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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

#181

Post by Fezzik »

cavisne wrote: post #158
bitexploder wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine they have a lot of more serious crimes to pursue. This just seems to be high publicity so it is getting more resources. That means other crimes with high impact victims get de-prioritized. Plus it is Chicago, it is still rather corrupt there. I would mistrust anything with publicity involved until it is proven to be valid.

Something that should never be overlooked in this case is that after police identified the suspects and made arrests Smollett still stuck to his lie. He was ready to send innocent people to a potential life sentence or the death penalty (which is how hate crimes are treated), and in fact is still maintaining his lie. All over a contract dispute. Evil stuff.

Not to diminish what a dunce this guy was, but the only crimes currently punishable by death in the US are ones in which the victim has died. And maybe treason, espionage, and other weird crimes against the government. Those are unclear at the moment.

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

#182

Post by avionicsguy »

raldi wrote: post #148
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.

So is Microsoft, at least, on Linked-In. I tested it last year and deleted my profile. Had a friend check and everything was gone...Everything including public posts.

LinkedIn has a remorse period of something like 21 days. And I had plan to test recovery process also. Then got busy with a contract and was too late to recover. It's awesome!

I think any global IT company must deal with GDPR kind of like most automakers in U.S. follow California emission standards. It's easier to create a policy for all than create "one off" policies for a geopolitical region.

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

#183

Post by paganel »

nl wrote: post #119
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m pretty sure this French actor is a household name by now.

Perhaps in some circles. I'm not in the US and had never heard of him. I did a Facebook search restricted to "Your Friends" and another restricted to "Your Groups and Pages" and there is zero coverage. I think people are overestimating how well known this guy is.

Same here (I live in Romania), never heard about the actor and I think I have only read some general stuff about the case itself on reddit some time ago, but I didn’t give it any importance. Not to mention that me living in the EU means that I couldn’t read the posted article at all.

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

#184

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

keiferski wrote: post #170

The deeper problem is that old laws are being used to deal with new behaviors. This inadequacy will continue to grow as human beings and computers slowly merge over the next century or two, where at some point, “your Google data” will be more-and-more equivalent to “all of your thoughts.” Those who say that this is justified because warrants were obtained seem to miss the point that state’s ability and desire to gath…

I'd say that very much depends on why you believe the warrant process exists in the first place. I honestly don't know that much about the historical context of search warrants. Do they exist because philosophers of old believed in a right to privacy as an end unto itself? Or do they exist for some more practical reason, like because they were used for extra legal retaliation against enemies of the state, or for intimidation, or to go on fishing expeditions.

Or, why does the protection from self-incrimination exist? Is it because we are concerned that the government might have access to your thoughts? Or is it because the government would torture people to get confessions, and the people wanted to remove the incentive to do so?

Depending on your belief about this, you might feel differently about what should be done about this Google situation. If you believe the latter view in the second paragraph, for example, you might have no problem with the breadth of the search. In fact, you might not even have a problem with involuntary brain scans, provided they were proven accurate. As long as the rule of law is strong and the materials were used only for a defined and limited purpose, you might think it would be better if the government could compel the true personal perspective of the accused.

So this really enters into questions about each individual's perspective on the purpose and value of privacy. I think it might not be accurate to say that people who say it is justified are missing the point. They might just think the point is different from what you think it is.

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

#185

Post by stickfigure »

ethbro wrote: post #151
drevil-v2 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you propose that works? Someone at Google searches for the information? An algorithm or an actual Google employee? If it is a human being then what about your privacy then? What if the Jussie and his manager were using codewords to disguise intent? A search algorithm would not be able to recognise that but a human being can easily infer meaning and intent from the context. What then? There are no easy answers.

Warrants shouldn't be intended to discover evidence, they should be intended to secure evidence that is expected to exist in a particular location . This distinction wasn't a major concern when the former was impractical. Because of digital records and search agents, suddenly either is practical. The intent of privacy law has always been to raise the cost of targeted prosecution. E.g. "We want to charge this person w…

I'm missing something.

In this case, the state is expecting evidence to exist in the form of incriminating email communication between Smollett and his manager, and possibly additional people. From the public evidence so far, it sure seems like a reasonable expectation! I'm a pretty hardcore civil libertarian, and I'm having a hard time faulting the judge here.

