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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

#141

Post by lonelappde »

ryanmccullagh wrote: post #106
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.

It’s clear you have no idea what this actor did. He staged a hate crime in Chicago and the main cook county attorney dropped the case after CPD proved it was fake. With your radical views, where do you draw the line? Will you vote to protect criminals, child abusers, rapist? All in an effort for “privacy”?

If you know this is true then you don't need to subpoena a year's worth of all his data.

Alexander Hamilton and James Madison also had "extreme" views

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

#142

Post by guelo »

perl4ever wrote: post #66
guelo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 politi…

If we killed some European general that was visiting some European country you would say that we had assassinated him.

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

#144

Post by lonelappde »

robocat wrote: post #41

On the flip side of the loss of privacy: location and similar data can be used as a solid alibi if you are accused incorrectly. How many people have been silently tagged as innocent because of their data stored? That said, ersonally I find the loss of privacy abhorrent, especially because I have fuck all rights in the US (not a citizen, so the US government and US corporations can abuse my personal information with v…

They could claim you faked your alibi data. If you innocently were near a crime you could be convicted by circumstantial evidence.

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

#145

Post by donarb »

bitexploder wrote: post #75
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…

This is all fine in theory. But why this guy? With limited prosecutorial resources, why are they doubling down on this guy? That is what I am always suspicious of.

This case is not specifically about Smollett. It's a about the perceived view that that prosecutor in the case was somehow compromised by abruptly dropping the charges. When she was asked why, she gave conflicting answers.

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

#146

Post by AlexandrB »

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?

It’s different because tech companies have inserted themselves as intermediaries into aspects of our lives that used to be essentially private. Activities such as: reading, dating, talking to friends, exercising, driving, reading a map, cooking, checking the weather, listening to music, watching movies, viewing pornography, getting medical advice, breaking and forming habits, menstruating, learning, sleeping, and many others are now frequently monitored and analyzed “in order to provide and improve the service”. All of this is subject to subpoena.

Edit: A few more: reading a newspaper, turning on a light, making a grocery list, setting the thermostat, going for a walk in the park.

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

#147

Post by viggity »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #78
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…

> They (the State prosecutors) With a warrant they convinced a court to issue. This is totally different from e.g. dragnet surveillance.

Exactly this. I've seen cases where a prosecutor has gotten a John Doe warrant to send to cell companies that effectively asked for the IDs of all phones that were present the closest cell tower at the times of multiple robberies (eg "give me all phones that were present at ABC tower on Monday at 1pm, DEF tower on Tuesday at 4pm, AND GHI tower on Thursday at 10am). Which obviously only the robber is likely to show up on. To me, they're effectively searching my data even though I don't meet all the criteria because I was only near one tower one day. This is way different than what the court did to Smollet. They already had tons of dirt on him - and thus probable clause to dig deeper.

I'd be weary of them using this data to try to go after him for some obscure crime completely unrelated to the false report (e.g. pics of him walking his dog in a state park that forbids pets).

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

#148

Post by raldi »

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…

Google's actually really good at truly destroying deleted things within something like 35 days.

If it's sitting on a backup tape in a vault somewhere, they delete all copies of the corresponding one-time personal decryption key instead.

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

#149

Post by inetknght »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #97
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.

>USPS has been storing images of all envelopes delivered for many years now. If this was of any doubt at all - they’ve made this accessible over email. If you enable “informed delivery” you get an email of the scan before it hits your mail box.

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

You mean those emails I get that the USPS claims it doesn't have an image for?

Oh don't worry they always have images of the blanket spam everyone gets. But actual mail with bills or letters? It's more usual to get "A piece of mail that we do not have an image for is included in today's mail."

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