[HN Gopher] Feds order Google to track people searching certain ...
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Feds order Google to track people searching certain names or
details
Author : ColinWright
Score : 434 points
Date : 2021-10-25 14:28 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.dailymail.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.dailymail.co.uk)
| NN88 wrote:
| Anyone get the sense we're in a post-Wikileaks era?
|
| These leaks seem... like they would get someone indicted...
| colbyhub wrote:
| I made the switch from DDG to Startpage.com the day when Bing/DDG
| censored "tank man" results on the anniversary of Tiananmen
| Square, haven't looked back.
|
| I do miss the !bangs, so I have a browser shortcut to access
| those when I need them.
| elwell wrote:
| Too privacy-conscious for DuckDuckGo? That's next level trend
| setting.
| zic wrote:
| I find it interesting that to this day, a search for the phrase
| "Bing/DDG censored 'tank man' results on the anniversary of
| Tiananmen Square" returns very few results in DDG, but several
| pages in Google.
|
| I would not cite this as an example of why to use one search
| engine over another. It's a good example of why to use more
| than one search engine.
| hyproxia wrote:
| You're talking about the "tank man" that was safely escorted
| out of the scene without getting harmed? What about him?
|
| https://youtu.be/qq8zFLIftGk
| J5892 wrote:
| The point is that the photo was censored by a significant US
| search engine.
|
| Also, let's not ignore that the CCP murdered somewhere
| between 300 and 10,000 Chinese citizens the day before he
| stood in front of the tank.
| emayljames wrote:
| The only people killed where unarmed soldiers, that where
| burned alive by protesters.
| J5892 wrote:
| Even the official CCP numbers disagree with you.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protest
| s...
|
| > On June 19, Beijing Party Secretary Li Ximing reported to
| the Politburo that the government's confirmed death toll
| was 241, including 218 civilians (of which 36 were
| students), 10 PLA soldiers, and 13 People's Armed Police,
| along with 7,000 wounded.
|
| But the actual number of deaths is likely much higher.
| falcolas wrote:
| Sounds like those numbers have been "fixed" as the
| narrative has evolved over the intervening years.
| J5892 wrote:
| I'm not up to date with the current official narrative,
| but I can only assume it's that there was a large picnic
| that day and someone accidentally spilled a giant jar of
| raspberry jam.
|
| But it was an otherwise pleasant day with exactly zero
| humans crushed by tanks or otherwise killed.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| That appears to be a someone counterfactual description of
| what happened. Supporting evidence would be of great help.
| lostlogin wrote:
| It's just feeding the troll to reply to that account.
| "Taiwan is China" etc in comment history.
| PostOnce wrote:
| He risked death to protest the oppression of Chinese people
| by the Communist government, brutal oppression the Communist
| government has spent decades trying to cover up. The brutal
| actions at Tiananmen Square and the surrounding areas--and
| the consequent coverup--are something we all disapprove of
| and abhor.
|
| He may have survived, but many others did not. You can find
| the photos of their corpses online if you're outside the
| Communist regime's censored, dishonest, pseudo-internet.
|
| Only commenting so younger people don't think your comment
| has any merit or honesty.
| freeflight wrote:
| Startpage.com uses Google results, which besides having become
| kinda useless, have their own issue with censorship [0]
|
| [0] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/04/goog-n04.html
| Djrhfbfnsks wrote:
| Google is also censoring a large list of search terms when
| used in combination with reddit. For example, you'll get zero
| results for "site:reddit.com underage".
| _trampeltier wrote:
| Any idea about, what the blacked words would be?
| Jolter wrote:
| Names, phone numbers, addresses.
| nathias wrote:
| Of course they do, I'm more interested in why all other nation
| states are okay with having the US spy on their citizens. Does
| that make Google noncompliant with EU law or is there a
| convenient privacy policy exception for the 'good guys'?
| tyingq wrote:
| I'm confused how anyone would think a keyword warrant was
| constitutionally ok. Curious what the argument looks like. I
| don't see how it passes tests for "unreasonable" or "broad".
| Lendal wrote:
| The article does say "specific addresses and phone numbers." So
| if a legal warrant can be issued for police to stake out a
| specific address, or wiretap a specific phone number, why would
| it be worse to have another legal warrant for asking Google for
| information about searches for that same address or phone
| number?
| tyingq wrote:
| I suppose because searches sometimes feel partially like
| thoughts and partially like actions. They also mentioned
| "names" and not just phone numbers. In any case, names/phone
| numbers/addresses are often ambiguous, so it's trawling in
| things that don't feel like probable cause.
