If the linked article has a paywall, you can access this archived version instead: https://archive.ph/zyhax
The court orders show the government telling Google to provide the names, addresses, telephone numbers and user activity for all Google account users who accessed the YouTube videos between January 1 and January 8, 2023. The government also wanted the IP addresses of non-Google account owners who viewed the videos.
“This is the latest chapter in a disturbing trend where we see government agencies increasingly transforming search warrants into digital dragnets. It’s unconstitutional, it’s terrifying and it’s happening every day,” said Albert Fox-Cahn, executive director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. “No one should fear a knock at the door from police simply because of what the YouTube algorithm serves up. I’m horrified that the courts are allowing this.” He said the orders were “just as chilling” as geofence warrants, where Google has been ordered to provide data on all users in the vicinity of a crime.
Why, would you look at that - apparently surveillance is fine and dandy, as long as it’s the US doing it. Fucking hypocrites.
The article LITERALLY says the opposite
Someone with enough reading comprehension to take that tone would have understood it was criticism of the federal government’s hypocrisy and that critics complaining is not the same thing as a law or the courts agreeing.
You did not provide enough context in your original statement to distinguish between sarcasm and sincerity. Any sufficiently good old stupid statement is unrecognizable from parody.
It’s not even op. Maybe we can all learn a little something here.
I mean…nobody else seems to be having trouble dude…
Well… the part they quoted is a little misleading.
The two situations they talked about at least on the face of it were:
- An undercover agent was in contact with someone, and sent them a link to something in the expectation they’d click it and then that undercover agent could track down what was the IP/identity of the person who clicked the link. Pretty standard stuff. The only weird part is that it was a stock Youtube link and they asked Google to be involved to give them identifying information after (and that for whatever reason there were 30,000 people who watched the video and they asked for the info about all 30,000).
- Law enforcement got a bomb threat, then they learned that there had been a livestream of them while they were looking for the bomb. That doesn’t automatically mean anything about the person who was livestreaming (maybe they just saw something exciting happening?), but wanting to talk with that person makes 100% sense to me.
So, to me both of those seem pretty reasonable. But of course the on-the-face-of-it explanation for #1 doesn’t completely make sense for a couple of different reasons. But I wouldn’t automatically class either of these as abuse by law enforcement without knowing more.
It’s crazy to me that this got 61 upvotes while the main concern here, that 30,000 unrelated people had their data handed over to the government, is just an aside in point 1.
It really concerns me that people think any of this reasonable. If this is “reasonable” then there’s nothing stopping cops from getting all of our data, whenever they want it. All they have to do is find one suspect who watched one video.
That’s fucking crazy and clearly unreasonable. Take my downvote for having an exceptionally bad opinion on this topic.
Most people don’t see the big picture. I remember people not supporting net neutrality.
People are desperate to be fucked I guess
I mean… 👉👈
Not you.
Worry not, you are a voice of reason.
30,000 unrelated people had their data handed over to the government
It doesn’t say it happened. It said Google received a court order. People challenge court orders sometimes, there’s just a process you have to go through to do it.
The whole article is honestly just weird. E.g. “Privacy experts from multiple civil rights groups told Forbes they think the orders are unconstitutional because they threaten to turn innocent YouTube viewers into criminal suspects.” That is… that’s not what “unconstitutional” means at all. Sometimes cops will question innocent people or knock on doors when they’re investigating crimes. If they’re doing it without court oversight, that’s dangerous. If “crimes” include things that aren’t actually crimes, that’s dangerous. If “knocking on doors” includes more than just actually asking questions to investigate, that’s dangerous. But I’m a little doubtful that they showed up at anyone’s door just because that person watched a YouTube video and started asking them questions related or unrelated to the specific crime they were investigating.
The article’s written in a way where you genuinely can’t tell some important details – they don’t say whether the video was public or unlisted, they don’t say whether the cops were the ones that uploaded it, there are important things like that that they don’t make clear. But the idea that the constitution says the cops can’t gather data under any circumstances to investigate a crime seems like just a knee-jerk “cops bad” reaction.
