Earlier this year, we began working with the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids to help people find helpful information about substance abuse online.  This is a guest post from their President and CEO, Steve Pasierb, describing our efforts together and the organization’s ongoing work to keep teens safe. -Ed

The Partnership for Drug-Free Kids is dedicated to reducing teen substance abuse and helping families impacted by addiction. We are the only family-focused nonprofit that provides resources and direct support to help families prevent and cope with teen drug and alcohol abuse.

The modern path to substance abuse looks very different than it did when today's parents were teens themselves. As we all know, people are spending more of their time online, across a variety of connected devices.  As a result, it’s increasingly important for our information to be accessible anytime, on the web and in mobile apps.

Thanks to a recent donation from Google, we’ve created innovative new content and tools that will help countless families find answers in the midst of a crisis, or before one ever happens.

Since beginning our work together in April, Google has funded search advertising campaigns, helped develop a mobile app with substance abuse-related information, improved our website, and plans to revamp our YouTube channel.  All of this is complemented by their ongoing efforts to fight rogue online pharmacies — Google has removed more than 7 million ads for these outfits this year alone. This work makes it harder for people to buy controlled substances online without a valid prescription, thereby reducing illicit access to these medications and reducing abuse.  

Search advertising campaigns funded by Google

Users will be able to find information about substance-abuse including: images, common slang terms, short- and long-term effects of each drug, and how to get help in our upcoming mobile app

Our national action campaign, the Medicine Abuse Project, is rallying parents, educators, health care providers, communities, and law enforcement to collectively help prevent half a million teens from abusing prescription drugs and over-the-counter cough medicine.  Thanks to invaluable partners like Google, we are able to expand our reach, sharpen our tools and help parents navigate the teen years with help at their fingertips.

Posted by Steve Pasierb, President and CEO, Partnership for Drug-Free Kids

As the old saying goes, “News is something somebody wants to suppress. All the rest is advertising.” We agree: Investigative journalism is a crucial pillar of free societies. That’s why we’re holding an “Investigathon” in New York City to share and practice new ways to make investigations more powerful.

It all starts with data. With the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, we’ve built the Investigative Dashboard to help investigators trace shell company ownership around the world. At the Investigathon, 100 investigators of all stripes will spend the afternoon learning to use the Dashboard and other datasets to trace Eastern European money laundering activities. So many public records are already available to search, sometimes it’s just a question of knowing how to look.

Data only goes so far without tools. That’s why we’ve also been working with Overview Project to make it easier to sift through huge volumes of business records. The world doesn’t need more isolated platforms, so Overview Project will soon have standardized APIs to integrate directly into the Investigative Dashboard, Visual Investigative Scenarios, and beyond.

Finally, knowledge spreads through personal relationships based on trust, so we’re hoping to play a small role in strengthening the investigative journalism community on the East Coast. When we held our inaugural Investigathon in London, there was so much enthusiasm that Hacks/Hackers, Bellingcat, and OCCRP decided to run six-month series of follow-up workshops and convenings to support the work we started there.

The challenges of investigative journalists are immense, and the forces arranged against them are formidable. But if people are to have free and open access to the truths about their societies, investigators must stay one step ahead of those who would want to suppress that information. We aim to help, one step at a time.

Posted by Justin Kosslyn, Product Manager, Google Ideas

Cross-posted from the Google Europe Blog 

Last summer’s Snowden revelations not only highlighted the urgent need for surveillance reform but also severely damaged relations between the US and Europe.

Google and many other technology companies have urged the US to take the lead and introduce reforms that ensure government surveillance activity is clearly restricted by law, proportionate to the risks, transparent and subject to independent oversight. Sadly, we’ve seen little serious reform to date.

However, the US Government can signal a new attitude when representatives of the European Commission visit Washington DC tomorrow. Right now, European citizens do not have the right to challenge misuse of their data by the US government in US courts -- even though American citizens already enjoy this right in most European countries. It’s why Google supports legislation to extend the US Privacy Act to EU citizens. The Obama Administration has already pledged its support for this change and we look forward to to working with Congress to try and make this happen.

We understand that governments have a duty to protect their citizens. The emergence of ISIS and other new threats have reminded us all of the dangers we face. But the balance in the US and many other countries has tipped too far in favour of the state and away from the rights of the individual — rights that are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

As President Obama recently instructed his Intelligence agencies: “All persons should be treated with dignity and respect, regardless of their nationality or wherever they might reside, and that all persons have legitimate privacy interests in the handling of their personal information.”

Posted by David Drummond Chief Legal Officer, Google