Google suspends Trends emails after revealing murder suspect’s name

After violating a court suppression order and publishing a murder suspect’s name, Google has suspended its Trends alert emails in New Zealand.

In New Zealand, among other countries, the right to a fair trial includes a court’s being able to order people and organizations to refrain from publishing suspects‘ names.

Google didn’t do that. It says it didn’t even mean to, but its Google Trends alerts went ahead and emailed out links to a media report that included the murder suspect’s name.

A few days after the December 2018 murder of British backpacker Grace Millane, Google had sent an email to anyone signed up for its “what’s trending in New Zealand” alert. After Google’s news-gathering algorithm picked up a British newspaper’s report of the suspect’s court appearance, it automatically forwarded the story to all subscribers, including the name of the accused killer in the subject line.

That action violated a suppression order prohibiting publication of the suspect’s name or identification details. Google’s violation sparked outrage in New Zealand, which, with its low serious-crime rate, had been shocked by the murder of the young tourist, believed to have been killed the night before her 22nd birthday.

According to a furious letter published by NZ Minister of Justice Andrew Little last week, when he met with Google representatives six months ago, Google said that the company took the issue seriously and that they’d look into what they could do to fix the problem.

Six months later, according to Little, Google said that the answer to “what can be done to stop this” amounted to “nothing.”

When I confronted New Zealand Google executives about what happened they indicated they took the issue seriously and would look at what they could do to fix the problem. Six months on, they now tell me they can’t – or won’t – do anything.

Really? A company that big can’t figure out how to fix “an obvious risk to justice systems?”, Little said. Sorry, that doesn’t cut it:

I would be failing in my duty if, as a minister of justice in a small country, I threw in the towel and decided nothing could be done in the face of a giant international corporation thinking it could ride roughshod over one of the most important principles of criminal justice.

Little also tweeted out a video clip showing his computer search for the words “don’t be evil,” followed by his text selection of the words “Google’s corporate code of conduct” in a Wikipedia entry.

.@Google, don’t be evil. https://t.co/OBPo8ub5rQ

—
Andrew Little (@AndrewLittleMP) July 03, 2019

“Don’t be evil” is, of course, the much-mocked motto that Google dropped back in 2015 when it became Alphabet and decided instead to “Do the Right Thing.”

Little said in his video that, based on the alert, a newspaper had published the prohibited material:

We’ve had a situation where, in a very important trial – the Grace Millane case – a newspaper, helped by Google, has published information that the judge said was suppressed.

Two days after getting scolded by Little, Google sent him a letter saying that the violative email went out to fewer than 200 subscribers.