I don’t even necessarily disagree with your broader point. If the cops took a publicly-listed YouTube video and asked a court for the identities of 30,000 people who happened to watch it, and then the court agreed, and then Google gave them the data instead of pushing back legally (which the article claims they do sometimes), then sure, that’s wrong. But literally every one of those elements is unclear from the article whether it happened.
there’s nothing stopping cops from getting all of our data
At the end of the article is an instance where the cops went to the court for a “geofencing” warrant and the court threw out their request because it was too broad. That’s the point of oversight and why having to get a warrant is an important step.
Like I say I’m honestly not completely disagreeing with you here. I definitely think too much data gets harvested about what every person does online and the cops are too freely able to access it with too little oversight. Depending on the details, maybe that’s what happened here, or maybe it was legit. I’m just saying I’m don’t agree with the assertion that it’s always wrong.
It’s not terribly different from law enforcement getting a search warrant for a video feed covering the apartment of a known pedo video distributor and then tracking down everyone.
The problem would be violation of privacy for everyone who went there who wasn’t a pedo.
Obviously, that’s not a perfect comparison for the Internet because it’s acceptable from anyone, but they’re following the same playbook.
How much privacy are you willing to trade to stop pedos from hurting kids?
Edit: in thinking about this, the save the kids stuff has been worn out by a certain group that even I’m tired of. I didn’t really think about that when I came up with the example, not that I expect it would matter to people’s personal feelings on the matter.
If I had my way, none, the pedo part is irrelevant. Save the kids mentality is not justification for draconian overreach
Yeah, I just edited the comment. That narrative is tired and political, and I honestly didn’t think of that at the time.
Not that it really matters what the example is.
Yeah, and that’s also wrong. The shitheads in blue should not get access to any private video feeds.
You’re thinking and able to reconsider previous statements, I’d consider that a win. Far too I find we simply double down without the due consideration we owe ourselves.
Neither of these is reasonable.
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There certainly are situations where this could be reasonable; however, when your parameters return 30,000 people it’s not nearly tailored enough.
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To get a warrant you need probable cause that a person committed a crime, I don’t see how a live stream could meet that burden unless it starts prior to the arrival of the police.
These are both abuses by law enforcement, or more clearly, a path that allows their job to be easier by infringing on people’s rights.
You don’t need probable cause that they committed a crime.
You need probable cause that the search will result in evidence of a crime.
Those aren’t the same thing.
The first one is horseshit though.
Yeah, that’s probably worded better.
Assuming all they had was a live stream of police responding, and that it didn’t start before police arrived, which would demonstrate prior knowledge, I don’t see probable cause. It’s much more likely that a passer-by recorded it.
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Being a passerby and actively engaging with the incident is way more than enough cause to identify and talk to them.
Poisoning the well a bit by saying actively engaging. Sounds like they are passively watching.
That warrant should absolutely be granted.
Thoroughly disagree.
It’s very different than geofencing an entire area. It’s specific…
Ok.
and directly connected to the crime, whether they committed it or not.
Not so much, and they already, presumably have the video.
That said, that person is also absolutely a suspect and should be looked at at minimum at surface level.
Other than mere location, what reason do you have to suspect the person? You can look, sure, but I don’t see grounds for a warrant.
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My theory for #1 is that it’s an unlisted video targeted at extremists or maybe a “How to make an illegal item” guide
Which I also think can be reasonable
It shouldn’t be illegal to learn how to make something illegal. I’m not allowed to build a nuke or a fully automatic assault rifle, but I should still be able to learn how they function.
Sounds like it wasn’t really illegal (just a mapping / drone thing), as well as the behavior they were looking into wasn’t something that was for-certain illegal (just trading cash for crypto, which is I guess “illegal adjacent” but not in itself illegal). IDK. The story as it was told was a little confusing / didn’t completely make sense to me on the face of it as the complete story.
Why would you make up a reason to justify the government seizing people’s data? Like damn I thought lemmy cared about privacy but this thread is wild with some of the comments I’m reading.
They were videos about using drones and AR to create maps. There’s nothing illegal about that.
https://mashable.com/article/google-ordered-to-hand-over-viewer-data-privacy-concerns
Yeah, this is hella sketchy. I don’t plan on ever using Google’s services again, but now I legit have to worry about all centralized websites in the US? I’ve been impressed with Biden at many points and screw Trump, but this is not a good look for the Biden Administration.
