Google tips off US law enforcement to child porn suspect's email contents

Google has defended its policy of electronically monitoring users' content for child sexual abuse after it tipped off police in the US state of Texas to the activities of a child pornography suspect.

Houston restaurant worker John Henry Skillern, 41, was arrested on Thursday following a tip Google had passed along via the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), which is based outside Washington.

"He was trying to get around getting caught, he was trying to keep it inside his email," said detective David Nettles of the Houston Metro Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce.

"I can't see that information, I can't see that photo - but Google can," he told Houston television station KHOU, which first reported the story.

It's common knowledge that the world's leading internet service, like its rivals, tracks users' online behaviour in order to fine-tune its advertising services.

But the Texas case prompted concerns about the degree to which Google might be handing over information about its users' conduct to law-enforcement agencies.

"The story seems like a simple one with a happy outcome - a bad man did a crime and got caught," blogged John Hawes, chief of operations at Virus Bulletin, a cyber security consultancy.