The unsealed court order wasn’t just fishing for a list of vague identifiers that could be winnowed down to a list of suspects and a follow-up warrant demanding actual identifying information on these ~30,000 YouTube users. No, it appears the feds led with the big ask, demanding names, addresses, phone numbers, and user activity for every viewer of these videos between January 1-8, 2023. AND(!!) it asked Google to provide IP addresses for all viewers who were not logged into (or did not possess) Google accounts.

That’s fucked

Here’s a genius tip to the Google developers: you don’t have to turn over the data you don’t have.

What’s worse is that a person could become a suspect just by turning on autoplay

I’m less worried about this scenario: “We are investigating one specific person whom we have probable cause to believe committed a specific crime. Oh look, he has a Gmail account. Let’s subpoena his video searches with a valid warrant.”

I’m extremely troubled by this scenario: “We don’t like people who search for videos on guns/surfing/cats/whatever. Let’s subpoena a list of those people and start investigating them on no other basis.”

The public needs to create “where do cops live ?” and “what is each cop’s collective record on abuse and arrests ?” type databases.

They need to be held to a higher standard that has us surveil them, too.

Watch them; follow them; write it all down.

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