|
| There's also a screenshot of one warranted search in the
| article that had no names/addresses/phone numbers. They
| wanted everyone that searched for combinations of
| "cardboard", "bomb", etc: https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/1
| 0/06/15/48837793-10063665... That's very "thought crime" to
| me.
|
| Pre-internet, it feels like a warrant for anyone that ran
| their finger down page xyz of the phone book.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > Pre-internet, it feels like a warrant for anyone that ran
| their finger down page xyz of the phone book.
|
| More like inquiring for / looking at certain books in the
| library. Which is something I'm sure happened all the time,
| historically.
| tyingq wrote:
| >in the library
|
| Maybe, if "in the library" means "in almost every library
| in the nation for each warrant".
| t-writescode wrote:
| People who do these things don't think about the
| constitutionality and are decidedly "ends justify the means".
| tyingq wrote:
| They do have have to get a judge to sign it though. So
| presumably the judge at least thinks about the implications.
| [deleted]
| ectopod wrote:
| I imagine that a randomly chosen judge would, but I don't
| imagine that the FBI gets their dodgy warrants signed by a
| randomly chosen judge.
| intunderflow wrote:
| Some of these keyword orders seem obscene in terms of how many
| people they target:
|
| > ("fragmentation") AND ("bomb" OR "explosive" OR "ied" OR
| "explosion" OR "pipebomb" OR "pipe bomb" OR "PVC bomb")
| hellojesus wrote:
| I think that's the point. It gives the government an easy in to
| collect more data on any and all of these users, regardless of
| whether it is pertinent to a specific case.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Exactly. Gotta start collecting danger on every teenager who
| downloads the anarchist cookbook on the off chance they
| become a far right truck bomber in the next 20yr.
|
| Yet every time something happens it seems like the suspect
| was on law enforcement's radar and they did nothing. Odd. Oh
| well, I'm sure a bigger data haystack to find needles in will
| solve that. /s
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Or more likely, any teenager who grows up to be an
| inconvenient political figure that the establishment at the
| time (which might or might not be ideologically different
| than the current establishment) wants to get rid of.
| boibombeiro wrote:
| you misspeled communist
| cogman10 wrote:
| 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
| foobiekr wrote:
| 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
| 1cvmask wrote:
| The FBI has a great track record of successfully
| thwarting Islamic terrorist plots that it creates:
|
| https://www.salon.com/2010/11/28/fbi_8/
|
| https://theintercept.com/2015/02/26/fbi-manufacture-
| plots-te...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/16/fbi-
| entrapment...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/15/magazine/fbi-
| internationa...
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| well I mean generally far right terrorism isn't described
| or charged as terrorism is it? So it seems unlikely that
| they would track a white kid in case they turned in to a
| far right terrorist, because the narrative is that's not
| a problem.
|
| Incompatible narratives should be resolved in one
| direction or another.
| 0des wrote:
| Didn't the mostly white population of protestors at the
| capitol get threatened with terrorism charges or
| something of that nature?
| flatt wrote:
| >19 far left (from 2008 -> 2016) And after the summer of
| 2020, the number for the far left should easily be in the
| thousands. We'll have to wait to see how that gets
| recorded.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> It gives the government an easy in to collect more data on
| any and all of these users, regardless of whether it is
| pertinent to a specific case.
|
| That seems a little tinfoil hat to me. Like there are
| government people with lots of time on their hands to chase
| leads on things that are _not_ related to a case. OTOH there
| seems to be a lot of pre-emptive searching going on,
| particularly in the area of terrorism related activity. On
| the other other hand, in that case I think we want them to
| foil plots before they are enacted right? It seems to be a
| hard set of concerns to balance. We could opt for the most
| privacy oriented approach, but I don 't think there's much
| public data on what the consequences of that would be in
| terms of bad things happening.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Right - the warrant indicates they're only interested in
| people from Texas searching for those terms in a two month
| period immediately before the active bombings. Feels a lot
| like a warrant to a hardware store for people buying a
| specific component they've found at crime scenes.
|
| Of course Daily Mail stripped that context.
|
| > _The information requested in this Application is being
| sought by the FBI, in part, to establish who searched for
| the Google Search Terms between January 1, 2018 to March 2,
| 2018._
|
| > _While I believe that a pool of individuals searching for
| these bomb components or methods during the time frame
| prior to the explosions at the victim addresses will be
| limited, the pool of individuals will be minimal if limited
| to searches originating from Texas. By identifying the
| users of the Google accounts or IP addresses of the devices
| that searched Google for these terms and cross-referencing
| that data with other investigatory steps such as cellular
| telephone records, a suspect(s) or witness(es) may be
| identified._
|
| https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21077351/google-
| keywo...
