William and Zachary Zulock are two men from Atlanta, Georgia, USA. They are a couple. They adopted two boys in 2018 from a special-needs agency. They repeatedly molested these two boys for years. They filmed their unlawful acts. They shared the recordings with others. They were nabbed in 2022. In 2024, they pleaded guilty to multiple charges. They were each sentenced to 100 years in prison without parole.
Why am I posting this here? That is an excellent question. It has to do with confidentiality. And ownership. The UK’s Daily Mail reports that investigators into this case “received an alert from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children about suspected child sexual abuse material (CSAM) uploaded to a Google account with a Walton County IP address.”
Google “reads” the things you upload. About Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation, Google says “We use different techniques to analyze the content of your Google Account for CSAM. We identify CSAM with trained specialist teams and automated technology…”
In a 2022 article, a man is reported to have taken a picture of his son’s groin because it seemed to be inflamed. Using Google’s services, he sent the picture to a doctor as a first step in taking care of the situation. The pictures were automatically uploaded to Google’s servers. Google’s system flagged the photos as CSAM. The man’s Google accounts were disabled saying the content was a “violation of the company’s policies.” Police were notified and started investigating. The man was cleared of any criminal acts. Surprisingly, Google refused to enable the man’s accounts.
The Lessons:
- The tech company reads the stuff you upload to their servers.
- The account you use is not ‘yours.’ The tech company can disable it. You know those services you sign up for using “your” email address? You may want to consider using an alternative address.