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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

#151

Post by vineyardmike »

autoexec wrote: post #23
vineyardmike wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do people really think Google isn't tracking location data without this setting enabled? How would anyone (save for a whistleblower) know? Frankly I think that Google wont track me if I flip the bit (bugs not withstanding). Maybe I’m a fool. Do I trust mega corps? No, but I trust them enough to not blatantly lie when there’d be huge legal repercussions. They’re a massive corporation with tons of lawyers. They have…

> They have an huge reputational risk I don't understand this argument. The most hated corporations in the US are all insanely rich and are at zero risk of going out of business even though most people hate them. After a certain point, corporations have basically nothing to fear from bad press. Google specifically has been found guilty of violating the law and people's privacy on numerous occasions already, including…

> whistleblowers are extremely rare. The few protections they have are being reduced all the time, and the risk is huge. Very few people will give up their career and risk becoming unhirable.

We get the new pixels leaked every year for a decade. We get all sorts of leaks from Google very regularly in the news.

If you work for a tech company and you have juicy new stories you can quite literally call a journalist and get something in the news that week.

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

#152

Post by vineyardmike »

photonthug wrote: post #40
vineyardmike wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> enabling an app to use my data for the service I believe it provides and them using it for everything else. I completely agree, but I think we need to push society away from requiring for profit products into our life, or at least recognize that they have an association cost to the user. What is the reasonable expectation of a business to profit off a product that we’ve deemed “required”? Who would make or support…

> I completely agree, but I think we need to push society away from requiring for profit products into our life, or at least recognize that they have an association cost to the user. What is the reasonable expectation of a business to profit off a product that we’ve deemed “required”? Who would make or support a product they can’t profit on? We kind of urgently need new models for certain things that start as for-pro…

> Since google did some part of the actual mapping, they certainly deserve credit, but of course the whole thing could not exist if GPS wasn't essentially available as a public utility. Maybe if they want to be stingy with the map data forever, they should pay license fees for the GPS technology, since that's a piece of infrastructure they outsource to the public? Or for our individual data, since it's required to build their models?

The problem with this is that it doesn’t really make sense in the context of the world we live in.

Google built the maps and the servers to host them. Google is entitled to monetize their property (in today’s world). Sure GPS is free to them, but that was a gift to society decades ago and it has spawned countless life-improving enterprises.

They already do pay for access to our data - by giving us maps which are not free to them to create and maintain. We all assume that these companies owe us money for the data but if you didn’t want to give Google data you should be paying a fee to access their maps. Companies used to charge - a lot- for maps and that’s why Google maps was amazing. Just look at how much they and others charge for map APIs.

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

#153

Post by nolist_policy »

autoexec wrote: post #125
gruez wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Do people really think Google isn't tracking location data without this setting enabled? How would anyone (save for a whistleblower) know? [...] You can't, in the same way you wouldn't know whether Carl Sagan really has an invisible dragon in his garage or not. It's impossible to prove a negative. >It doesn't matter if you delete the list of GPS coordinates from your google account because what you can't delete is t…

> You can't Sounds like a good reason not to trust them. That said, it's not impossible to be reasonably assured that our data isn't being stored or used inappropriately, but that would require strong regulations which protected that data and a proven record of companies being caught and facing meaningful consequences for violating those regulations. It'd be nice if we had strong whistleblower protections as well. Ma…

> They have collected the test scores and grades of a lot of children through schools [...].

Citation needed. That would be in violation of the EU gdpr.

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

#154

Post by Brian_K_White »

dotancohen wrote: post #149
Brian_K_White wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only woman worth meeting will obviously not use Whatsapp either.

Hard disagree, I've met some terrific women on Tinder. Terrific both in and out of the sack.

Perhaps they may use it, but they cannot be intolerant of you not using it and still be terrific.