| dvogel wrote:
| If the image is accurate I think "motion led" would also be in
| scope for initial collection. There is a filtering process
| after the search term net that determines whether it is in
| scope for the warrant. Given the dubious framing of these
| search terms and past examples like the NSA watching every
| Linux Journal visitor I'm disinclined to trust such a process.
| RIP to work schedule of the poor intern who has to weed out all
| the results for suburban parents setting up Halloween
| decorations with glowing eyes.
| Beaver117 wrote:
| It's motion ied not LED
| Ekaros wrote:
| I wonder what is the minimal set of English words covering all
| search engine users...
| reuben364 wrote:
| I would guess {"google"} would cover almost all users.
| tata71 wrote:
| .
| reuben364 wrote:
| By my interpretation, the empty set would cover no users,
| not all of them.
| cronix wrote:
| For the bottom of your email, website's hidden text, etc.
|
| DISCLAIMER: We do not endorse bombs, explosives, (insert other
| key words).
| waterhouse wrote:
| Emacs has you covered with M-x spook. FMD MI5
| Pork AMTRAK New Federation Erosion Ansar al-Islam Suicide
| attack Avian Hazmat MSCJ Chemical weapon ATF SABC Collapse
| AlbertCory wrote:
| 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 have been
| purchased on March 10, then _maybe_ a search for "fertilizer" in
| the weeks before March 10 would be allowed.
|
| But not a generic search.
|
| Just my opinion that's not legal advice.
| gowld wrote:
| Your first paragraph contradicts the next two paragraphs.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| Would you care to explain that?
| [deleted]
| LatteLazy wrote:
| You'd think so. But for 20 years plus justices at all levels
| have been very happy signing off secret warrants, ultra wide
| warrants, back dates warrants and other bs. It seems the
| judiciary don't (want to) understand computers well enough.
| They just accept government claims of necessity.
| 28uwedj wrote:
| Hey got a sec? check our this cute dog
| https://google.com/search?q=bomb
| iammisc wrote:
| Does the current administration follow SCOTUS rulings?
|
| Edit: why am I being downvotes? The president explicitly stated
| his plan to ignore another SCOTUS ruling
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| The President is basically the head of law enforcement in the
| federal government. Police organizations in the USA have a
| long history of pushing the limits of what is Constitutional.
| After all, they just want to get their job done and leave it
| up to the judiciary to decide what is Constitutional.
| gowld wrote:
| Can you link to info about that?
| iammisc wrote:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-08-04/biden
| -...
|
| > The president knows this. He told the press that his
| administration had surveyed the opinions of constitutional
| scholars, and that most thought an extension would be
| unlawful. Yet under political pressure from the left, Biden
| nevertheless ultimately decided to issue the extension.
|
| In other words: SCOTUS wrote words clearly indicating a ban
| would be illegal. By a technicality (expiration date), they
| didn't issue an explicit ruling. Biden did it anyway, while
| admitting he knew it was illegal.
| Spivak wrote:
| Seems like a good political move though, now the courts
| actually have to make the administration stop and get all
| the negative heat from putting people on the street. I
| mean the supreme law of the land let an order they
| believed was unconstitutional stand because of their
| personal moral imperatives and empathy toward renters. Is
| it really that crazy to shoot your shot and see if they
| do it again? Like the whole situation is nuts -- "I think
| this is unconstitutional but I'm not going to say so
| because the law is gonna expire soon." If that's really
| the case then you could rule the other way with a clear
| conscience since it's only a few days. Taking a bet that
| it was a bluff with little downsides if your wrong seems
| like a no brainer.
|
| And the administration gets to say they did all they
| could and it's up to congress now.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _let a law they believed was unconstitutional_
|
| Nobody alleged anything was unconstitutional. The
| question was whether the CDC exceeded the authority
| Congress gave it. The Court declined to answer that
| question when it was first raised. It answered it,
| definitively, the second time, striking down the
| moratorium extension.
| Spivak wrote:
| Right, my only point was that it essentially cost the
| administration nothing to extend it on the chance that
| they would decline again or vote differently when it
| actually mattered.
| RattleyCooper wrote:
| At least with the eviction moratorium, it was ruled
| unconstitutional by scotus and biden doubled down and
| enacted a new illegal eviction moratorium.
|
| Seems like they are kind of picking and choosing what rules
| they'll follow, and which rights they think people deserve
| mattkrause wrote:
| No, it wasn't.
