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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

#371

Post by justaman »

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?

I don't believe it is different. Rather our trust in government has degraded in the last 100 years.

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

#372

Post by martin_a »

throwno wrote: post #298
martin_a wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only need those pop-ups if you are using cookies which are not "technical cookies". If you are using tracking technology based on cookies or anything that collects information specific to a user, you will need to show the cookie banner and give an opt-in. Otherwise tracking/analytics is not allowed. So... Every site you see this banner on has some dead bodies in their cellar and wants you to move on and not take…

If I don't want cookies, "technical" or otherwise, I'll browse incognito mode or block them by some other means. I don't need a European bureaucrat to get involved. Thanks.

As others have mentioned these notices are not for "us". "We" are the ones that _love_ to setup their own PiHoles, tunnel everything through some self-hosted VPN spread over the world, running adblockers, script blockers, private mode browsers, do not track-settings and so on. We're just fine. But the others are fucked. And they need laws and notices so they don't get screwed.

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

#373

Post by [deleted] »

nounaut wrote: post #252
ekianjo wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you can also view things a different way. It will be a lot harder for real criminals to get away with anything in the future. Now it becomes scary only if the authorities decide to go amok and make criminals of us all, but assuming it goes this way without anyone pushing back is not too realistic.

Many of the things we consider just and right today were illegal at one point in time but change was eventually made because of people who would have been considered criminals.

[deleted]

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

#374

Post by codingdave »

tyingq wrote: post #339
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…

Is there some line you don't want it to cross? As tech progresses, there will be increasingly more about everything you do that gets logged.

If any community has the power to reverse that trend, it is HN and the rest of the software community that actually builds the tech. I am constantly battling it in my own company, where they want to track everything our users do. And they even have some legit reasons for it, to use the data to build better UX, etc. I am the only person fighting against it, saying that tracking should be limited to only the cases where there is truly a compelling business question it can answer.

If Google were to apply the same logic to their tracking, we'd be in a better place. For example, they may want real-time location data for the traffic alerts when using Maps. And they may desire some aggregated form of that data long-term. But I cannot see any business benefit to Google maintaining my personal location data at specific times and dates in the past. There is zero business benefit to keep that level of detail in their logging.

Or, to answer your question more directly, that is the line I do not want to cross - where we are logging personal data "Just in case" we ever might need it. I'd like to see every piece of tracked data tied to a specific business need, and then have it deleted when that need no longer is relevant.

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

#375

Post by thrownblown »

tremon wrote: post #268
partisan wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the same thing. He is suing the city of Chicago for “malicious prosecution”. As part of that lawsuit, the city must attempt to show that the prosecution was not malicious. That’s different than stating that you would like to browse through someone’s history for the purpose of finding crimes where they may not exist.

What? They're collecting evidence post facto to argue whether the previous prosecution was malicious or not?

He's being sued by the city for the costs of the hate crime investigation.

He's counter-suing for malicious prosecution.

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

#376

Post by superhumanuser »

greedo wrote: post #368

“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.”

"Show me the man and I'll show you the crime."

- Lavrentiy Beria

(Most influential of Stalin’s secret police chiefs)

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

#377

Post by shakna »

stickfigure wrote: post #185
ethbro wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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.

Then why is the warrant not for _that_? Instead, we have a broad-reaching data pull that will be filled with a ton of information is irrelevant.

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

#378

Post by shakna »

PeterisP wrote: post #129
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.

This seems just as with any other search warrant - it's a specific search sanctioned by the court; just as a physical warrant for your house will involve LEO's that can search your underwear drawers for to verify if there's something relevant for the case, the same applies for your online records. There's no new precedent involved, noone ever had any privacy whatsoever from a properly court-approved search. What's th…

> This seems just as with any other search warrant - it's a specific search sanctioned by the court; just as a physical warrant for your house will involve LEO's that can search your underwear drawers for to verify if there's something relevant for the case, the same applies for your online records.

No, not really. A physical warrant might be issued for your home, your work and maybe one other place you frequent.

However, because this is very much not a specific search, but rather the whole year of data, it's more akin to issuing search warrants against every business you've walked passed in a year, whether or not you actually entered the premises, and that's just to begin with.

And if you tried to issue warrants in that matter, they wouldn't approved, because you do have certain reasonable expectations of privacy with regards to a court-approved search. Specifically, that a court will not explore things that are not pertinent to the case.

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

#379

Post by collyw »

Johnny555 wrote: post #136

Suddenly the inconvenience of moving to an encrypted email provider like ProtonMail doesn't sound too bad. I don't particularly have anything to hide, but I'm sure a prosecutor could find something suspicious in my emails if he looked hard enough. It wouldn't make my email completely inaccessible to the government (they could subpoena the sender), but would make it a lot less convenient to go on a fishing expedition.

I was wondering about this. If I switch to Proton, but 90% of my outgoing emails go to gmail accounts, google still has 90% of my email data.

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

#380

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]
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