Googling for Answers
“Google Agrees to Block Child Porn Online”
At long last, a hopeful sign emerged this week, that something was being done about the explosion of Internet child pornography when the American company, Google announced in the UK that it was going to block child porn online.
Wait. Why was this announcement coming out of England?
After all, Google is an American company and its Chairman is a close friend of the American President Barack Obama. Could it be that the Brits care more about eradicating child pornography than the Americans?
It does make you wonder, why the President of the greatest nation on the earth, never thought to mention the epidemic of child pornography to his close friend and political and financial supporter, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt.
Mr. Obama could have easily mentioned, ‘Hey, Eric why don’t you do something about all those vile and illegal child pornography images and videos that surface on your search engine.’ Obama could have reminded Schmidt that those creepy pedophiles had posted photos of the Obama girls on a pedophile website.
After all, Mr. Schmidt served as Barack Obama’s informal advisor on the 2008 campaign trail, as well as a major donor in the 2008 and 2012 election campaigns. The President certainly could have given his good buddy a nudge to do the right thing on behalf of the American children. Right?
Surely, all those times while they met at the White House when Mr. Google was appointed a member of President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, Mr. Obama had the opportunity to mention this problem of child pornography on the Internet? He could have dropped a little hint like:
‘Hey, Eric, how about getting your brilliant techies in Mountain View to work on the problem of child porn.’
I guess Eric and the President were too busy raising campaign cash to think about the protection and safety of America’s children.
But wait, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is concerned about child pornography and even acknowledged the skyrocketing problem of child sexual abuse images on the Internet in 2011, when he said, “Unfortunately, we’ve also seen a historic rise in the distribution of child pornography, in the number of images being shared online, and in the level of violence associated with child exploitation and sexual abuse crimes. Tragically, the only place we’ve seen a decrease is in the age of victims.
This is – quite simply – unacceptable.”
If the “rise in child pornography is so unacceptable,” surely Attorney General Eric Holder, who has statutory authority to prosecute federal crimes of child pornography must have asked his close friend Barack Obama, to ask his close pal, Eric Schmidt, the Internet’s largest search engine boss, about curtailing the epidemic of child sex abuse images popping up on Google. After all, these images are terribly damaging and traumatizing to America’s children. But no, Holder was too busy tracking missing guns in Mexico.
Certainly, recently retired FBI Director Robert Mueller, whose job it is to investigate child exploitation crimes must have mentioned to the President that over 2 million computers are trading child pornography images in the U.S., Of course, he must have said to the President, ‘Can you talk to your good friend Eric Schmidt at Google and ask him and his MIT techies to block these violent and brutal images?’ Bob Mueller is very aware of the extent and danger of child pornography. Before he retired from the FBI he told NPR, “The worst thing I saw at the FBI is child pornography in the United States, it is epidemic.”
Apparently, those conversations never occurred because up until now, Google has done precious little to protect innocent eyes and ears from viewing pop up child pornography during internet searches.
Don’t blame Mr. Schmidt. He was very busy raising campaign funds for President Obama in 2008 and 2012. Mr Schmidt was also preoccupied promoting Obama’s jobs bill in 2011 when the President asked Congress for a new round of stimulus spending and was faced with a Republican deadlock.
No doubt, they both had politics on the brain, and not the protection of children.
So along comes an island in the Atlantic, the size of Louisiana, which decides to take on the American corporate behemoth, Google, because British children are being murdered by pedophiles who feed off the violent and vile child pornography images flooding the Internet. This small country and its prime minister, David Cameron demanded that that Eric Schmidt of Google, close friend of Barack Obama, create software to block search results linked to child sex abuse images.
Initially, the Google Giant told the Prime Minister that “it couldn’t be done, shouldn’t be done.” However, nothing changes an intransigent corporation like the threat of regulation and steely resolve.
So an about face occurred, and suddenly in the words of Obama’s best friend Eric Schmidt writing an OpEd in the UK Daily Mail admitted, “We’ve listened, and in the last three months put more than 200 people to work developing new, state-of-the-art technology to tackle the problem….We welcome the lead taken by the British Government, and hope that the technologies developed (and shared) by our industry will make a real difference in the fight against this terrible crime.”
Amazing! So with determination and leadership from the Prime Minister of a country the size of Oregon, the American based Google has promised a global block on search results linked to illegal child sex abuse images.
Google has relented and agreed to make changes which will prevent illegal child pornography appearing on more than 100,000 different searches. It appears that PM Cameron took a page from his predecessor, Winston Churchill who said, “I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod.”
Now, what about Mr. Schmidt’s good friend. The words of President Obama now seem so ironically prophetic, “Americans…still believe in an America where anything’s possible–they just don’t think their leaders do.”
Oh, truer words were never spoken by Barack Obama. Yes, he said that!
You can bank on that. I googled it.