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

fourthamendment.com

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

#111

Post by rjh29 »

modeless wrote: post #66
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.

This is false. The "Location History" setting that the article is talking about is a different feature entirely from the "Web and App Activity" setting that you are referencing. "Location History" has never been required for any Google Maps features other than (obviously) Timeline, AFAIK.

I have it disabled and at the very least I have to type my location in every time on desktop because it doesn't track frequently visited places locally

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

#113

Post by ajb »

coldtea wrote: post #106
ajb wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statistically, you can't rely on having a non-repressive government for your entire lifetime. The US has been fortunate in missing out on it for quite a while, but even then there has been HUAC and J Edgar Hoover, even if they didn't take over the whole government.

Not just those, the goverment has been historically repressive of many minorities, using the police to do this, from blacks to native americans, labour advocates, activists, and other categories, that's not confined to the HUAC and Hoover era.

Absolutely. Wasn't trying to make an exhaustive list.

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

#114

Post by jffry »

cpcallen wrote: post #102
judge2020 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Since reading this I've gone looking for the setting in Maps (on iOS) but not been able to find it. Can you tell me where it is?

Maybe it's similar to the Android app. If so:

1. Open Google Maps

2. Tap my profile photo at top right

3. Pick "Your Timeline" from the menu

4. Tap the cloud icon in top navbar

5. Toggle the option to enable cloud backup

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

#115

Post by jppittma »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #75
gruez wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Have you considered the possibility that the average person doesn't care that much about privacy? I have. I considered it in depth and did a good deal of psychological research on it. Then I went out onto the street and asked people; dozens and dozens of ordinary people, old, young, rich, poor... Result: People really care about privacy. You can read all about it in the podcast and blog I am not allowed to mention…

When you say “profitable software designs” my bet is that if you have any person off the street a “tour” of google and how their data is actually treated, more than 1/3 of them would be okay with sharing that information, and wouldn’t believe it to be a violation of their privacy.

What happened to Google on privacy could easily happen to any company- people complained about the total amount of data Google had, the gut response of the devs was

“oh, you can trust us, we’re not using it for anything nefarious, just features/debugging”

And then Apple took that and used it as a marketing opportunity.

And now, once you get to a certain size, you start having to develop without metrics/logs, or go through a bunch of red tape to get them.

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

#116

Post by poisonborz »

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #39

Get an iPhone. Android and iOS are equivalent, while Apple’s revenue is overwhelmingly based on hardware and services, unlike Google’s revenue which is overwhelmingly based on advertising and tracking.

> Android and iOS are equivalent How can you write this after using both for like 10 minutes

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

#117

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #39

Get an iPhone. Android and iOS are equivalent, while Apple’s revenue is overwhelmingly based on hardware and services, unlike Google’s revenue which is overwhelmingly based on advertising and tracking.

Apple sells your traffic to Google for tens of billions of dollars. Of course they're not leaving the equivalent money on the table, they just hope people will be fooled by the indirection.

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

#118

Post by zo1 »

modeless wrote: post #52
judge2020 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google's handling of this "change" was disastrous. I also value my timeline data and would hate to lose it.

Google's solution was to force me to acknowledge some weird dialog that had minimal information about the impact. This is beyond asinine and I don't know how they can say they gave me any informed consent on the change - the whole thing is bizarre.

I took a screenshot, and left it running for a few hours while I stewed over it luckily. Then went and confirmed the "backup" of my timeline afterwards just to be sure. But who knows if this "feature" even works as before, even though it has my backups.

Side note. The solution to this is not to move my data to "the device" and off their servers. The solution should have been for them to open-source the service that handles this data, and make it a configurable first-class option in their location app.

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

#119

Post by zo1 »

dmantis wrote: post #100
epigramx wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a welcome change Can someone explain why it's good that your official law infrastructure has no access to Google when in need? Is this some kind of bizzaro-extermist-libertarianism "government is evil" from America again?

Because law enforcement must be costly and non-automated to avoid the unbalanced power distribution between an individual and the gov, which only serves the individual and not rules them. A cost to catch a criminal should be a manual and expensive work from an agent and thus provide no ability to mass abuse human rights on scale. Only on actual criminals when needed.

> "A cost to catch a criminal should be a manual and expensive work from an agent and thus provide no ability to mass abuse human rights on scale. Only on actual criminals when needed."

The problem is that we're expending huge amounts of engineering power to avoid the issue when we could instead be using it to provide a privacy-first option that still safely enables law enforcement efforts to track down violent people whilst not enabling this hypothetical power-inbalance of government over individuals.

Let's be honest though, it's a hypothetical boogeyman. The real problem is that we all secretly know that we don't live in a rainbow world where we all agree on what is "right". We can't even agree on supposedly simple concepts like protecting children's bodily autonomy and safety, so who's to say we will ever be able to agree on any other political issue which arguably pales in comparison.

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

#120

Post by jurip »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #117
BenFranklin100 wrote: post #39

Get an iPhone. Android and iOS are equivalent, while Apple’s revenue is overwhelmingly based on hardware and services, unlike Google’s revenue which is overwhelmingly based on advertising and tracking.

Apple sells your traffic to Google for tens of billions of dollars. Of course they're not leaving the equivalent money on the table, they just hope people will be fooled by the indirection.

If you believe this is what the Safari default search engine deal entails, please provide receipts.
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