IRIE
International Review of Information Ethics Vol. 3 (06/2005)
© by IRIE – all rights reserved www.i-r-i-e.net 19
ISSN 1614-1687
Lawrence M. Hinman:
Esse est indicato in Google: Ethical and Political Issues in Search Engines
Abstract:
Search engines play an increasingly pivotal role in the distribution and eventual construction of knowledge,
yet they are largely unnoticed, their procedures are opaque, and they are almost completely devoid of independent
oversight. In this paper the author examines three areas in which we encounter difficult and persistent
ethical issues in search engine technology: The problem of algorithm and the lack of transparency of the
search process, the problem of privacy with regards of the possibility to monitor search histories, and the
problem of local censorship. The given findings lead to the conclusion that the development of structures of
accountability for search engines is an important task for the near future.
Agenda
Introduction .......................................................................................................... 20
The Public Function and Responsibility of Search Engines........................... 21
The Problem of the Algorithm ........................................................................... 22
The Politics of Searching: Privacy and Liberty ............................................... 23
Local Standards in a Global Village ................................................................ 23
Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 25
IRIE
International Review of Information Ethics Vol. 3 (06/2005)
Lawrence M. Hinman:
Esse est indicato in Google: Ethical and Political Issues in Search Engines
In the final months of 2004, rumors began to circulate
on the Internet that the infamous prison abuse
photographs from Abu Ghraib were no longer available
on a Google image search, although they
continued to show up on other search engines.1
The implication was that political considerations
might have been influencing the search engine
results, and implication that Google denies.2 When I
emailed Google directly about this issue, Nate Tyler,
a spokesman for Google, wrote: “Basically, Google
did show these images but only for a limited period
of time, as our index (collection of web images)
cycles through every so often to update itself. New
images replace the old. At no point did we filter
these images.” This explanation seems implausible,
given the large number of old photos that seem to
stay in the Google database and the high level of
importance (and back-links) of these particular
photos.
This was not the first instance of ethical issues being
raised about search engines. In the early years of
search engines, the line had not always been clearly
drawn between “sponsored sites” (i.e., sites that
pay the search company to put their sites on the top
of the list) and regular, non-paying sites. This has
in large measure been worked out, and search
results typically label those sites that have paid to
be listed. This strikes a nice balance between the
demands of honesty and those of business. Search
1 When I did a search on “Abu Ghraib” in December
2004 on Alta Vista
(http://www.altavista.com/image/results?q=abu+ghraib&mik=photo&mik=graphic&mip=all&mis=all&miwxh=all), I came across a number of the infamous
photos on the first page of results; the research
listed a total number of 2,579 results. However,
when I did a comparable search on Google (with
SafeSearch turned off)
(http://images.google.com/images?q=abu+ghraib&
hl=en&lr=&safe=off&start=0&sa=N), I got 137
results, but almost none of them were the prison
abuse photos that from Abu Ghraib that so electrified
the world. The same search, repeated in February
2005, yielded far more images in Google, although
still some of the original infamous photos
seemed not to be present.
2 Email from Mr. Tyler to me on 1/4/05.
engines are understandably heavily dependent on
advertising revenues, so it was important to provide
a solution that permitted that to continue; at the
same time, it was important that users find themselves
directed toward the most relevant sites.
Subtle variations upon this theme, however, are
now pervasive. Search engine companies sell
certain keywords to advertisers in such a way that,
when searches enter that term, certain advertising
results are displayed in the results page. The advertiser
then pays the search engine company a fixed
amount per click. This has given rise to “click
fraud,” generated by the lure of an estimated 3.8
billion dollars annually in advertising revenues.3
Competitors may repeatedly click on the ads,
thereby driving up the advertising costs paid by their
competitors. The average price-per-click for popular
keywords is $1.70, and can range in rare cases as
high as $50 per click. It’s easy to see how an
unscrupulous competitor could drive the advertising
budget of another company into the ground.
Other issues have proved more troublesome. In a
typical Google search on the word “Jew,” several of
the first ten sites that come up are virulently anti-
Semitic, including “Jew Watch” and “The International
Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem.” Comparable
searches on “Christian” or “Muslim” or
“Hindu” do not yield critical sites among the topranked
entries. In a note from Google on “Offensive
Search Results,”4 The Google Team points out that
anti-Semitic sites do not typically appear in a search
for “Jewish people,” “Jews,” or “Judaism,” only in a
search for the singular word “Jew.”
