CBS News Investigation Finds Fraudulent Court Orders Used To Change Google Search Results (cbsnews.com) 58
A CBS News investigation found that some companies that are hired to make negative web pages disappear appear to be forging judges' signatures to trick Google into changing its search results. From the report: One of the only ways to get Google to permanently remove a link from its search results is with a court order from a judge. CBS News sorted through thousands of these court orders and spotted small businesses from all across America trying to clean up their reputations. But we also spotted a problem: Dozens of the court documents were fakes. "It never even crossed my mind that people would have the guts to actually go out there and just forge a court document," said Eugene Volokh, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who specializes in internet law. Volokh points out that forging a court document is criminal. "Part of it is just how brazen it is. They take a judge's signature and they copy it from one order to another order and they pretend something is a court order. It's cheaper and it's faster -- if they don't get caught," Volokh said.
CBS News worked with Volokh and identified more than 60 fraudulent court orders sent to Google. Some are obviously fake, like one with a case number of "1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9." Others are more sophisticated, and appear to be drawn from nine different federal courts across the country. The most recent fake court document we identified was submitted in April. It's not just about making a bad review of a local restaurant disappear. CBS News uncovered bogus court documents submitted on behalf of two convicted criminals who wanted Google to forget about their crimes. Both were child sex offenders. Of the more than 60 phony documents, we found that 11 had signatures forged from judges in Hamilton County, Ohio.
CBS News worked with Volokh and identified more than 60 fraudulent court orders sent to Google. Some are obviously fake, like one with a case number of "1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9." Others are more sophisticated, and appear to be drawn from nine different federal courts across the country. The most recent fake court document we identified was submitted in April. It's not just about making a bad review of a local restaurant disappear. CBS News uncovered bogus court documents submitted on behalf of two convicted criminals who wanted Google to forget about their crimes. Both were child sex offenders. Of the more than 60 phony documents, we found that 11 had signatures forged from judges in Hamilton County, Ohio.
Forging court docs is bad (Score:2, Insightful)
obviously Eugene Volokh lacks imagination. Would hate to be in his classes.
No, you lack context. Forging a judge's signature is something nobody who knows the legal system would do unless they were out of their mind. These "companies" don't understand that, probably because they're random pseudotechies.
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Interestingly, the Hamilton County Common Pleas Court has already done this, but it looks like this fraud pre-dates their system they rolled out in 2017:
The 2017 rollout of the new website already included more “sophisticated” and “effective” security measures, but Pureval said more will be done.
First, all judicial orders will be stamped with an encrypted QR code that will allow them to be “scanned and directed to the Hamilton County Clerks website to verify the judicial order,” Pureval explained.
Second, the county has created a customer service hotline and email system allowing residents to question and confirm all judicial orders.
“It is critical that our citizens have faith in the accuracy of judicial orders and court documents,” Pureval said. “That they know when a judge sentences someone to prison, or decides a child’s custody, that order is legitimate and true.”
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Strange, Even I have seen it happen (well seen reports of it happening) going back half a decade.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/w... [nbcnews.com]
Re:Lack of imagination (Score:5, Informative)
It's been almost three years since Volokh began publishing accounts [washingtonpost.com] of libel cases filed against fake defendants in order to get stuff deindexed. There are specific companies who are repeat offenders [reason.com], offering this reputation clean-up "service". They even tried removing the mention of the previous fakes [reason.com]!
In terms of skipping even that step and actually forging the orders, this story from 2017 [reason.com] has a summary of one case and several links at the bottom to more.
Volokh is on a crusade to quantify how ISPs, web hosting companies and domain registrars react to different types of court orders not directly aimed at them, so if you work at one of the above and know what your company's policy is, or have examples for him see see this post for how to email him about it. [reason.com]
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Indeed. People do all kinds of really stupid things when they think the can profit.
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You don't say (Score:1)
Uh, naive. There are bad apples out there who do all kinds of evil shit.
And there is insufficient law enforcement staff to investigate white-collar crimes because violent crimes get priority (for obvious reasons), meaning your chance of getting caught is small.
Re:You don't say (Score:4, Informative)
No, not naive, to any mind that can connect dots.
First, these submissions are part of a permanent public record, just waiting for the first intrepid journalist or OCD computer scientist to come along and spill the beans.
Second, forging a court document is a bit like fondling Voldemort's wand when he's out of the room. A judge is liable to take that personally when (not if) he or she finally finds out.
Third, if you're already a registered sex offender, they know where you live.
So now you're a convicted sex offender, with a record of forging court documents. Chances of you being remanded back to your own supervision are rather slim at this juncture. How could you be trusted with anything? You've now shat the bed in triplicate and the stain just won't come out.
