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Judge orders Google to turn over a full year of actor’s data

chicagotribune.com

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Re: Judge orders Google to turn over a full year of actor’s data

#31

Post by keanzu »

buboard wrote: post #16

at what point does this projection of judicial power against individuals in the name of safety (whose safety? whats really at stake here even?) become terrorism?

Are you trying to say: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." ?

Become terrorism? To answer that we'll first need to define "terrorism".

There are over 109 different definitions of terrorism. It is not only individual agencies within the same governmental apparatus that cannot agree on a single definition of terrorism. Experts and other long-established scholars in the field are equally incapable of reaching a consensus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism#Modern_definitions

Re: Judge orders Google to turn over a full year of actor’s data

#32

Post by ars »

paxys wrote: post #24
abbadadda wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Queue the Google alternative posts. This is some terrifying stuff. > not just emails but also drafted and deleted messages; any files in their Google Drive cloud storage services; any Google Voice texts, calls and contacts; search and web browsing history; and location data.

The scariest part is that this amount of data access can be very effectively weaponized to build a strong case against anyone . All of us are inadvertently breaking some law or the other all the time. If the government doesn't like you for any reason they are one court order away from blackmailing you or putting you away.

> they are one court order away

The implication being that the courts are corrupt?

If that's the case I think you have way worse things to worry about than "data access", the courts have much greater powers than that.

Re: Judge orders Google to turn over a full year of actor’s data

#33

Post by Spooky23 »

zadokshi wrote: post #21

Is this different in any practical sense to an old fashioned request for physical paper documents? The only difference I can think of is traditionally documents are destroyed after they are no longer needed. Now they can see “deleted” documents and document change history. i.e. emails stored locally on a personal or company server can be permanently destroyed. Traditional email systems won’t have a change history of…

No. The only difference is that you typically don’t put papers in the custody of a third party.

My dad at one point was an inspector general at a government agency. They would use records and “physical metadata” like building logs and receipts for the purposes of their work. The difference today is that your allowing many third parties to gather that data.

That’s the key thing. If you store data in the custody of a third party, it isn’t yours.

Re: Judge orders Google to turn over a full year of actor’s data

#34

Post by greglindahl »

doodliego wrote: post #15
alexfromapex wrote: post #5

Highly disturbing that the court is allowed to request that much data without any legal restrictions [on privacy].

This is a court-authorized search warrant authorized by a aitting judge. It doesn't get any more legal than that, and it's Google or any other company's legal duty to comply.

It certainly can get more legal than that -- Google (or the target, if they somehow found out) could appeal against the warrant, which would result in another round in the courts.

Re: Judge orders Google to turn over a full year of actor’s data

#35

Post by keanzu »

m0zg wrote: post #18

I (rhetorically) wonder why the title does not contain the "actor's" name. But then again, we all know why that is.

Full title -> Jussie Smollett investigation: Judge orders Google to turn over a full year of the actor’s data as part of special prosecutor probe

Too long for HN? Unknown. The title reads fine in the Chicago Tribune.

Re: Judge orders Google to turn over a full year of actor’s data

#36

Post by crocodiletears »

0xADADA wrote: post #3

I (and we should all) act as if this could happen to anyone. Essentially that the state can deputize any company to snitch on the digital ephemera that constitutes our daily lives, but especially those that we are deeply engaged: Google, Facebook, Lyft, Amazon. As such, we should not self-censor, but instead disengage from these proxy-cops and move to more distributed spaces.

I disagree on your last point.

Whether it's Google, Microsoft, your ISP, a databroker, a webscraper, an unscrupulous app developer, or even your TV, I think it's safe to assume that one day or the next, every piece of content you produce, or topic you discuss will leak its way onto a major adcorp's servers.

I can hardly think of anyone I know that can't attest to the experience of discussing something as a non-sequitur, only to receive ads about it shortly thereafter. Even visiting an old friend with vastly different interests, never enabling location services, or connecting to their WiFi, I've noticed vast changes in my ad regime.

Decentralising your web activity can only make you less easily monetizable, but you'll never escape the panopticon, and Google can release data it got from third-parties just as easily as the data it collected itself.

If you want to say something you don't want Facebook, Amazon, MS, Google, or the state to hear about, do it in the woods or a private room away from anything digital.

Re: Judge orders Google to turn over a full year of actor’s data

#37

Post by Spooky23 »

keanzu wrote: post #23
zadokshi wrote: post #21

Is this different in any practical sense to an old fashioned request for physical paper documents? The only difference I can think of is traditionally documents are destroyed after they are no longer needed. Now they can see “deleted” documents and document change history. i.e. emails stored locally on a personal or company server can be permanently destroyed. Traditional email systems won’t have a change history of…

Quality of the record keeping is vastly higher. Imagine a subpoena for every paper mail you sent in a year. You can't get that from the US Postal service.

USPS has been storing images of all envelopes delivered for many years now.

Prior to that, it was possible to have that information manually logged. If you corresponded with people in a Warsaw Pact country in the 1960s, that mail was recorded and sometimes opened.

Re: Judge orders Google to turn over a full year of actor’s data

#39

Post by perl4ever »

paxys wrote: post #24
abbadadda wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Queue the Google alternative posts. This is some terrifying stuff. > not just emails but also drafted and deleted messages; any files in their Google Drive cloud storage services; any Google Voice texts, calls and contacts; search and web browsing history; and location data.

The scariest part is that this amount of data access can be very effectively weaponized to build a strong case against anyone . All of us are inadvertently breaking some law or the other all the time. If the government doesn't like you for any reason they are one court order away from blackmailing you or putting you away.

Including Google. There was a well-publicized case in which they were "hoist on their own petard" a few years back.

What happened, basically, from memory, is that someone was arguing that Google did something wrong (I forget, but it might have been the collusion to keep down employee wages or something) and so there was discovery of emails by Google, and they eat their own dogfood so it was gmail.

So Google smugly said "hah, there aren't any incriminating emails", but then it turned out that the autosaved drafts of some of their emails were incriminating, and were preserved, and ended up being produced in court.

So remember that the next time you type an email or a forum or facebook post, and you revise it extensively before hitting the button to send it.

Re: Judge orders Google to turn over a full year of actor’s data

#40

Post by Spooky23 »

abbadadda wrote: post #10
0xADADA wrote: post #3

I (and we should all) act as if this could happen to anyone. Essentially that the state can deputize any company to snitch on the digital ephemera that constitutes our daily lives, but especially those that we are deeply engaged: Google, Facebook, Lyft, Amazon. As such, we should not self-censor, but instead disengage from these proxy-cops and move to more distributed spaces.

Queue the Google alternative posts. This is some terrifying stuff. > not just emails but also drafted and deleted messages; any files in their Google Drive cloud storage services; any Google Voice texts, calls and contacts; search and web browsing history; and location data.

It should be queue the reduce use of electronic communications posts.

This isn’t a phenomenon unique to Google. Google just attracts attention because of the broad scope of what they do.

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