3 Michael Liedtke, “Click Fraud Looms As Search-
Enging Threat,” Associated Press, Feb. 11, 2005;
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/n
ational/10876986.htm?1c. Also see Jessie C. Stricchiola,
“Click Fraud—An Overview.” Alchemist
Media, Inc
http://www.alchemistmedia.com/CPC_Click_Fraud.htm .
4 http://www.google.com/explanation.html . They
write, in part, that “If you use Google to search for
"Judaism," "Jewish" or "Jewish people," the results
are informative and relevant. So why is a search for
"Jew" different? One reason is that the word "Jew"
is often used in an anti-Semitic context. Jewish
organizations are more likely to use the word "Jewish"
when talking about members of their faith.”
[ p. 21]
In an international counterpart to the United States
emphasis on local standards for judging pornography,
international search engines encounter the
problem that such anti-Semitic websites are illegal in
some countries. Responding to the legal requirements
of their home countries, Google.de and
Google.fr do not list those anti-Semitic sites. A
search for “Juden” (the plural—the singular in
German, “Jude,” returns many entries on Jude Law)
on Google.de yields over 2M entries, but the first
page contains no critical entries; nor does a search
on “Juif” on Google.fr yield anti-Semitic sites.
Google’s official policy on this issue is clearly stated
in the note on offensive entries:
Our search results are generated completely objectively
and are independent of the beliefs and
preferences of those who work at Google. Some
people concerned about this issue have created
online petitions to encourage us to remove particular
links or otherwise adjust search results.
Because of our objective and automated ranking
system, Google cannot be influenced by these
petitions. The only sites we omit are those we
are legally compelled to remove or those maliciously
attempting to manipulate our results.5
Several of the first page sites that appear in a
search on the “Klu Klux Klan” are highly critical of
the Klan; no note appears in that search about
offensive results.
These cases raise interesting and extremely important
ethical issues about access to information on
the Web and the role of search engines. Let me
begin by commenting on the public function and
responsibility of search engines.
The Public Function and
Responsibility of Search Engines
Search engines occupy a privileged place in the
world of information technology. They are like
windows onto the web—and, like windows, tend to
be largely unnoticed because our gaze focuses on
what is visible through them. With windows, however,
it is easy to detect when they are cloudy or
distorted. With search engines, however, it is much
more difficult to tell when they are providing dis-
5 Ibid.
torted or incomplete pictures. Several points should
be noted here.
First, the vast amount of information available on
the Web would be almost useless without search
engines. They play an absolutely crucial role in the
access to information.6 In the world of the Web,
esse est indicato in Google: to exist is to be indexed
on Google. The challenge in information retrieval is
not simply to find the right piece of information, but
also to avoid listing all the pieces of extraneous
information. (The success of Google was precisely
in its ability to help users find exactly the information
they were seeking and to avoid irrelevant sites.)
Search engines are the gatekeepers of the web,7
helping people to reach their desired destinations.
Without them, much of the web would simply be
inaccessible to us.
Second, access to information is crucial for responsible
citizenship.8 Citizens in a democracy, and
6 In March 2005, Google was ranked fourth in most
accessed U.S. sites by Nielsen, with a unique audience
that month of 60M viewers, which equaled an
audience reach of 43%.
http://www.netratings.com/news.jsp?section=dat_t
o&country=us The other principal mode of access
to the Web has been guides done by individuals. In
the early stages of the Web, these flourished. More
recently, with increasing accuracy of search engines,
they have declined in importance.
7 On the gatekeeper metaphor, see Baye, M. R. and
Morgan, J (2001). Information Gatekeepers on the
Internet and the Competitiveness of Homogeneous
Product Markets, American Economic Review 91(3):
454-474.
8 On the political dangers associated with search
engines, see Introna, Lucas D. and Helen
Nissenbaum (2000) "Shaping the Web: Why the
Politics of Search Engines Matters", The Information
Society, Vol. 16, No.3, 1-17; available at
http://www.indiana.edu/~tisj/readers/full-text/16-
3%20Introna.html. On government surveillance,
see “The Nature and Scope of Governmental Electronic
Surveillance Activity,” Center for Democracy
and Technology (2004), at
http://www.cdt.org/wiretap/wiretap_overview.html;
for current standards, see “CURRENT LEGAL STANDARDS
FOR ACCESS TO PAPERS, RECORDS, AND
COMMUNICATIONS: What Information Can the
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International Review of Information Ethics Vol. 3 (06/2005)
Lawrence M. Hinman:
Esse est indicato in Google: Ethical and Political Issues in Search Engines 22
indeed members of the international community in
general, cannot make informed decisions without
access to accurate and complete information.
