, cyber bullying, file sharing, posting personal info… you name it.
Interesting conversation. I’d like to follow up on what was just said and suggest that, for too long, responsibility for internet safety has been taken on - somewhat piecemeal - by one stakeholder or another. What we need is a concerted by 1) industry, 2) education, 3) law enforcement, 4) parents and 5) the young people themselves.
As my friend, a detective in the police department notes, “Puberty and the internet do not mix.” However, our “digital natives” have been growing up in a world of toys and tools not of their making, but which they have adapted to create a new world which most “digital immigrants” are completely left out of, and which many, many are afraid of. It’s a world of unintended consequences!
I’d a like to also suggest that, for as nasty and ugly as online predatory behavior might be, our young people are at an even greater risk of damage from peer abuse: cyberbullying, harassment, intimidation, stalking, hazing, threats.
We really do need to bring all those stakeholder groups together to both take control of the situation and to ensure the safety of our youth.
Thank you.
Mike
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