>"The Google Gods have banned you. You have 48 hours to collect your child pornography."
This is completely a non-issue. If the user already potentially committed a crime, Google already has the evidence. Whether or not the user is able to go back and redownload images that may or may not be illegal that may not have been saved is completely inconsequential. The issue is for the false-positive cases or the borderline cases. Google is not the law; let the judicial system determine guilt.
> Whether or not the user is able to go back and redownload images that may or may not be illegal that may not have been saved is completely inconsequential.
With all due respect, unless you're a lawyer, your comment has zero weight.
If I rent a hotel room and use it to store a barrel of cocaine, and a cleaning lady discovers it, I'm fairly certain they are 1) under no obligation to me to allow me to retrieve my cocaine, and 2) are probably legally prohibited from allowing me to collect my coke barrel.
Point taken, but these situations are much more fuzzy. If I understood correctly, this was an automated detection of possible child pornography. In such a case it would seem likely that Google acting proactively has no culpability. The only legal requirement (from the many articles I've read on the subject) is to remove illegal content once the company is made aware. Automated detection based on heuristics likely would not fall under that category.
If specific pictures are under question and a human deems them likely to be illegal they can disable access to those pictures. They have no legal responsibility to prevent access to legal data.
Edit: downvoting without a rebuttal is cowardly at best.
This is completely a non-issue. If the user already potentially committed a crime, Google already has the evidence. Whether or not the user is able to go back and redownload images that may or may not be illegal that may not have been saved is completely inconsequential. The issue is for the false-positive cases or the borderline cases. Google is not the law; let the judicial system determine guilt.