Within a few years, the Web has become the favored
source of information retrieval. When we
want to find more information about a topic,
whether it be torture or tsunamis, we turn first—and
often only—to the Web. The Web has become the
principal source of research information for most
Americans who do casual research. Typically, users
turn first to Google for searches; Machill et al.
estimated that 74% of users turn to Google first.9
Third, search engines have become central to education.
Students today perform countless web
searches in an average day. They search Google far
more often than they go to the library, undoubtedly
more often than they look in a book for information.
Search engines play a role analogous to the card
catalogue in traditional libraries and the indices,
such as the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature,
that were so important to students of the previous
generation. Imagine a library without a card catalogue;
that would be a close analogy to the Web
without search engines, but with one important
difference. Books would still be written without card
catalogues, but without search engines, many
persons and groups would probably not develop
their websites.
Fourth, search engines are owned by private corporations,
businesses that are quite properly seeking
to make a profit. These companies, especially
Google since it has become the search engine of
choice for so many millions, have a crucial public
responsibility but are accountable to shareholders,
not the general public. This sets up a tension
between the public role of search engines and their
corporate accountability.
Government Get About You, and How Can They Get
It?” at
http://www.cdt.org/wiretap/govaccess/govaccessch
art.html
9 Machill, M., Neuberger, C., Schweiger, W. and
Wirth, W, “Wegweiser im Netz” Qualität und Nutzung
von Suchmaschinen,” in Wegweiser im Netz:
Qualität und Nutzung von Suchmaschinen, Verlag
Bertelsman Stiftung, Bielefeld, p. 397.
Let’s now examine three areas in which we encounter
difficult and persistent ethical issues in search
engine technology.
The Problem of the Algorithm
The key to the success of Google was an important
conceptual shift in the understanding of searches.
Initially search engines used fairly elementary
algorithms to determine page rank such as the
number of visits to a page, the number of other
pages which link to a given page. What is common
to these initial approaches to user searches was that
they depended on objective criteria such as the
number of page views. A given search engine could
certainly get it wrong, but that did not diminish the
fact that there was an objective fact of the matter to
be gotten wrong. These initial searches were at
least intended to rank the most popular sites, where
“popularity” would have a technical and objective
meaning.
The shift in what we could call second-generation
search engines involved looking much more closely
at what users wanted to find, which was not always
the most popular site, but the site that most closely
meets their needs. The remarkable success of
Google depends in part on its ability to offer users
what they are looking for, based on the search
terms that are entered. Thus we have the following
relationship:
This is conceptually very different from a ranking of
page popularity alone; what the user wants becomes
an integral part of the formula, as does the
set of search terms most commonly used to express
what the user wants.
The situation described above is complicated by the
fact that the search algorithms that govern searches
are well-kept secrets, and properly so. Not only do
these algorithms give some companies a competitive
edge, but potential spammers can manipulate
search engine results much more easily if they know
the details of the algorithms used to rank search
results. Consequently, the search process is not
transparent, that is, we do not know why certain
sites have been included or excluded and we do not
know what some sites are ranked above others.
Users’ needs Search terms Desired site
IRIE
International Review of Information Ethics Vol. 3 (06/2005)
Lawrence M. Hinman:
Esse est indicato in Google: Ethical and Political Issues in Search Engines 23
The Politics of Searching: Privacy
and Liberty
In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States
proposed to develop an email intercept system that
could sniff out possible terrorist threats, getting
right to the “meat” of the message and disregarding
the inessential. Carnivore, as it came to be
known,10 was designed to monitor email traffic, but
it is easy to see the way in which the same argument
could justify monitoring internet searches.
Carnivore, like most FBI computer projects, was a
technical failure and abandoned, after an expenditure
of $6-15M, in favor of commercial software.11
After all, if the government is entitled by the Patriot
Act of 2001 to see what books we have been taking
out from the library,12 wouldn’t the same logic
mandate access to search requests?
The potentially chilling effects of such a situation are
clear. The technical difficulties are significant but
surmountable. Certainly it is virtually impossible to
check who is doing searches from a public computer.
From office or home machines, it’s at least
possible to obtain ip addresses, and sometimes
more if, for example, someone has cookies enabled.