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

#155

Post by photonthug »

vineyardmike wrote: post #152
photonthug wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I completely agree, but I think we need to push society away from requiring for profit products into our life, or at least recognize that they have an association cost to the user. What is the reasonable expectation of a business to profit off a product that we’ve deemed “required”? Who would make or support a product they can’t profit on? We kind of urgently need new models for certain things that start as for-pro…

> Since google did some part of the actual mapping, they certainly deserve credit, but of course the whole thing could not exist if GPS wasn't essentially available as a public utility. Maybe if they want to be stingy with the map data forever, they should pay license fees for the GPS technology, since that's a piece of infrastructure they outsource to the public? Or for our individual data, since it's required to bu…

Let's talk about a community that needs water, but doesn't have the capital to drill a deep enough well. Private company comes in, drills the well, and the people rejoice.

But then the price-gouging comes, and it's not exactly simple for anyone to "compete", because if another corporation has deep enough pockets to drill a well in the first place then a) they aren't likely to have gotten that way from generosity, and b) in terms of profit it's much easier to go dig another well elsewhere and just start squeezing a different community.

Exactly how much and for how long do we want to let the company squeeze people since they are "entitled to monetize their property"? What if they give the water away for free, but the "price" to the community is that they are subject to medical experiments without their knowledge or their informed consent, or just without any real ability to opt out? What if every well in every town looks like this, so that people can't vote with their feet?

This is clearly a problem in the limit.. anyone who thinks this general scenario is fine, or that it automatically works itself out somehow is not being serious. Water just makes this a simple story to understand. There's more nuance and less urgency in a different setting, but most of the basic issues remain the same.

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

#156

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

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!)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2023/12/14/google-...

""And there are lots of ways of doing the legal process (including Google's warrant policy, although that's just one way) that are a lot more privacy protective than ordinary warrants. But I can see why this might be in Google's business interest. If there isn't a lot of economic value to Google in keeping the data, and having it means you need to get embroiled in privacy debates over what you do with it, better for Google to drop it.""

The public has the government to thank for this change because if they had not inundated Google with warrants, Google would have continued to collect and keep this data. The data collection and storage caused the warrants. The warrants caused the decision to purge.

These so-called "tech" companies will collect and store data to the detriment of the public's privacy even when it is unclear if doing so has any economic value.

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

#157

Post by TastyJhinga »

steelframe wrote: post #143
lucianbr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you have a mobile phone but you configured it so that you are unreachable when you are not at home? I'm all for privacy, but people being able to call me is hugely conveninent, and I really don't want to give it up. We need a better solution.

People can still call me and leave a message. I'll receive their message when I feel like it, not when they feel like it. It's really not all that terrible a thing. You should try it sometime.

How does it feel like living under a rock? Why even have a mobile phone at this point then? Just get a landline wired telephone at home and at work instead.

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

#158

Post by taneq »

hollerith wrote: post #34
taneq wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any obligation to announce exonerating data found by prosecutors during a dragnet search? I was under the impression that they could just pick something that makes you look bad and build a case on that, and that unless your defence has access to all the same data (do they?) and is equally motivated and funded, that in this case you’re probably just boned.

There is such an obligation. In fact, just yesterday, a judge dismissed a case in the middle of a trial to punish a prosecutor for not disclosing information to the defense -- and the information had only a tenuous relevance to the case: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/12/a-bo...

Huh, good to know! Thanks.

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

#159

Post by coldtea »

willcipriano wrote: post #107
coldtea wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oppression of minorities is really just the outcome of democracy on long enough time scales. Run a democracy long enough and you'll have the boot of 51% of the population on the other 49.

>Run a democracy long enough and you'll have the boot of 51% of the population on the other 49.

Why is there a 49% of people with widely different ideas about what's to be done and what's good than the rest 51% of them? What kind of fucked up society would that be?

Democracy pressuposses a shared base consensus about reality and what's good, and then arguing about the specifics and the approaches.

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

#160

Post by BenFranklin100 »

poisonborz wrote: post #116
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

iOS is a bit better, but honestly I think Android is just fine. I don’t see a big difference for most users.
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