• Google’s AI has breached name suppression orders by revealing names of individuals with court-ordered suppression.
• Former Act Party president Tim Jago was named by the AI before his suppression lapsed.
• Google has been asked to explain how its AI accesses suppressed information but has not responded.

By Ben Strang of RNZ

Google’s AI has been breaching name suppression orders put in place by New Zealand courts.

Both AI overviews, and a website function showing things people have also searched for, have given the names of people granted suppression while going through a court case.

RNZ can’t reveal cases where the Google AI is naming individuals, due to current suppressions, but one such person was former Act Party president Tim Jago, who sexually abused two teenage boys in the 1990s.

Jago’s name suppression had recently lapsed, having been in place for two years.

Last month, former Act Party president Tim Jago was named as the former political figure who abused teenage boys in the 1990s. Photo / Dean Purcell.

But a simple Google search last year asking the name of the prominent political figure facing charges could trigger a response directly naming Jago.

Google had been asked to explain how its AI was able to name someone with name suppression, and for clarity about where it gets the information. Google is yet to respond.

The Attorney-General Judith Collins said it was not an issue that had been raised with her.

Media law expert at Victoria University Steven Price said he was not surprised that AI was outing people with name suppression.

“It seems to me just another development which was always a challenge to our name suppression regime – people sticking something up online and other people finding it,” Price said.

“We’ve got to a position where, for one reason or another, it’s hard to get name suppression. The Government about 10 years ago said, we shouldn’t be awarding it just because someone’s famous.

“And about the same time, it became pretty clear that when celebrities tried to get name suppression, there was going to be a guessing game, information would come out online and people would find out.”

Price said only about a dozen cases each year feature a high-profile person who had been granted name suppression, and only about 1% of all cases involved suppression.

Most of the time that is to protect the names of children or sexual assault victims, rather than the person who is charged with an offence.

He said if Google’s AI started naming victims, that would be more concerning.

Price thought it was very unlikely Google’s AI could access the names of victims.

Google hasn’t responded to questions asking if that was possible.

According to Google’s privacy policy, its AI could get any publicly available information from the internet, including cloud data.

It said it did not scrape information from private cloud data, without the explicit permission of the user.

The company had faced lawsuits overseas regarding its AI data collection, such as eavesdropping on phone calls without permission, and the collection of personal data from cellphones despite users asking the company not to track information.

– RNZ