|
| The Court originally declined to vacate the stay in a 5-4
| decision. The fifth vote was from Kavanaugh, who wrote
| that he _thought_ the stay should be vacated, but wasn 't
| voting to do so because the moratorium was about to
| expire anyway. That concurrence is certainly informative,
| but doesn't override his _actual vote_ to maintain the
| stay.
|
| The second moratorium was quickly overturned, with
| Kavanaugh voting this time in accordance with his
| opinion. In any case, the administration did actually
| follow that ruling.
|
| This is taken directly from the actual decision (the
| first round is discussed on page 4): https://www.supremec
| ourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/21a23_ap6c.pdf
| [deleted]
| wayoutthere wrote:
| 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.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| 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 Erdogan 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.
| vimacs2 wrote:
| 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.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Wasn't there a history of political violence and rabble
| rousing in Rome for a century or two before Rome? I
| thought the Imperium cleaned up a lot of the problems
| that Rome had for a while, at the cost of the democracy
| (which was really a plutocracy, until populism become
| more effective).
|
| I could be wrong, since it's been some years.
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| We are in another Trump presidency for all practical
| purposes. Increasing surveillance, rule by executive order,
| no respect for the press, no transparency, business as
| usual, threatening other countries. Not much has changed.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Not even close. Another Trump regime will spell the end
| of any democracy at all in the USA. He will finish the
| fascist insurrection that he started.
| themitigating wrote:
| Can you provide a source?
| iammisc wrote:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-08-04/biden
| -...
|
| > The president knows this. He told the press that his
| administration had surveyed the opinions of constitutional
| scholars, and that most thought an extension would be
| unlawful. Yet under political pressure from the left, Biden
| nevertheless ultimately decided to issue the extension.
|
| In other words: SCOTUS wrote words clearly indicating a ban
| would be illegal. By a technicality (expiration date), they
| didn't issue an explicit ruling. Biden did it anyway, while
| admitting he knew it was illegal.
| root_axis wrote:
| So in your own words the court did not issue a ruling,
| yet your original comment explicitly mentions a ruling
| without further elaboration. That seems disingenuous
| because without knowing what actually happened a reader
| could be easily mislead to believe that a ruling was
| actually issued, which is the only thing that matters
| with respect to the legal authority of the POTUS/SCOTUS.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _SCOTUS wrote words clearly indicating a ban would be
| illegal. By a technicality (expiration date), they didn
| 't issue an explicit ruling. Biden did it anyway, while
| admitting he knew it was illegal._
|
| SCOTUS said the moratorium exceeded the CDC's legal
| authority, but declined to strike it down given it was
| soon expiring [1]. (They also strongly suggested that if
| POTUS tried renewing, they _would_ strike it down.) POTUS
| tried renewing. SCOTUS struck it down.
|
| None of this is properly construed as POTUS ignoring
| SCOTUS. When SCOTUS struck down the law, POTUS obliged.
|
| [1] https://www.scotusblog.com/2021/06/divided-court-
| leaves-evic...
| iammisc wrote:
| This is next level rationalizing. For a president to say
| in no clear terms that he is going to make a rule he
| knows is illegal is something else.
|
| At least other administrations justify their attempts to
| break the law and mount some defense.
| jahewson wrote:
| No this is Kavanaugh trying to have his cake and eat it
| by saying one thing and doing another. He ducked out of
| making a ruling and Biden forced him to do so.
|
| The court doesn't get to make law by threatening to make
| law. They have to actually do it.
| rpmisms wrote:
| The court doesn't, or at least shouldn't, make law.
| jonas21 wrote:
| What are you talking about? The court ruled in favor of
| the administration in the first case, and against it in
| the second one. The administration complied after the
| second decision. This is how checks and balances work.
| Talanes wrote:
| It's not an illegal rule until the Supreme Court actually
| makes a ruling. The Supreme Court does not determine Law
| merely by speaking.
| mywittyname wrote:
| This kind of thing happens all the time though. The most
| salient instances being when states enact abortion
| restrictions that are known to be unconstitutional and
| were historically subject to injunctions and ruled
| against.
|
| There isn't a mechanism to stop unconstitutional laws
| from being passed or left on the books.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| cronix wrote:
| SCOTUS also said the eviction ban needed to be an act of
| congress. Congress debated it since then and couldn't
| come up with something they agreed on, so nothing was
| passed. So then, on the 2nd go around, Biden is using the
| CDC to come up with it, again, bypassing the congress
| which SCOTUS said was the only legal path forward.
| Congress could grant the CDC the authority to do so, but
| it hasn't. I think bypassing SCOTUS can only be argued to
| be intentional on the 2nd round.
