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Feds order Google to track people searching certain names or details

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Re: Feds order Google to track people searching certain names or details

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Sure, you'd get pretty mad if every time you get robbed the police searches your vehicle but they don't need to break anything and you will get over it. Or I'll stop calling the police, especially if that first invasive experience doesn't end with my belongings returned.

>Or I'll stop calling the police, especially if that first invasive experience doesn't end with my belongings returned. Oh my sweet summer child. Calling the police is never about getting the belongings back. Calling the police is only about striking the perpetrator with violence, hoping that it would equalize the karma levels.

I'm beginning to see that now. Its just like the aggressive down voting shootin from the hip. People here cant even entertain the technical challenge of it - eventho the problem is [apparently] assumed to be impossible. I knew US police had a bad rep but I never imagined the service to be this worthless.

I often think we need to bring back something like monks who selflessly deliver a service in exchange for an isolated life of study and meditation.

We have way to many shit people who cant be trusted with anything and make poor company.

Re: Feds order Google to track people searching certain names or details

#182
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He said he did it from home though. I always wondered if he was making it up or not, but this was the Bush era (not that that much has changed).

I'm assuming he landed somewhere after the search that his bosses had logs for, like maybe a bio page on some .mil domain. Back in the 2000's, you still got a referrer header that included not just "google.com", but also the search query parameters. So if you followed https://www.google.com/search?q=my+asshole+boss+joe+schmoe to get to the .mil hosted bio page, they got to see that.

That seems plausible, but as this story was related to me over a decade ago, I can't remember if he said he clicked on anything in particular.

Re: Feds order Google to track people searching certain names or details

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He said he did it from home though. I always wondered if he was making it up or not, but this was the Bush era (not that that much has changed).

VPN or company managed device? Seems like something a vaguely savvy user would keep in mind though.

I think it was a home device, I don't think this guy was super savvy though.

Re: Feds order Google to track people searching certain names or details

#184
"Accidental leak reveals US government has secretly hit Google with 'keyword warrants' to identify ANYONE searching certain names, addresses, and phone numbers"

This is historical - it is disclosure.

Talk about the constitution all you like, but was anyone in any doubt that they were already doing this? That they suck up all the data from media companies to have a mega-graph? That they are running accurate simulations of us (Sentient World Simulation), in order to better manage us?

And don't expect anything to change - Google et al could change this is a minute - they have the lobbyists to get whatever they want. They don't want. This is good for the government and the corporations. In fact, what's the difference? We are living in technocratic fascism.

Re: Feds order Google to track people searching certain names or details

#185
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Sure, you'd get pretty mad if every time you get robbed the police searches your vehicle but they don't need to break anything and you will get over it. Or I'll stop calling the police, especially if that first invasive experience doesn't end with my belongings returned.

Right, that seems a whole different problem that should really be addressed. In the Netherlands the police are the politest people one could ever meet. It takes very few complaints about politeness or excess force to lose the job. Ofc on the flip side they are also highly incompetent, have no tools, get to see just about ever crook released, are under paid and are very unprofessional. But polite, woah!

Cute attempt at establishing a completely made up dichotomy but generally the politeness of a police force is correlated with how effective it is, not inversely.

Re: Feds order Google to track people searching certain names or details

#186

I'm not a Constitutional scholar, but I would bet SCOTUS rules this kind of warrant illegal. Google certainly has the resources to take the case that far. AFAIK a warrant usually is tied to a specific person or a specific crime. In other words, if an explosion killed Harry McHarryface, then it would be constitutional to ask for names of people who searched for Harry. Or if the fertilizer used in the bomb was shown to…

Look at it this way, if a car is involved in a drive-by shooting the police can't get a warrant to search every single home that has the same year/make/model of car registered to with that address. For a legal warrant you have to have probable cause that a specific person committed a crime. You can't just search everybody and see what sticks, that's blatantly unconstitutional.

> For a legal warrant you have to have probable cause that a specific person committed a crime. You can't just search everybody and see what sticks, that's blatantly unconstitutional.

Sure, though it’s worth noting that nothing prohibits the police from walking down the street and asking people. Those people don’t have to talk to the police, but…

Google will fight warrants like this. AT&T doesn’t. Other companies have varying policies on this.

Obviously, one can’t assume data is not available to law enforcement merely because the police would need a warrant to get it over a possessor’s objections.

Re: Feds order Google to track people searching certain names or details

#187
Various leaks over the years have showed us how when programs doing icky stuff are revealed, they are "shut down" only to be recycled as new secret programs with "new" mandates doing exactly the same thing.

After Snowden, it'd be naive to assume that the US government isn't still vacuuming up every possible source of data that it can.

It is also naive to assume that the various data brokers doing the same thing for commercial purposes aren't also open books to the various 3-letter agencies.

Re: Feds order Google to track people searching certain names or details

#188
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real life: This bullet killed Vicki Weaver, who was standing behind the door in the cabin where Harris entered.[108] Vicki was holding the Weavers' 10-month-old baby Elisheba. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge

I've seen the same terms ("the bullet killed") used to describe the recent death of Halyna Hutchins on set of Alec Baldwin's film

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/07/14/...

Re: Feds order Google to track people searching certain names or details

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the SCOTUS has basically no legitimacy left at both the federal and state level. States are routinely ignoring Supreme Court rulings and have for years, and federal agencies don’t listen to them either anymore. The rule of law in the US is on life support right now. Another Trump presidency will kick the patient out the window.

Another Trump presidency will be the end of democracy in the USA. He will install cronies at the top of the military leadership and do exactly what Erdoğan did in Turkey. It's as sure a thing as the sun rising. He will not depend on a bunch of untrained rabble to take over the Capitol next time.

The only objection I have to this post that I have is the notion that there was a democracy there to begin with. Before Julius Caesar attempted (unsuccessfully) to monopolise power in the Old Republic, there was already a ever widening chasm between the farmers that made up the bulk of Roman citizenry and the people in the Senate.

All Caesar had to do was harness this growing discontent of the masses through his fake populism and having undying loyalty in much of the army helped as well.

It took just one generation after Ceasars assassination for the establishment of the Imperium and the dissolution of the Republic.

Trump might or might not be reinstated but the beginning of the end of the American experiment has already been set in motion.

The only way to save it is through a radical reorganisation of power to counter the one to come but the establishment want to keep returning to the supposed Utopia that was in place before Trump - missing the obvious fact that it was their "utopia" that lead to Trump in the first place.

Re: Feds order Google to track people searching certain names or details

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You can look up terrorism incidents in the US [1]. Far right extremism is far more likely the reason for terrorism in the US vs far left extremism. In recent years, 115 far right attacks vs 19 far left (from 2008 -> 2016). And that's with adding another category for Islamic terrorism (63) (which, in and of itself would be far right terrorism.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States

this is true today, but the right has never come close to the left in 1970.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22571602-days-of-rage

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