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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

#61

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

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

#62

Post by bananocurrency »

judge2020 wrote: post #56
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).

distributed !== decentralized

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

#63

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#64

Post by [deleted] »

drevil-v2 wrote: post #51
avs733 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

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

#65

Post by nkurz »

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.

I chose to shorten the title in the way that I did because I hoped it would help focus the discussion on the civil liberties and surveillance aspects rather than on the specifics of Smollet's case. Happily, based on the comments so far, this seems to have worked.

I also worried that if I used his name, it would be flagged as off-topic before any useful discussion could happen. Does this explanation this match your assumption? One of the odd things about "we all know" is that often enough, we don't all know, or even agree.

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

#66

Post by perl4ever »

guelo wrote: post #22
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?

A bit of an aside. Terrorism is a useless word now besides its propaganda value. The USA just declares whoever they don't like to be a terrorist, like how they just did to Iran's army, and now apparently they can legally assassinate any Iranian soldier. What's funny is Iran wants in on this propaganda game now, they designated the US army as terrorists.

I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense to talk about "assassinating" soldiers any more than "terrorist attacks" on them. Those are things done to civilians by definition. We certainly don't want to promote the idea that "collateral damage" is necessary for a military operation to be ethical.

I think terrorism has a perfectly good definition - political lobbying/influence "by other means" than conventional politics, i.e. attacking and terrorizing civilians. Doesn't matter who does it or how exactly.

Maybe the US government doesn't exactly use that definition, but that doesn't mean there is no such thing as terrorism.

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

#67

Post by Mirioron »

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…

I would agree with you if our legal systems were built for that, but our legal systems are built to deal with a society that has privacy. People unknowingly commit crimes, or implicate themselves in crimes, all the time, because there are too many ways to do that. No reasonable person can be expected to avoid committing crimes when the government itself can't even keep track of the number of criminal laws there are.[0] You're supposed to follow rules that the government itself can't even keep count of. This works reasonably well as long as the government doesn't have evidence about everything you've done, but the moment that they can track a large chunk of your life is when this system stops working.

With data from Google they can prosecute you for all the things you've done wrong or seem to have done wrong. It just takes an ambitious prosecutor to do it. This pretty much destroys the point of the fifth amendment. The "Don't Talk to the Police" lecture [1] is still relevant today, but if the state has this much evidence of what you do, then I'm not sure that will protect people. It is a nightmare scenario if this sets a precedent on law enforcement being able to vacuum up all of your data about your life.

I agree that Smollett seemingly getting a slap on the wrist was outrageous, but I think that this is Pandora's Box that they're playing with.

[0] https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2013/03/frequent-reference-questio...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

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

#68

Post by Daneel_ »

keanzu wrote: post #48
Spooky23 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Knowing a letter was delivered by USPS doesn't yield the contents. The state would have to subpoena each individual recipient - and they may have destroyed or lost the letter. It would only be equivalent if every letter was opened and recorded so that all the contents would later be available because this subpoena covers not just emails but also drafted and deleted messages; any files in their Google Drive cloud stor…

Sometimes the contents almost don't matter. For example, if you saw multiple letters from an oncology department to a household, followed by letters from government departments and a funeral home, it wouldn't be hard to figure out what was going on.

It's the exact same problem with phone metadata. The connections can be made to tell the story, and are even easier to manipulate into whatever narrative the prosecution wants to sell.

In my example, you probably thought "person has cancer, household receives letters from the government post-death, bill from the funeral home", which is exactly how it could be sold. But it could just as easily be "person beating cancer, household receives government forms related to healthcare subsidies, funeral home letter was a condolence letter sent one year after the death of their parent." This is why metadata is so dangerous, it's far too easy to spin.

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

#69

Post by Dylan16807 »

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…

> State has a duty to prosecute law breakers. This is a load bearing wall of civil society. Everywhere.

That doesn't mean there should be enormous databases of everything people do for the state to access at will.

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

#70

Post by Spooky23 »

perl4ever wrote: post #49
Spooky23 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Well, people do typically put papers in the custody of a third party. Always have. Pretty much every paper that is involved in discovery is classified by the "custodian". Also of course, all the digital information, but traditionally it's paper. If you use and/or have a dispute with a lawyer, a doctor, a contractor, an accountant, whatever, they're going to have papers pertaining to you.

I’m talking about an individual, not a business scenario. Your papers in your custody in your home are only accessible via warrant, as opposed to your online stuff that requires as little as an administrative subpoena.

Your doctor and attorney are unique in that professional relationship is legally privileged.

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