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-supreme-
| court-st...
| mattkrause wrote:
| Is doing something that the Supreme Court _may_ later
| overturn--and bear in mind it was a close decision--
| actually "illegal"?
|
| I could certainly see the argument that it's ill-advised,
| and indeed, it was struck down a few weeks later.
| However, I don't think concurring opinions are binding
| and you could imagine certain fact patterns that might
| have changed Kavanaugh's mind: Congress agrees on a
| similar extension, but there's a short gap before it
| comes into effect, the situation worsens dramatically,
| the extension is much more narrowly tailored, etc.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > Is doing something that the Supreme Court may later
| overturn--and bear in mind it was a close decision--
| actually "illegal"?
|
| It's not illegal at all. Making it illegal would never
| work in practice.
|
| It is however supposed to be politically embarrassing and
| should in theory hurt your party.
|
| However right now, in practice, due to the polarized two-
| party shit show that is US politics at the top level, it
| doesn't matter. The constituents haven proven to lack
| both will and tools to hold their elected representatives
| accountable, who in turn have learned they can get away
| with pretty much anything.
|
| What could they have done to avoid a president who would
| behave that way? Elect Trump? Hah.
| [deleted]
| dahfizz wrote:
| >why am I being downvotes? The president explicitly stated
| his plan to ignore another SCOTUS ruling
|
| People only think executive overreach is cool as long as they
| can ignore the downsides.
| adolph wrote:
| %s/current/any/
| [deleted]
| RattleyCooper wrote:
| 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.
| 6510 wrote:
| If the car was used multiple shootings, the same phone was in
| that area and the phone was used to search for the victims
| name every time then we have everything we need but are
| unwilling to use it?
|
| We can probably figure out how to extract such data and cross
| reference it without making any of it available to random
| government employees.
|
| Say you take pictures of license plates, store the data some
| place safe and allow a query of 5 recent armed robbery
| locations. If the result contains multiple cars matching 2
| locations no results are returned. The moment a 6th robbery
| happens and a single car matches 3 out of 5 law enforcement
| can start looking for it immediately.
|
| 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.
| Talanes wrote:
| >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.
| 6510 wrote:
| 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!
| vimacs2 wrote:
| 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.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| There's a pretty broad statement. Evidence?
| NullPrefix wrote:
| >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.
| 6510 wrote:
| 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.
| s5300 wrote:
| The police in my hometown consist of:
|
| * A dude who managed solid D grades throughout
| _elementary and middle school_ despite a good &
| supportive family life & voluntarily chose to hold
| himself back a grade (8th grade) to "have a better chance
| of a football career to get into the NFL"
|
| * A dude who, for as long as I can literally remember,
| talked about how he was going to be some kickass marine.
| Talked about it all the time, for years. He was also a
| solid D (even in shop class) student & football player.
| Not only did he fail, to my knowledge, in every metric
| required to be a marine - he managed to fail, which I
| truly didn't know was possible, every metric required to
| be an _army grunt_ - except presumably the physical
| requirements. It wouldn 't be hard for me to imagine him
| failing a cardio requirement tho.
|
| This dude couldn't get in the lowest levels of our
| fucking army. I really only thought you could be
| disqualified for things like admitting to drugs or having
| felonies, but he managed to fuck up some test of
| intelligence they require.
|
| * & several generations of people who are similar fuckups
| like these two.
|
| Now, what do people like this on a police force manage to
| get up to?
|
| Last month, there was a domestic violence call somewhere
| in the town. By the time the cops got there, dude was out
| on the curb, in his car, with his kid (wife had said he
| had a gun and threatened her with it, he did not have a
| gun)
|
| Police haphazardly blocked him into the curb with their
| cruisers, and surrounded him with their guns out, in a
| crossfire with themselves. Proceeded to scream absolutely
| incoherent shit at the dude, while he's in the turned off
| & parked car with his hands clearly visible on the wheel
| - kid in the back seat, for about 10 minutes. Dude
| finally decides nothing good is going to come out of this
| & decides to attempt to leave. Turns car on, very slowly
| tries to turn out of how they'd blocked him in, and
| _very_ slightly bumps a cruisers bumper (nobody was in
| the cruiser)
|
| One cop then randomly decides to shoot. Keep in mind, I
| earlier mentioned the cops put themselves in their own
| crossfire. I have _absolutely_ no fucking idea how, but
| one cop shot the other cop in the shoulder. This was the
| very first bullet fired by anybody, and as stated, the
| perp didn 't even have a gun.