Seems to me the undercover agent made an extremely poor choice in links to send. If you expect to track down whoever clicked it, a link to a private video would be the obvious choice.
Right? It’s seems like a no brainer in the surface.
and they asked Google to be involved to give them identifying information after
If it was a court order, then it’s much more than simply “asking them to be involved”.
It’s literally a legal order requiring them to comply or face legal consequences.
I don’t see Google being the ones we should be the most angry at in this scenario. They were obeying a court order.
Jokes on you I’m already on the DoD blacklist because I played War Thunder and got spammed with 40 year old “classified” NATOPs by the forums.
lol WT has done more espionage than most countries
If War Thunder adds Space Combat we’ll find out about Area 51 in 3 weeks.
The fact that that KEEPS HAPPENING is so fucking funny
“But sir, downloading viewings for ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ could blow up the entire Internet!”
“Why bother? By now everyone on the planet has already seen it twice.”
“You worry too much son, Google already responded to the subpoena with a link to the data, so go get it! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ”
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://m.piped.video/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
The kind of things why I use NewPipe…
I dont think newpipe would protect from this since it still contacts the yt servers to pull the video. Peertube or a VPN would stop this though.
I just found out that Lemmy is not allowing (or has rate-limited, or whatever) VPN connections to post or react.
Not a fan of that at all.
Edit: it’s my instance being on Cloudflare, not Lemmy as a whole. My mistake.
Could be your instance. World is behind cloudflare after all.
World and NordVPN. Recommend another instance?
The instance my account is on, dbzer0, was set up by a former mod of the piracy subreddit. Can’t say for certain, but I’d expect that VPNs would work with it. The admin really seems to know his shit.
Having trouble verifying my email. Gonna see if it works without VPN.
Lol they denied my application. Nice.
Edit: it was my own carelessness. Damn.
Now you’ve really piqued my interest. This may be the winner.
Hmmm. Im on monero.town obviously and its not behind cloudflare, but i don’t have any specific recommendation. Easy way to tell if an instance is behind cf is to run a ping instance.tld from command line. If the average is like 20-40ms its likely cloudflare.
I appreciate that.
Some instances, like mine, do not require an email address to join .
I’m on a VPN without issue
World seems to be blocking NordVPN. Recommend another instance?
I use mullvad which hasn’t given me any issue
That’s my next stop after this contract runs out.
Using RiseupVPN with no problem 👍👍
VPNs protect your from geting caught torrenting, but it cant protect you from the US-goverment.
First of all most of the advertized VPN’s are Honeypots and/or back/bugdoored by the NSA.
And even if they where not…so much of the internet runs on servers/services/isp’s that are related to american companys that Timing attacks are possibe (for example your ISP logs and shared your encrypted traffic and the NSA then compares Timing patterns of requests with other services).
Right, but if Google is collecting your IP address to give to the government, then using a VPN would put another step in their path, and they would have to go to the VPN provider to try to figure out who it was.As long as that VPN provider is in another country like proton VPN and does not keep logs Then there’s a good chance that they won’t know who it was that requested the YouTube video
I mean what makes u think that proton isnt just another NSA operation.
It could be, that’s definitely true. At some point, you either have to trust something or self-host everything, though.
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Use any VPN as if it where compromized.
Never used them, so not sure.
What if unicorns are real but invisible and we can’t touch them?
I can make up outlandish “facts” too.
there’s a teapot that I think you’d be quite fond of, orbiting the earth right behind the moon just where we can’t see it
Damn! That would be epic and well played for sure. Not advocating.
Nice rare instance!
You have no clue how vpns work and shouldn’t be giving anyone advice on tech. You are full of shit. I’m not even gonna be polite about it because you are spouting nonsense with complete confidence.
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Lovely. Wonder what the videos were?
Dream face reveal
ASMR videos of a parent proud of me
Just another reason to not have a YouTube account. If you use Newpipe, you can subscribe to feeds anyway without any YouTube account.
Until youtube pulls a twitter move where eventually everything will only be available under a login. Wait and see.
everything works until it doesn’t.
Isnt NewPipe still making calls to YouTube from your IP? I think you’d need to also configure it to use an Invidious or Piped instance.