Most recently, Google has offered a voluntary search
history, “My Search History,” that allows users to
store and retrieve their searches. It “lets you easily
view and manage your search history from any
computer.”13 Google stresses the benefits for end
users, building on the fact that most of us have at
one time or another been unable to retrieve a
reference we originally found in a Google search but
cannot find again. However, there is obviously an
economic motive behind this helpful attitude: Google
can provide advertisers with far more sophisticated
consumer profiles if it maintains a comprehensive
database of search histories that can be sorted by
individual user. To some extent, this is already
10 Later, it was called DCS-1000.
11 “FBI cuts Carnivore Internet probe,” CNN website.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005 Posted: 9:59 PM EST
(0259 GMT) Tuesday, January 18, 2005.
12 “FBI monitoring library records in terror probe,”
Associated Press, June 25, 2002
(http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document
.asp?documentID=16468; last accessed 5/3/05).
13 https://www.google.com/searchhistory/login
possible with cookies and with individuals signed in
with a Gmail account, but the new “My Search
History” feature increases accuracy dramatically and
tracks users across multiple machines.
Economics is driving these technological developments
in tracking search engine users, but the truly
frightening aspect of this is political rather than
economic. We all leave countless virtual footprints
as we move through the day, using credit cards,
making cell phone calls, accessing ATM machines,
etc. These already provide a surprisingly detailed
picture of an individual’s daily life at least in terms of
external activities. Search histories, however, go
one step further: they provide an excellent source of
insight into what someone is thinking, not just what
that person is doing.
The danger, at least in the United States, is that
such monitoring may be used increasingly to monitor
and eventually suppress political dissent. The
terrorist attacks of September 11th were ironically
effective in strengthening public support for the
erosion of personal liberty in the United States, and
one can easily imagine government monitoring of
search engine activity justified as a counterterrorism
measure.14
If such a scenario seems too implausible, and if it
seems unthinkable that major search engine companies
would cooperate with such an undertaking,
one only has to look at Internet filtering in China
today to see what the future may hold.
Local Standards in a Global Village
Perhaps the most frightening aspect of the power of
search engines has occurred recently in China,
which has made massive and highly effective efforts
to prevent average Chinese citizens from accessing
certain sites on the Internet. The accepted wisdom
has been that the Internet is an unstoppable force
for democratization, a force for liberation that
cannot be tamed by local governments.
14 For an insightful discussion of this issue in the
European context, including a discussion of the
differences between the American and European
contexts, see Michael Nagenborg, “Privacy and
Terror: Some Remarks from Historical Perspective,
IJIE International Journal of Information Ethics, Vol.
2 (11/2004), 1-5.
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International Review of Information Ethics Vol. 3 (06/2005)
Lawrence M. Hinman:
Esse est indicato in Google: Ethical and Political Issues in Search Engines 24
This assumption has been proved false in the case
of Internet censorship in China. The Chinese government
has succeeded in blocking the access of the
average Chinese computer user to political sites
dealing with the Dalai Lama and free Tibet, the
Falun Gong, Tiananmen Square and—most recently—
the Chinese demonstrations against Japan’s
most recent attempts at revisionist history.15 The
report of the ONI on “Internet Filtering in China
2004-2005” indicates that China has been far more
successful in preventing its citizens from accessing
certain websites than previously imagined. China’s
approach has been multi-pronged. Much of it
occurs at the backbone level, which is highly effective,
but this is supplemented by restrictions on
internet service providers and even down to the
level of cybercafés, which are required to track
customer usage.16 Email appears to be filtered at
the service provider level, not at the backbone level,
and increasingly sophisticated anti-spam filtering
software can also be modified for use in political
filtering. Blog provides are carefully monitored
through keyword filtering, and politically incorrect
bloggers are typically removed quickly from the
servers. Within China, when one looks for Google,
one often reaches alternative search engines such
as Openfind, Globepage, chinaren.com,
search.online.sh.cn, and fm365.com.17 These
15 Jonathan Krim, “Web Censors In China Find
Success,” Washington Post, Thursday, April 14,
2005; Page A20. Also see Jonathan Zittrain and
Benjamin Edelman, “Empirical Analysis of Internet
Filtering in China,” Berkman Center for Internet &
Society, Harvard Law School:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/china/ ; last
accessed 5/2/05; this includes a complete list of the
18,931 sites blocked by the Chinese government.