|
| Cop yells out he's hit, and then all cops present go fish
| in a fucking barrel on the car, with the child in it, to
| the tune of 67 bullets IIRC.
|
| The local news &, as you can assume, all Facebook groups,
| report that the man opened fire on police, and that the
| cops had then killed him. All comment sections swarmed
| with the local painkiller addicted retirement community
| saying "good, he should be dead" - and that reporting is
| now unchallengeable canon in their dementia ridden but
| still able to vote minds.
|
| There's still an ongoing investigation by the state as to
| how the chucklefuck cop managed to go full retard enough
| to blast his buddy, but having gone on so long I'm sure
| it's going to end up as another "we've investigated
| ourselves and found no wrong doing"
|
| The service isn't "worthless"
|
| It's downright fucking dangerous to anything and
| everything around it, like the person legally in the
| crosswalk, who was hit at 120mph+ by a cop SUV and turned
| into mostly red mist, no significant body parts to be
| found, by one of the squadrons of cops responding to the
| aforementioned call.
| Zababa wrote:
| > Calling the police is only about striking the
| perpetrator with violence, hoping that it would equalize
| the karma levels.
|
| Or, you know, prevent them from doing crimes again.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Well, generally you need to file a police report to file
| an insurance claim, so whether or not they do you any
| good (or even harm), you don't have a lot of alternatives
| (unless you don't have insurance, in which case you also
| don't have a lot of alternatives, likely).
| jonas21 wrote:
| On the other hand, if a specific type of nail is used as
| shrapnel in a homemade bomb, investigators _can_ go around to
| all hardware stores in the area and ask for security camera
| footage of customers who recently bought large quantities of
| that type of nail.
|
| This isn't a hypothetical situation - according to the LA
| Times, it's how they cracked the Austin bombing case that
| involved the Google warrant [1]:
|
| > _Trying to find the buyer of the nails, officials "went to
| every hardware store" in the area to find customers who had
| made large purchases, and they struck gold with a Home Depot
| store in the Austin suburb of Round Rock, McCaul said in an
| interview with the Los Angeles Times._
|
| > _"The fatal mistake that led law enforcement to him --
| because he was pretty good at evading surveillance cameras --
| was when he walked into Home Depot," McCaul said.
| Investigators obtained surveillance video of Conditt walking
| into the store in a wig and walking back out to a vehicle
| with a license plate connected to his name._
|
| So I think there's a little more nuance here. Certainly
| matching just on a list of fairly generic terms seems too
| broad. But a warrant for specific keywords that was limited
| to a specific city and time frame might be analogous to going
| to all the hardware stores in the city and pulling security
| footage?
|
| [1] https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-austin-bombings-
| suspect...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| The police can ask for anything. It's not the same thing as
| ordering something.
| jonas21 wrote:
| Indeed! It seems the reason they had to get a warrant for
| Google is that Google cares about user privacy and
| doesn't just hand over the requested data unless they're
| compelled to do so. It's unclear whether they got a
| warrant for any of the hardware stores of if they stores
| simply gave up the data when asked.
| zamfi wrote:
| > 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.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Neither am I a constitutional scholar, but I'm less optimistic
| about this being ruled illegal.
|
| But it's for a somewhat meta-reason: there have been numerous
| cases where something strikes me as blatantly unconstitutional,
| but the SCOTUS has allowed it anyway.
| Maximus9000 wrote:
| Is there a better source on this? Daily Mail is terrible:
|
| https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/daily-mail/
| bduerst wrote:
| It's blog-/reprint-spam of the original Forbes Article:
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/10/04/googl...
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| The Daily Mail is terrible, but so is Media Bias fact check.
| Their methodology is a joke regardless of your politics.
| alexpw wrote:
| Which alternative to MBFC is preferred? AllSides or
| AdFontesMedia or?
| exhilaration wrote:
| Forbes appears to be the original source and is linked in the
| article:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/10/04/googl...
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| mediabiasfactcheck looks pretty terrible too. A quick spot
| survey of who they think is left, right, and accurate is
| obviously off. Then when you look at the biased organizations
| they leverage for they're "fact checking", you can't have much
| hope for the end results.
|
| How can you trust an information source analysis site built
| upon untrustworthy information sources?
|
| "fact checking" is just another power center that is easily
| taken over by those seeking political power.
| verisimi wrote:
| "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.
| greenail wrote:
| It would suck if you were interested in the Polish efforts to
| decrypt enigma and you searched for 'bombe' but you get
| redirected via the spelling correction feature into government
| surveillance. How likely would a spelling correction get you
| swept up in this?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Are these keyword warrants signed off on by a judge?