And a reason for platforms to implement zero trust models. I mean they need to hand out data to 3rd parties, they dont benefit from that?
SimpleX for the Win.
When companies tell you they respect your privacy and you should give them your data, you tell them it doesn’t matter. Because policies can change, and at the end of the day, your privacy isn’t always up to an single company.
Wait. This was last year, so not the capitol riot. What happened in January last year? I’m in a decent mood today. Just going to skip looking deeper into this one. I have Factorio to play!
The headline made me think of back when phone networks were just starting to be fast enough to watch YouTube on data, a guy at the job I was working was caught watching videos of young girls in supposedly lacking state of dress splashing in inflatable pools or something along those lines. Dunno what happened to him but everyone thought he was a nice guy the day before and then suddenly everyone was grossed out by his mere existing.
My immediate concern though is do they account for people who were tricked into watching like with Rick rolling?
Are the problem with the people who watch the video, or the people who create, or host the videos?
A little bit of everyone? Watchers create demand for creators, which creates demand for hosts. If any link in this chain breaks, then the little ecosystem dies.
Though that’s both difficult and reductive. Punishing hosts drives watchers to shadier hosts, with creators following. Punishing creators just creates space for other creators to fill the gap with unpredictable content (be it more of the same, better, worse, or other). Punishing watchers is resource intensive to do well, so the focus has to be on the really bad stuff to get anything done. And conjures articles like these when done poorly.
Good thing I have history turned off so I can watch “How to make an AK47 from scratch” in peace :D
They still somehow track your history despite that turned off
Notably with recommendations
For anyone wondering what the videos were:
In a just-unsealed case from Kentucky reviewed by Forbes, undercover cops sought to identify the individual behind the online moniker “elonmuskwhm,” who they suspect of selling bitcoin for cash, potentially running afoul of money laundering laws and rules around unlicensed money transmitting.
Is this measure worldwide, or only for United States?
In the first line of the article
Federal investigators have ordered Google to provide information on all viewers of select YouTube videos
Federal, so yeah just the US for now.
The US isn’t the only federation in the world but it’s Forbes so yes of course it’s the US.
Good, maximum jail time for everyone clicking on vtuber videos
But they’re not committing any crime.
I say ban the flat earth YouTubers, mostly because their content is so boring.
Any of those punchable “react face” thumbnails. Dont care what the video is about, if it’s got one of those stupid faces on it, straight to the fuckin’ gulag!
From the reports I’ve heard by amateur youtubers, those dumb face thumbnails actually do get them more traction
The algorithm favors clickbait and dumb react thumbnails over regular videos because those are the videos that get “engagement”. Even if said “engagement” is writing a comment about how much the video sucks, it’s a win in YT’s book.
A major problem with media and algorithms today is exactly as you said. Engagement is engagement and they don’t really care if you’re raging or agreeing as long as you’re Interacting.
Anyone who enjoys those videos should also be banned. From the internet.
I have an addon that just replaces all Youtube thumbnails with a random frame from the video.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/clickbait-remover-for-youtube/
I’ve seen that before but the trouble with that add-on is it just replaces it with a random frame not necessarily one that’s helpful or good. At least the stupid faces actually show you what the video is about.
The DeArrow extension works with both ways:
- If the community submits a thumbnail (you can vote on them) and a better video headline, that will be the default one. I always try to submit the most relevant thumbnail, even if it might be a spoiler one (it’s up to you if you are interested in the context or not).
- In the absence of community submitted content, a random thumbnail will be used (still better than the stupid faces).
I highly recommend using DeArrow, from the same dev from SponsorBlock.
Nah, I’d rather just not even consume the media. Especially considering video is mostly entertainment media anyways; anything actually useful hidden behind one of those stupid faces, I’ll just find an alternative source.
vtubing should be a crime
if people haven’t figured out already, this is a joke
Roko’s Basilisk is finally coming to life.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/ut-zGHLAVLI?si=RSV7VqRyrqN0y1Y3
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Roko’s these nuts
I don’t know if I should watch this after reading that story…
J/k.
Kind of.
I always thought the basilisk was kind of dumb. Atheists invent God, get scared.
Roko will remember this
