Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No reasonable expectation of privacy in one's Google location data

fourthamendment.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 172 posts

Re: No reasonable expectation of privacy in one's Google location data

#51

Post by brookst »

rayiner wrote: post #44
jmward01 wrote: post #9

Missing from this is the reality that the modern world increasingly requires using these applications. It is meaningless to present an option you are forced to agree to. Additionally there is, to me, a big difference between me enabling an app to use my data for the service I believe it provides and them using it for everything else.

That’s neither here nor there. The question is do you reasonably expect that this information is private. The answer is obviously “no,” because you’re handing the information over to a company with hundreds of thousands of employees. Whether you think you have a good reason to give up your privacy like that or not is neither here nor there.

Wait, so if I get medical care a company with United Health, a company with hundreds of thousands of employees, I have no expectation of privacy just because of their headcount?

Re: No reasonable expectation of privacy in one's Google location data

#52

Post by modeless »

judge2020 wrote: post #30
toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

Google is pushing location data to devices and purging it on servers. From a citation within my comment I’ve cited below: > This change means that Google will no longer respond to geofence warrants from law enforcement that request information on all devices near a particular incident. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40869536 (edit to fix my mistake, thank you Centigonal!)

The actual accuracy is worse than before but it’s a welcome change. They do still offer a way to keep an encrypted backup of the database on Google servers (so you don’t lose it if you lose your phone) but its disabled by default and it doesn’t even have a modal popup making it easy to enable backups, you have to specifically click the UI button to see the modal with the info sheet and a button to enable backing it u…

Thank you for posting this. I had no idea that there was a default off option to keep encrypted backups. I would be pretty mad if I lost all my years of timeline data because I switched phones. It's ridiculous that Google didn't even show an option for this in the long and needlessly convoluted migration process.

Re: No reasonable expectation of privacy in one's Google location data

#53

Post by AnthonyMouse »

_heimdall wrote: post #38
jmward01 wrote: post #9

Missing from this is the reality that the modern world increasingly requires using these applications. It is meaningless to present an option you are forced to agree to. Additionally there is, to me, a big difference between me enabling an app to use my data for the service I believe it provides and them using it for everything else.

> Missing from this is the reality that the modern world increasingly requires using these applications We don't have to accept this though, everyone in the modern world makes a choice to accept the implied requirements of being part of the system. We accept the assumption that we are all online, that we all have a mobile phone, and that we all keep up with news and pop culture to an extent that we all seem to zero i…

The problem here is that the choices are all glued together. If you disable saving location history to third party servers and all your apps still work by just using it locally, that's one thing, and certainly when that option is available then people should choose it.

But if disabling third party storage breaks the apps, you can nominally stop using the apps, but that's often not a viable option and even if it isn't completely infeasible the user will be under significant pressure to indicate consent even if they would prefer not to. That's not where we want to be.

Re: No reasonable expectation of privacy in one's Google location data

#54

Post by jmward01 »

gruez wrote: post #18
jmward01 wrote: post #9

Missing from this is the reality that the modern world increasingly requires using these applications. It is meaningless to present an option you are forced to agree to. Additionally there is, to me, a big difference between me enabling an app to use my data for the service I believe it provides and them using it for everything else.

>Missing from this is the reality that the modern world increasingly requires using these applications From the second paragraph in the linked article: >Location History is turned off by default, so a user must take several affirmative steps before Google begins tracking and storing his Location History data. [...] Roughly one-third of active Google users have enabled Location History. This is specifically about the…

1/3 of active google users is a lot of people to opt into giving away their privacy. Either they actually don't understand what they did, understand but were forced in some way or understand and truly believe the value of the service was worth the privacy invasion. It is pure speculation on my part but my guess is that the first two reasons dwarf the third. The decision in question though would, in my view, only have merit if the third answer was overwhelmingly the case.

