Unfortunately, "Google let the government have my private data" is right up there with "President Trump said one thing yesterday, and now he's saying the exact opposite" in the what-did-you-expect hall-of-fame.
Google broke its promise to me – now ICE has my data
341–350 of 830 posts
Re: Google broke its promise to me – now ICE has my data
#342Every time this happens the debate goes the same way — trust Google or don't, switch to Proton, self-host everything. But the real issue I believe isn't whether we trust Google. It's that the data existed somewhere it could be taken from in the first place. I've been thinking about this a lot while working on a side project. I ended up making it work entirely offline — no server, no account, no network calls. Not out…
Yeah, in this case, the cell carriers did a lot of the work.
Re: Google broke its promise to me – now ICE has my data
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
a) The kids in cages garnered significant press, public sympathy, and protest b) I also lived in Austin during that time, and the scale and militarization of current ICE action is on another level to what it was in the early 10's
c) despite appearances and the current state of fear, Trump's second-term ICE has deported merely a fraction (0.6m) achieved under Obama's ICE (3m+), so if it's on a different level, it's clearly a lower one. Movement vs action, perhaps. https://www.wlrn.org/immigration/2026-01-23/politifact-fl-im... https://tracreports.org/tracatwork/detail/A6019.html https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO00/20200109/110349/HHRG...
Is this the same stat where turning a person away at the border counted as a deportation during the Obama years? I’ve found the changing methodology to make comparisons troublesome
Re: Google broke its promise to me – now ICE has my data
#344Promises are broken, policies are changed and political regimes vary. You need to make sure that you consider the future and not just now. And that means NEVER handing your data over in the first place.
That's easier said than done. Even if you don't directly use Google services, chances are that Big Data is still watching you on every website you go to. And if you have a mobile data plan, your service provider knows exactly where you are 24/7.
Re: Google broke its promise to me – now ICE has my data
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's this account's only comment and was only created right before posting. It has no credibility.
[flagged]
> For me, most threads get their own account.
This is a violation of the guidelines: "Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to."
Re: Google broke its promise to me – now ICE has my data
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the data is encrypted, it can go on the cloud, though.
It still is risky, as who knows what tools NSA & cie really have. Even if it feels safe now, it can be stored by them, and what will (quantum?) computers be able to do in a decade? And how will the US gov look like at that time?
Forget that. If they are really so motivated, they can get a warrant to raid your home and confiscate your hard drives.
It's not an apples to apples comparison because an administrative warrant served to Google is much different from raiding your home but if they wanted to they could.
At this point, acting as if America (and many parts of the world for that matter) aren't living under an authoritarian government is futile. We still have freedoms but they're trying really hard to take them away from us.
Re: Google broke its promise to me – now ICE has my data
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
USA was founded well after the Pilgrims. I don't think anyone in 1776, or even in the Pilgrim days, was thinking a foreigner should have the right to vote for instance.
Who else didn't they think should have the right to vote in 1776, and was that the right call in your opinion? As I said above, a law you have to tie yourself in knots to justify might be a bad law.
What are you saying, the US Constitution is bogus because people were racist in 1776? It's undergone amendments and clarifications by the Judicial branch. It's been consistently obvious that foreigners don't have the same rights as citizens here, and tourism or immigration law wouldn't really work otherwise.
Re: Google broke its promise to me – now ICE has my data
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anticipation of stories like this are why I didn't rely much on Google 20 years ago. Never used Gmail other than as a throwaway account. Went many years before I had a Youtube account. Finally made one to upload some videos. I am normally not logged in. (OK, OK - I was more concerned with them suddenly charging for a "free" service, as well as selling data to commercial enterprises than with them giving to the govern…
What will the world be like in 2046?
Does anyone else remember Epic 2014? It was a video made years ago that speculated about the future of the internet and media, with the end game being personalized news written by a computer. The timeline is off but the brand names are mostly the usual suspects. Rewatching it now gives me this uncanny feeling.
Re: Google broke its promise to me – now ICE has my data
#349This story is the one that finally pushed me to leave google. I moved off my ~20 year old Google account and deleted everything off their services including almost a decade of Google photos. I cancelled my Google one subscription for extra space. I'm now self hosting what I can and paying proton mail for everything else. I refuse to allow a company that will hand over data at the request of an administrative warrant…
It's good that people migrate, just remember that you haven't deleted anything. They have all of that data and so do various US government agencies and, who knows, maybe other third parties.
Also remember, that when you exchange email with people who use GMail, then they've got you again.
Re: Google broke its promise to me – now ICE has my data
#350This story is the one that finally pushed me to leave google. I moved off my ~20 year old Google account and deleted everything off their services including almost a decade of Google photos. I cancelled my Google one subscription for extra space. I'm now self hosting what I can and paying proton mail for everything else. I refuse to allow a company that will hand over data at the request of an administrative warrant…
Are there good hosted options that will not respond to non-judicial data requests? Someone is going to say self hosted is better and I don't disagree, but there's limits to how much time I can spend on self hosted stuff.
Protonmail iirc. You can even get documents and photos synced. Not sure how well it works for photos.