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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

#81

Post by drevil-v2 »

Mirioron wrote: post #67
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…

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.[…

I wrote this comment elsewhere below but it still applies

The State has always been able to look up phone records, bank records, land records, criminal records, medical records etc etc as in order to pursue justice and prosecute.

How is this any different?

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

#82

Post by buboard »

perl4ever wrote: post #58
buboard wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> but people basically have no idea how courts work and that discovery is a thing

are you saying that courts have become so opaque and inaccessible to voters that they exert their power as an impenetrable cabal ? Or that people need a PhD to assess whether the law or its enforcement is good or bad?

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

#83

Post by ars »

keanzu wrote: post #54
thedailymail wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Then they would seize his phone and use that to decrypt the email.

Or order him to turn over his own email.

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

#84

Post by m0zg »

nl wrote: post #42
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.

The title is "Jussie Smollett investigation: Judge orders Google to turn over a full year of the actor’s data as part of special prosecutor probe" which seems to include the the actor's name? But then again, we all know why that is. I don't know who Jussie Smollett is (other than this story) and I'm completely in the dark what this is supposed to be implying. Maybe you are seeing headline optimisation? Is that what t…

Unless you lived in a cave in Afghanistan for the entirety of 2019 there's no way you don't know what I'm "implying".

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

#85

Post by perl4ever »

solveit wrote: post #55
perl4ever wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well, after...Googling...it, there's a little more to the story. It was actually a fight with Oracle about the usual stuff (Java patents), and the email itself was covered by attorney-client privilege, and therefore didn't have to be shown to the other side, but the drafts slipped through by accident because, you know, the subject didn't actually say "Attorney work product - confidential" until almost the final version. And although there is something called a "clawback", the judge ruled that their attempt was too little and too late. "Your honor, it's devastating to my case!"

Basically, Google relied on an algorithm/search engine to screen for privileged documents instead of having lawyers review things the old-fashioned way and they got bit by that.

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

#86

Post by fennecfoxen »

ohithereyou wrote: post #71
hnuser123456 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is yet another reason why for profit media should be taxed like cigarettes and liquor. People like it, it's bad for them, and it costs money to undo the damage it causes. Plow the money into courses on basic reasoning, civics, and grants to non-profit, independent media so that the people benefit when for profit media pushes a war for profit or racial divison for more ad revenue.

This suggestion befits an authoritarian dictatorship which seeks to control the press and muffle its critics, but it is ill-suited for a people who wish to remain free.

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

#87

Post by [deleted] »

drevil-v2 wrote: post #79
nilkn wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The State has always been able to look up phone records, bank records, land records, criminal records, medical records etc etc as in order to pursue justice and prosecute. This is a necessary "evil". We give up some freedoms so that we have a civilisation and an orderly society. And this isn't setting up any precedent that is egregious. This is on the front page of Chicago Tribune newspaper and on the front page of H…

[deleted]

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

#88

Post by analog31 »

drevil-v2 wrote: post #81
Mirioron wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.[…

I wrote this comment elsewhere below but it still applies The State has always been able to look up phone records, bank records, land records, criminal records, medical records etc etc as in order to pursue justice and prosecute. How is this any different?

In my view, the state has to ask a court to approve the purpose of each request, based on a reasonable hypothesis about what might be found.

How this seems different is the lack of any limitation on the kind of content that can be turned over. And in my view, that was a mistake on the judge's part for approving such a sweeping request.

For instance if I were accused of committing a crime against X, then I suppose that Google could be asked to turn over e-mails that I wrote about X, but not e-mails about my bicycle. This is how the system prevents the state from going on a hunting and fishing expedition.

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

#89

Post by nwallin »

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.

What's the difference between this and a normal warrant, where they take every scrap of paper and electronic equipment in your house?

If your objection is that it's weird Google has kept that data, sure. I get it, I use DuckDuckGo, Firefox, and I host my own email server on a VPN. I'm struggling to understand why this particular aspect is weird though. It seems totally normal that the government would seek this information as part of a criminal probe.

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

#90

Post by bilbo0s »

drevil-v2 wrote: post #79
nilkn wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The State has always been able to look up phone records, bank records, land records, criminal records, medical records etc etc as in order to pursue justice and prosecute. This is a necessary "evil". We give up some freedoms so that we have a civilisation and an orderly society. And this isn't setting up any precedent that is egregious. This is on the front page of Chicago Tribune newspaper and on the front page of H…

>Those things do happen and I think we should preserve our outrage for those moments

That creates an almost arbitrary, "this fits my worldview so I'll support rights this time" thought process. Like, "Well, this guy's a Nazi so we should trample his rights. But this woman's an abortion activist, so we should be sure to protect hers."

How do you propose we prevent ideological blindness in the protection of rights? Should we take the government's word that, "this time, it's really worth trampling rights"? Or would you create an unbiased oversight board that tells us when protecting rights is appropriate? Or should each person look at a case and decide for themselves whether or not they should take a stand against rights infringement?

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