| gowld wrote:
| Yes.
| literallyaduck wrote:
| The only sensible solution is to name JS and CSS frameworks using
| the keyword list.
| baud147258 wrote:
| I'm not really sure it's a idea that's usable, I mean the
| results of the framework would end up below results on actual
| explosions, so it'd be a PITA to search for information... I
| remember one tool called Beaver that was part of a deployement,
| really annoying to track down the documentation and existing
| issues
| hwers wrote:
| This is a wonderful civil disobedience type idea. If our
| industry had any guts we'd actually do this.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| It would have to be popular for the keyword poisoning to
| work, but it probably won't get popular with a weird name..
|
| "Yeah in my last project I developed a web app based on
| BinLaden Framework and IsisDB"..
| hwers wrote:
| I'm sure we can figure out something cleverer. Maybe use
| one of the more obscure names or a tagged phone number in
| some clever way.
| beermonster wrote:
| Reminds me when the trigger keywords for Echelon[1] leaked on
| the internet [2]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
|
| [2]
| https://www.theregister.com/2001/05/31/what_are_those_words/
| pcrh wrote:
| How useful is that list if it includes words like fish,
| cards, redhead, Texas, and so forth?
| rpmisms wrote:
| > Glock 26 - a ceramic handgun that can't be detected by
| airport scanners (a reader informs us that the Glock 26 is
| only partly ceramic, the bullets are metal and is can be
| detected at airports - so we should really shift this one
| into the X-file list)
|
| They pulled this directly from "Die Hard", the Glock 26 is
| just a cut-down Glock 19, with a big fat metal slide being
| integral to the gun's functionality.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Federal agents raided the home of John Doe this morning,
| accused of searching for terms such a "PipeBombJS" and "IED
| components for React". The suspect was making pour over coffee
| when he was apprehended.
| gnurqdio wrote:
| Real case: the default installer for GNUradio is called
| "pybombs". Last time I searched for it, google tried to auto-
| correct to one of those bad terms:
|
| https://github.com/gnuradio/pybombs
| coolspot wrote:
| Correction: the suspect was holding an object resembling an
| improvised explosive device when he was fatally shot.
| jaclaz wrote:
| Correction: the police forces that intervened reported how
| the suspect was holding an object resembling an improvised
| explosive device when he was fatally shot.
| adolph wrote:
| 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
| baud147258 wrote:
| 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
| haroldp wrote:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
| watch/wp/2014/07/14/...
| coolspot wrote:
| OP's quote misses context.
|
| Vicky Weaver was killed through a door by a sniper firing
| at someone else.
|
| A sentence before the quoted one attributes the bullet to
| the sniper.
| angst_ridden wrote:
| Correction: there was an officer-involved explosion when
| security forces investigated a suspected terrorist's
| kitchen / chemistry lab.
| [deleted]
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Don't the results already get ruined by people needing help
| with video games?
| mvdwoord wrote:
| This is genius.
| etblg wrote:
| There was a free to play FPS game called "Dirty Bomb" (made by
| Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory's Splash Damage). Always felt a
| little weird googling that name.
| thegabez wrote:
| Brave and Brave search have been great.
| bduerst wrote:
| IIRC, _Brave Search_ is a skin for Bing and Google search
| engines. These fed orders went out to Google, Microsoft, and
| Yahoo.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| How does Brave search compare to DuckDuckGo, Startpage, and
| Qwant?
| nbzso wrote:
| Hardened Firefox and https://searx.me/ are great to.:)
| beebeepka wrote:
| How does one harden Firefox? What's there beyond Tor browser
| and/or noscript?
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| it is like regular Firefox but really hard to install. It
| will also kill you if it crashes
| circularfoyers wrote:
| https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js There are hundreds of
| settings that can be configured to harden Firefox. A lot
| were upstreamed from the Tor Browser via the Tor Uplift
| project. The afforementioned user.js is well documented and
| the most well maintained that I'm aware of.
|
| This is one of the leading reasons why I think Firefox is a
| better browser than competitors because they don't allow
| this level of customization without hacking on the source
| code, like say Brave does. However not even Brave or
| Ungoogled Chromium is hardened as much as Firefox is with
| this user.js.
| akomtu wrote:
| You shouldn't think it's just the Search. Google also owns Chrome
| and Android.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| It may be an unpopular opinion, but I'm kind of fine with that. I
| mean, Google tracks everybody anyway, but there is no benefit to
| the society at large. But if in this way you can somehow help
| preventing mass murder, at least for once this tracking is put to
| good use. I imagine they must have a lot of false positives so
| probably concentrate on the worst offenders. If someone is
| searching for a lot of sick stuff on ways to kill people, maybe a
| friendly visit with a psychologist could help prevent a tragedy.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.md/r5jBp
| dhosek wrote:
| Anyone else finding themselves wanting to go to Google and try
| all these searches?