Your new government accommodation will in all likelihood live up to its reputation as notoriously unpleasant. Before you were a nobody that people ignored/avoided. Now you're a dirtbag VIP with a target painted on your back. Good work, Sherlock. Your big bad-apple cojones are now wiffle balls for the general population milling about despondently.
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And there is insufficient law enforcement staff to investigate white-collar crimes because violent crimes get priority (for obvious reasons), meaning your chance of getting caught is small.
Well, yes. But that may not work so well in the long-term when there is a paper-trail. One case found by other means and pretty much all should get found. The case in point may also be something that judges really want to put a lid on...
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The same happened with Google's YouTube, once they allowed court-ordered censorship
As far as censorship goes that's a relatively small issue. Once the Internet corps started to automatically remove content based on user reports/flags things went downhill. Political activists regularly use report brigades to censor things they don't like. No courts (real or fake) needed.
restore, promote, prosecute (Score:5, Funny)
Google should now manually recheck all their court orders to ensure they are valid. The invalid ones should be restored and promoted then the FBI should be notified of the fraud. There are a bunch of people that need to go to jail for this.
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APK, Alexander Peter Kowalski, is a mentally defective spammer who has been a tech screw-up for over 20 years. His main claims to fame are:
1. Being kicked off Arstechnica and then whining like a little bitch to them to have all of his embarrassing comments deleted, which they didn't.
2. Threatening to sue when his shitty program was accidentally flagged as malware, because it acts in shady ways, instead of going through the proper channels to resolve the issue.
3. Creating a slow bloated file aggregator and s
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Public records are, well, public. Public court records are, well, actually permitted to be made available to the public, in fact actually intended to be available to the public. If that's a problem for you, work to change the law and shield these records from public view, so we can be even less informed about our courts.
In fact, many jurisdictions have found creative ways to restrict access to public documents now that, given the Internet/digital documents/search engines available, are actually, practically
Re: There is no need to Google index people's cri (Score:2)
" just no reason that this type of information needs to be made so readily available"
Uh, first, it's the law, and second, for actually good reasons. Same reasons sex offenders are registered...
Change the law.
You seem to disagree with yourself (Score:3)
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There should be data privacy laws concerning such records. It's one thing to go to the courthouse and pay to retrieve a records. It's another to let every stalker, ex, extortionist, co-worker, or really anyone have instant and immediate access to your private affairs
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"Your private affairs"? Committing crimes against the rest of us, and getting convicted, isn't a private affair. In fact it's Constitutionally required to be public, for good reason.
You seem a bit conflicted and you're trying to think two o
Nope, not the United States (Score:2)
> like he was 18 she was 17... 17 yo girl's mom gets pissed off he deflowered her daughter, files statutory rape charges and *boom* now he's a sex offender.
Not in any state with the US. Think that's law in any state? Name the state and we'll have a look at the statute.
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You did make one small error in you post. I hope you don't mind my fixing it for you. You need more online yelling in your format:
EITHER I HAVE A RIGHT TO CHECK IF MY DAUGHTER'S NEW BOYFRIEND IS A SEX OFFENDER, OR I DON'T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now everyon
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We somehow made it thousands of years without Google searchable court records and now suddenly these people are the bad guys for trying to move on from their pasts?
There is no reason for such records to be searchable on Google by any tom, dick, and Harry. There should be data privacy laws concerning such records. It's one thing to go to the courthouse and pay to retrieve a records. It's another to let every stalker, ex, extortionist, co-worker, or really anyone have instant and immediate access to your private affairs.
That's where you're wrong--they're public affairs, not private.
are they looking at Accessory changes? (Score:2)
are they looking at Accessory changes?.
And this is the same google that does not check DMCA clams as well.
And? (Score:3)
Seems like a quite important missing detail.
Or are we just going to be again surprised about dark corners of the human nature?
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I was waiting for the CBS Big Brother Zingbot to appear this year.
Electronic signature? (Score:4, Insightful)
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If the courts had an official website where court orders could be validated it would eliminate the forgery problem outright. It still wouldn't stop the fake defendant cases, but those are harder to fight.
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Now if they would sign those scanned documents cryptographically you'd have a harder time forging them.
Or not, as the case may be.
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"you'd have a harder time forging them."
Charging more for tickets to the show? Not a preventative.
Quick way to jail... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is trivial to verify, now that its out of the bag expect google to submit all these fake court orders back to the judge (along with all theinformation on the person that submittted it) whose signature was forged along with an FBI investigation initiated by the Judge. You are going to see everyone involved hauled before the court and put in jail for a long time.
This is probably the quickest way possible to get yourself a 20 year jail term for forgery. And if some dumb ass took money to do this for others they'll probably end up with a life term after all the fraud charges and criminal contempt charges. Jeez people are dumb.
AI solution (Score:2)
with Google's push to throw AI at every problem they have, this would be an ideal candidate to shift out the fake court orders from the real ones.