16 OpenNet Initiative (ONI), “Internet Filtering in
China 2004-2005: A Country Study,” April 14, 2005.
http://opennetinitiative.net/studies/
china/ONI_China_Country_Study.pdf Also see
Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman, “Internet
Filtering in China,” 2003.
http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/docum
ents/apcity/unpan011043.pdf
17 Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard
Law School, “Replacement of Google with Alternative
Search Systems in China: Documentation and
Screen Shots,”
search engines are easily manipulated to carry out
the kind of filtering that the Chinese government
mandates.18
It is important to realize here the degree of
cooperation that China has gotten from the West in
its Internet filtering programs. Certainly much of
the backbone of China’s Internet has been supplied
by American manufacturers. According to the ONI
Country Study on China, Cisco Systems has played a
pivotal role in providing the infrastructure that
enables the Chinese government to filter the Internet
so effectively.19 Without the technical expertise
and physical infrastructure provided by American
companies, China’s Internet filtering endeavors
would be far less successful.
The role of Google in this situation, at least what we
know of that role, does little to quell fears about the
ways in which Google may be subject to political
pressure. In 2004, the Chinese government began
intermittently to shut down access from within China
to the China Edition of Google News. Eventually,
Google decided to shape its search results within
China to the expectations of the Chinese government.
A Google statement describes the situation in
the following terms.
There has been controversy about our new
Google News China edition, specifically regardhttp://
cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/china/googlereplacements/
18 OpenNet Initiative: Bulletin 005, “Probing Chinese
search engine filtering,” August 19, 2004
http://www.opennetinitiative.net/bulletins/005/
19 “There has been considerable debate about the
complicity of Western corporations in the development
and maintenance of China's filtering system.
China’s Internet infrastructure includes equipment
and software from U.S. companies, including Cisco
Systems, Nortel Networks, Sun Microsystems, and
3COM.28 Cisco Systems in particular has been
integral to China’s Internet development. The core
of China's Internet relies on Cisco technology; Cisco
specifically implemented the backbone networks for
ChinaNet29 and CERNet30, China's nation-wide
educational network. Cisco's involvement continues
to this day with the company’s role in the development
of China's “Next-Generation Network,” known
as CN2.31.” “Internet Filtering in china 2004-2005,”
pp. 6-7.
IRIE
International Review of Information Ethics Vol. 3 (06/2005)
Lawrence M. Hinman:
Esse est indicato in Google: Ethical and Political Issues in Search Engines 25
ing which news sources we include. For users
inside the People's Republic of China, we have
chosen not to include sources that are inaccessible
from within that country.20
In other words, Google decided to respect the
Chinese political censorship rather than allow it to
be shut down once again.
Although China is a vast potential market, it currently
has little economic influence over Google, and
presumably no political power over it. Nevertheless,
Google seems to have accommodated itself to the
wishes of the Chinese government. If this is the
case, one cannot help but worry that Google could
eventually be much more strongly influenced by the
United States government, which has far greater
economic and political impact on Google than does
the government of China.
Conclusion
Search engines play an increasingly pivotal role in
the distribution and eventual construction of knowledge,
yet they are largely unnoticed, their procedures
are opaque, and they are almost completely
devoid of independent oversight: powerful, cloaked
in secrecy, and not subject to external control.
Insofar as the flourishing of deliberative democracy
is dependent on the free and undistorted access to
information, and insofar as search engines are
increasingly the principal gatekeepers of knowledge,
20
http://www.google.com/googleblog/2004/09/chinagoogle-
news-and-source-inclusion.html Google
concludes, “On balance we believe that having a
service with links that work and omits a fractional
number is better than having a service that is not
available at all. It was a difficult tradeoff for us to
make, but the one we felt ultimately serves the best
interests of our users located in China. We appreciate
your feedback on this issue.” Also see the links
at http://www.google-watch.org/china.html .
we find ourselves moving in a politically dangerous
direction. We risk having our access to information
controlled by ever-powerful, increasingly opaque,
and almost completely unregulated search engines
that could shape and distort our future largely
without our knowledge. For the sake of a free
society, we must pursue the development of structures
of accountability for search engines. Based on
the cases discussed above, there is little reason to
think that search engines will remain impervious to
external political and economic pressures.
Lawrence M. Hinman, Director of the Values
Institute and Professor of Philosophy at the University
of San Diego, writes widely in the area of applied
ethics. He is the founder of Ethics Updates
(http://ethics.sandiego.edu) and Ethics Videos
(http://ethics.sandiego.edu/video/).