What else do you expect?

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

#186

Post by Mauricio_ »

crocodiletears wrote: post #178
Mauricio_ wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. No way in hell that's true. Things are bad enough, you don't need to make stuff up.

I'm working from my personal experience. If you've never had something similar happen, then good for you. I'll admit that it's quite likely that advertising algorithms are sophisticated enough to anticipate our needs based on previous behaviours with uncanny precision and timing. But I don't trust to that, given the proliferation of cheaply made gimmick apps which contain embedded third party ad libraries. Since I ha…

It's 3am so I'll read the article tomorrow.

In the mean time: I think it would be trivially easy to verify: just take a rooted phone and log accesses to the microphone. Somebody would've found that it's being activated when it shouldn't by now.

>I'll admit that it's quite likely that advertising algorithms are sophisticated enough to anticipate our needs based on previous behaviours with uncanny precision and timing.

Or it could be that among the hundreds of random ads we see online everyday one of two happen to be related to one of the dozens of conversations we had in the past days.

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

#187

Post by brigandish »

russler23 wrote: post #134
brigandish wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was no chance of that happening Mens rea is the guilty mind required for something to be a crime. Intent matters as much as outcome or chance of outcome in the judgement of whether a crime has occurred, and explains the use of "sought" in the comment you replied to.

Well, it hadn’t even entered my mind that increasing racial tensions could be a crime, so that didn’t make it through my legal framework. Why did it occur to you?

His actions and motivations in committing a crime, alleged or proven, are relevant, that's why it entered my mind - he is under investigation for a crime, is he not? Igniting racial tensions doesn't need to be the crime, just as stealing money to pay off debts doesn't make paying off debts a crime, but it's still relevant in showing mens rea and the kind of mens rea e.g. knowing, negligent, reckless etc and in assessment of the effects of his actions.

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

#188

Post by busymom0 »

burfog wrote: post #160
bitexploder wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine they have a lot of more serious crimes to pursue. This just seems to be high publicity so it is getting more resources. That means other crimes with high impact victims get de-prioritized. Plus it is Chicago, it is still rather corrupt there. I would mistrust anything with publicity involved until it is proven to be valid.

The fake lynching looks like a crime done in order to pass a law, possibly to help someone get elected president, which is quite serious. Dropping the charges is highly suspicious too, having been done by people who were also associated with the presidential candidates trying to get their law passed.

Yep. The prosecuter who dropped the charges was also being mentored at the time by the senator who was trying to pass the "anti-lynching" law the same week. Their bill had failed several times, then this incident happened and the bill passed within a week. The actor was also close friends with the same senator.

This story isn't about politics, it's about corruption at the high offices.

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

#189

Post by stickfigure »

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.

But why this guy?

How about "because he couldn't let sleeping dogs lie"? The guy got a lucky break when someone dropped the prosecution. He had the opportunity to shut up and let the story fade away. He didn't take it.

No matter how lucky you are, if you keep doubling down, eventually the house takes your money.

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

#190

Post by nl »

m0zg wrote: post #159
nl wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it damage the liberal narrative? Wouldn't it add sympathy to him (given that most of the comments here are against the idea of Google getting access to his data) I really think you are overestimating how many people have heard if this guy (who seems pretty dodgy) and are looking for reasons to be offended here.

I have another example of self-censorship to further a narrative: your tweeting about Australian brush fires doesn't mention arson even once. https://twitter.com/search?q=%40nlothian%20arson&src=typd

Seriously? You are stalking me now? In which world is that good behaviour and why do you think it's relevant?

I hadn't mentioned arson because it's stupid. If you go stalk my HN comments you'll find I talk about it there and ironically I did write something about arson, around about the time you wrote this: https://mobile.twitter.com/nlothian/status/12151167074522439... - the short version is that every year roughly 50% of the bushfires in Australia are deliberately lit or suspicious, and there is nothing to indicate this year is any different.

And seriously? Are you really trying to somehow tie Australian bushfires to some wacky case in the US? What is wrong with you?

To make it clear: assuming the impression I get from this report then I think this actor guy should go to prison for false reports. That still doesn't mean I'd ever heard of him before.

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