One man’s war on Google’s contemptible arrogance
NZ Justice Minister Andrew Little has won a major victory with an apology by Google | UPDATED
NZ Justice Minister Andrew Little has won a major victory, with Google’s decision on Saturday morning to apologise, and suspend the system by which it identified the suspect in the high-profile Grace Millane murder trial.
Google’s letter says: “I want to apologise for the miscommunication on Tuesday. I did not mean to convey that Google does not take this issue seriously.
“We understand the need to protect the right to a fair trial and acknowledge that is a fundamental part of the legal system.”
Read the letter here
Little welcomed the letter, saying: “Today Google reached out with an apology and acknowledgment that fair-trial rights need to be protected.
“Google have offered to immediately suspend the part of the system that led to suppressed information being breached. I welcome this responsible approach by Google.
“Work on how suppression orders will be upheld in the digital age will continue. I look forward to constructive engagement with Google and other multinational tech corporations on long-term solutions.”
EARLIER STORY:
When New Zealand MP Andrew Little steps into the fray, he carries with him quite the title. He’s the Minister of Justice and the Minister for Courts; the Minister Responsible for Pike River Re-Entry; and the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations; the Minister Responsible for the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service; and the Minister Responsible for the Government Communications Security Bureau — all of which is to say he’s not easily daunted. “I’m also a former union official,” he told The Weekend Australian from his offices in New Plymouth this week. “I’m used to tough battles.”
Little’s latest? He’s taking on Google. “They wish to live above New Zealand law, and it’s my job to ensure that they’re not able to do that. We don’t surrender those things that are important to us, chiefly our justice system.”
It was in his role as Justice Minister that Little this week accused Google of “flipping the bird” at New Zealand laws by breaking suppression orders in the Grace Millane murder trial.
It was one of those crimes that moves a nation: Grace was a happy-go-lucky British backpacker, out and about in the world, on a year-long adventure. She’d only just arrived in New Zealand, after travelling on after four weeks in Peru. She stepped out for the night in Auckland, just ahead of her 22nd birthday. A week later, her battered body was found along a roadside.
Vigils were held for Grace. Men and women united in a show of white candles.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was reduced to tears.
In an apology broadcast nationwide, she addressed the family directly, saying: “I cannot imagine your grief. Your daughter was supposed to be safe here and she wasn’t and I apologise for that.”
A 26-year-old man has been charged. His name has been suppressed in New Zealand.
That wouldn’t happen in Australia, or indeed in Britain, where the accused can usually be named. New Zealand prefers a system by which the accused’s identity is sometimes suppressed to ensure the trial’s integrity.
You could take issue with that law: open justice is an important principle, too. But whatever your position, it’s their law, meaning theirs and not ours to make. They came to it after deliberation.
Then along came Google, with its “trend alerts”. The day after the accused’s first appearance in court, Google pushed out a story, featuring his name and a picture. That’s a clear breach of the suppression order and it puts the security of the trial in doubt.
“That email was sent directly to New Zealanders,” Little told The Weekend Australian. “This is not about algorithms. This is about information being collated and sent to people, like a note saying: here is some news that you may be interested in if you live in New Zealand.
“If you care about justice for Grace Millane, upsetting the trial is not something you would do.”
Little asked for an explanation and in December two Google executives were hurriedly dispatched to the Beehive (that’s the nickname name for the Executive Wing of the New Zealand parliament complex, which looks a bit like one.) They promised to “look into the matter”.
“We gave them until March,” Little says. “I asked them again in March and they again said they wanted more time. I asked them again this week, and they told me they weren’t going to change anything. That’s when I said they were flipping the bird. I am determined to defend the integrity of New Zealand law. Why should we capitulate to them?”
Little released to the public an email from Google’s New Zealand government affairs manager Ross Young. It says: “We have looked at our systems and it appears that last year’s situation was relatively unique as it was a high-profile case, involving a person from overseas, which was extensively reported by overseas media.”
In other words: what can you do?
Says Little: “It’s contemptuous, and that is unacceptable to me. They should not be allowed to get away with this.”
Google has told New Zealand journalists that its trend alert was raised because people were searching for the accused’s name and finding it in British media reports. Google also says it didn’t find out about the suppression until four days after it was granted, adding: “We respect New Zealand law and we will respond to court orders when we get them. As you’ll appreciate, there are trillions of web pages, dynamic and active, on the internet at the moment.”
Little isn’t having it.
“What do we do, say, ‘Oh, OK, it’s the machines? Therefore we give up?’ The issue is too important. It is simple arrogance for them to say: New Zealand’s laws are New Zealand’s laws and they don’t apply to us.”
Suppression orders are tricky in the age of global news. The Victorian courts prevented the Australian media from announcing the verdict in the trial of Cardinal George Pell, but the fact Pell had been found guilty was reported abroad and trended on Twitter.
New Zealanders can see overseas reports, mainly from Britain but also from Australia, that name the suspect in the Millane trial. The suspect’s name and picture have been published on social media. What irks Little is Google’s insistence that he must suck this up.
“They say there’s nothing we can do. And because they are a large transnational company, there is a reluctance to take them on. They say, ‘We are not publishers. We just gather up the information that has been published around the world.’ I don’t agree.
“I say they are no different to a newspaper that now has a website. Newspapers also gather up stories and publish them. Google made this information available to people. They are not above the law.”
It’s quite the battle he has picked. We have surrendered so much already. Censorship as we once knew it (the careful restriction of pornography to those over the age of 18, for example) has collapsed in the face of the new media behemoths; so, too, has our ability as parents to defend our children from bullying. There have been assaults around on the world on political processes. Now comes one on the justice system.
Google’s ambivalence wouldn’t fit with its own manifesto from 2000: “Don’t be evil.” Then again, it changed that a few years ago to “Do the right thing”, but that surely can’t mean according to rules it imposes — or, rather, doesn’t — on itself.
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