Judge orders Google to turn over a full year of actor’s data • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by drevil-v2 » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 2:12 AM UTC

avs733 wrote: post #30

drevil-v2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

State has a duty to prosecute law breakers. This is a load bearing wall of civil society. Everywhere. Making sweeping general statements is good for riling up the mobs but I would implore HN readers to be more pragmatic about these things. Look at the context. This person sought to ignite racial tensions for personal gain. He was given a sweetheart deal. The State is going after him and those protected him. They (the…

yes we have seen you know how to make this comment. Another way to look at that 'duty' is to say [The] state has a responsibility to ensure justice for all. That may seem like the same thing but vagueness is at times valuable given that life rarely satisfies the black and white dichotomies many of us would prefer.

What exactly are you saying? That the State should let this one go?

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

#52

Post by cronix » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 2:12 AM UTC

crocodiletears wrote: post #36

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-sequit…

The other week I was out in a National Forest hiking. I was about 6 miles from the nearest Forest Service road. I took a break and sat there eating a sandwich and looked up to see a camera mounted on a tree about 4 feet from me. I imagine some hunter put it there. I'm just saying that even out in the middle of nowhere, not near any paved roads, there are still cameras watching and recording.

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

#53

Post by hnuser123456 » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 2:14 AM UTC

drevil-v2 wrote: post #20

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.

State has a duty to prosecute law breakers. This is a load bearing wall of civil society. Everywhere. Making sweeping general statements is good for riling up the mobs but I would implore HN readers to be more pragmatic about these things. Look at the context. This person sought to ignite racial tensions for personal gain. He was given a sweetheart deal. The State is going after him and those protected him. They (the…

The media seeks to ignite racial tensions for personal gains all the time, shouldn't we prosecute them too?

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

#54

Post by keanzu » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 2:14 AM UTC

thedailymail wrote: post #47

ars wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Queue the Google alternative posts. How would that help? They'll just get a warrant for those. > This is some terrifying stuff. You have a strange definition of terrifying. This is how the law is supposed to work. You do realize they can also go in his house and search through his things? Or order his friends to talk? That's what search warrants are.

>How would that help? They'll just get a warrant for those. If the business is not based in the US, it will make getting a search warrant much more difficult. Your (e.g.) Protonmail account is less likely to be subpoenaed than your Gmail.

Even if user data were seized, it would be impossible to decipher because of ProtonMail's encryption. Unlike Gmail or Outlook, email you send with ProtonMail is encrypted before it's sent to the ProtonMail servers.

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

#55

Post by solveit » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 2:15 AM UTC

perl4ever wrote: post #39

paxys wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sa…

It's incredibly interesting that unsent emails were used to support a case. Were they used to prove intent of some kind?

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

#56

Post by judge2020 » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 2:16 AM UTC

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 imagine that being distributed makes it easier to obtain the data for a person. If a court can't get data on a user from the the main server's owner, they might go after more vulnerable server owners that happened to be federated with the main server (vulnerable, as in less disposable income for lawyers).

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

#57

Post by drevil-v2 » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 2:16 AM UTC

hnuser123456 wrote: post #53

drevil-v2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

State has a duty to prosecute law breakers. This is a load bearing wall of civil society. Everywhere. Making sweeping general statements is good for riling up the mobs but I would implore HN readers to be more pragmatic about these things. Look at the context. This person sought to ignite racial tensions for personal gain. He was given a sweetheart deal. The State is going after him and those protected him. They (the…

The media seeks to ignite racial tensions for personal gains all the time, shouldn't we prosecute them too?

I think CNN just found out the answer to that the hard way. They settled with that Covington kid.

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

#58

Post by perl4ever » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 2:17 AM UTC

buboard wrote: post #45

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the time when libertarian lunatics figure out how to convince enough people to change the accepted meaning of the word "terrorism"? I mean... you obviously don't like this, and many people agree, on very reasonable grounds. But it just is not terrorism. It's sort of how boiled mushrooms are not "death", even though I have equal affinity to both concepts.

its not civil to call people lunatics because of their beliefs. and yeah, i said terrorism because it is a completely fickle, undefined term yet governments can use it to instill all kinds of violence. but when ordinary people use it they "have to define it". i can see the double standard.

It's not civil, but people basically have no idea how courts work and that discovery is a thing.

So "spectacularly ignorant" might be a better alternative to "lunatic", but that isn't polite either.

It's kind of like how Matt Levine was making fun of Carlos Ghosn today for saying "I was brutally taken from my world as I knew it".

``Yes, right, that perfectly and exactly describes the experience of every single person who is arrested and sent to jail. Very few of them like it! And he’s not wrong, it is a bad thing to take people away from their friends and families and everyday lives. It’s just, you know, that’s kind of the deal, with jail. In general society does not seem especially responsive to arguments of the form “I do not want to stand trial for these crimes, because I’d rather hang out with my friends.” ''

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

#59

Post by crocodiletears » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 2:18 AM UTC

cronix wrote: post #52

crocodiletears wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-sequit…

The other week I was out in a National Forest hiking. I was about 6 miles from the nearest Forest Service road. I took a break and sat there eating a sandwich and looked up to see a camera mounted on a tree about 4 feet from me. I imagine some hunter put it there. I'm just saying that even out in the middle of nowhere, not near any paved roads, there are still cameras watching and recording.

Dishearteningly true.

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

#60

Post by nilkn » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 2:18 AM UTC

drevil-v2 wrote: post #20

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.

State has a duty to prosecute law breakers. This is a load bearing wall of civil society. Everywhere. Making sweeping general statements is good for riling up the mobs but I would implore HN readers to be more pragmatic about these things. Look at the context. This person sought to ignite racial tensions for personal gain. He was given a sweetheart deal. The State is going after him and those protected him. They (the…

He allegedly did something quite bad, and if guilty I’d like him to face justice. But if the cost of convicting him is setting a precedent that effectively strips hundreds of millions of people of their privacy and subjects us all to an unofficial form of state surveillance, then let him walk.