Re: No reasonable expectation of privacy in one's Google location data

#55

Post by inejge »

kibwen wrote: post #32
steelframe wrote: post #29

I run GrapheneOS on my phone and have all location permissions denied for everything except for (offline) Organic Maps. I also make it a habit of keeping airplane mode enabled except on the (very) rare occasion when I need to make an outbound phone call while out of the house. With the recent revelations about the triangulated location data that AT&T left exposed for all of its customers I don't feel like this is an…

It's not an overreaction. The idea of everyone willingly sharing the details of their every movement with sociopathic corporations who are beholden to national security letters would have been met with ridicule 30 years ago.

I don't think that actual history supports that assertion. 30 years ago, cellular networks were really taking off and people were starting to use mobile phones en masse. Always on, pinging the base stations, delivering that data to equally sociopathic and beholden carriers. The public was not up in arms.

What's changed in the meantime, aside from the richness and granularity of location data, is awareness of the potential for the abuse of it all, supported by well-publicized incidents. Which is a good thing; the public is quite tolerant of invisible machinations, as long as they remain distant and abstract.

Re: No reasonable expectation of privacy in one's Google location data

#56

Post by treebeard901 »

Location history is really just a setting asking if you want to see your own location data.

All of your location data from the E911 system through to Google Play Services and on to maps, etc is constantly being collected then sold and collated among all these companies.

It is impossible on a modern cellphone to fully disable reporting of your location to any provider in the stack.

Re: No reasonable expectation of privacy in one's Google location data

#57

Post by jkhanlar »

gruez wrote: post #27
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google used to (still does?) disable many features of Maps if location history was disabled. I kept it off, but could easily see many people felt forced to give up on their privacy for the convenience.

Source? I remember them disabling search history if you didn't sign in, but not any other critical features. Moreover as I mentioned in my previous comment, only a third has this feature enabled, so whatever feature google is withholding must not be that important to most people.

> "so whatever feature google is withholding must not be that important to most people."

correction: to most institutional investors that take precedent over the end user people

Re: No reasonable expectation of privacy in one's Google location data

#58

Post by gleenn »

lokar wrote: post #5
gleenn wrote: post #3

How is turning on a feature the same thing as handing data it collects to Google etc? I turned on computer backups, does that mean the feds can read all of that?

Sharing your personal information with a 3rd party reduces your claim to privacy and 4th amendment rights.

I'm not sure I'm making any better argument, but technically it's 2nd party. If I turned on a Google feature, that's between us. And honestly that's kind of the point I'm trying to make. Enabling a feature doesn't mean I want anyone to have access to that features data.

Re: No reasonable expectation of privacy in one's Google location data

#59

Post by gruez »

jmward01 wrote: post #54
gruez wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Missing from this is the reality that the modern world increasingly requires using these applications From the second paragraph in the linked article: >Location History is turned off by default, so a user must take several affirmative steps before Google begins tracking and storing his Location History data. [...] Roughly one-third of active Google users have enabled Location History. This is specifically about the…

1/3 of active google users is a lot of people to opt into giving away their privacy. Either they actually don't understand what they did, understand but were forced in some way or understand and truly believe the value of the service was worth the privacy invasion. It is pure speculation on my part but my guess is that the first two reasons dwarf the third. The decision in question though would, in my view, only have…

Have you considered the possibility that the average person doesn't care that much about privacy? That's entirely consistent with other things you can observe, like the lack of response to the Snowden leaks, or how commonly excuses like "nothing to hide" are invoked.

Re: No reasonable expectation of privacy in one's Google location data

#60

Post by dabber »

justinpombrio wrote: post #47
_heimdall wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Missing from this is the reality that the modern world increasingly requires using these applications We don't have to accept this though, everyone in the modern world makes a choice to accept the implied requirements of being part of the system. We accept the assumption that we are all online, that we all have a mobile phone, and that we all keep up with news and pop culture to an extent that we all seem to zero i…

> Anyone can choose to avoid any one of these parts of the modern world. Well my apartment building is about to replace the doorbells with a cell phone app (or phone calls as an alternative). No cell phone -> no door bell. I'm just a renter; I get no say in the matter.

> I'm just a renter; I get no say in the matter.

Surely you evaluated alternative apartments before deciding to rent at the one you are currently in, right?

Post reply on HN