| djKianoosh wrote:
| just make a google search link go viral "you won't believe what
| the government doesn't want you to know!!" and every boomer and
| their mother is now a person of interest
| CptFribble wrote:
| 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.
| Willish42 wrote:
| While folks are right to point out this should be expected since
| Snowden, I think it's worth acknowledging that the cozy
| relationship between government and tech companies dates a bit
| further back. Enabling this kind of trakcing was the stated goal
| behind research grants from the same three-letter-agencies during
| Google's foundational years.
|
| https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci...
| t-writescode wrote:
| I recall reading stories about librarians actively refusing to
| give, effectively, exactly the same information back in the day.
|
| How we have fallen.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Same with video rental information after Robert Bork's rental
| history was leaked and all of Congress realized the same thing
| could happen to any of them, regardless of party. If the
| Patriot Act didn't kill it off, the wording of the law along
| with the switch to streaming likely has rendered it mostly
| ineffective.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I've always assumed that was the case.
|
| It's sort of like the license plate readers some communities have
| installed at the entryways to their community. Not only does it
| track people who aren't part of the community, it tracks all the
| comings and goings of the members, too. Oops.
|
| If the information is there, it'll be used.
| tootahe45 wrote:
| They asked Microsoft also. So does anybody know whether Windows
| would be logging searches at the OS level? ik about the windows
| search menu being logged, but interesting whether they actually
| intercept web searches.
| web2sucks wrote:
| Next headline "DuckDuckGo is used for terrorism"
| mywittyname wrote:
| DuckDuckBoom
| ourmandave wrote:
| DuckB4Boom
| [deleted]
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Maybe the correct response to unconstitutional, secret warrants
| is to refuse to comply, maybe even refuse to respond?
|
| It's not clear to me what would happen next but I can't imagine
| Pichai would be arrested. Maybe a datacenter would be raided
| (could FBI even guess where this data might be physically
| located?) but at least then some public action would have to
| happen and break the secrecy.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I would love for this to be viable. But I can't help but think
| there are all sorts of ways for our intelligence agencies to
| ruin a person's life for not complying. I'm not even suggesting
| some kind of spy-novel intrigue, you can just tell them to
| comply or they'll drag you and your company through the mud
| until they get what they want. Imagine taking a principled
| stand and then suddenly having your life examined under a
| microscope by the FBI or the IRS. It would be a totally
| unrelated audit, just how some people tend to be subject to
| random additional screening at airports.
| hwers wrote:
| This is what I fear is going to happen once surveillance-type
| robots start appearing in the streets. The narrative is that
| we'd somehow destroy them on sight but the truth is that that
| would be criminally persecuted.
| adventured wrote:
| Both things will happen. In some locations they will be
| destroyed despite the potential consequences, in other
| locations the population will rationalize their presence as
| being a good thing. It'll vary by affluence, culture. Poor
| people will tolerate them a lot less than rich people (rich
| people will believe that they make the area safer and will
| accept the trade-off).
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| Just remember Qwest and Joseph Nacchio.
|
| It's entirely plausible he was crooked, but he also claimed
| the NSA backed out of a deal with Qwest and then the insider
| trading charges showed up after he refused to comply with
| their (illegal) requests to spy on their customers.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime" was Beria's
| infamous boast. He served as deputy premier from 1941 until
| Stalin's death in 1953 ...
| soperj wrote:
| Ironic considering, soon after he was arrested, tried for
| treason and other offenses, sentenced to death, and
| executed on 23 December 1953.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| I don't think ironic is the right word. Just fitting - he
| knew the system and the system lived up to his promise.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It 's entirely plausible he was crooked, but he also
| claimed the NSA backed out of a deal with Qwest and then
| the insider trading charges showed up after he refused to
| comply with their (illegal) requests to spy on their
| customers_
|
| Read the charge sheet [1]. Is it possible that the NSA
| walked over to the SEC and asked them to prioritise this?
| Sure, why not. Is it also pretty clear cut that he insider
| traded? Yes.
|
| [1] https://www.sec.gov/news/press/2005-36.htm
| toolz wrote:
| It's difficult to win in an SEC governed market that is
| corrupt by design. You'd need a competitive advantage
| large enough to bridge the SECs designed corruption in
| the market.
| tyre wrote:
| What does this even mean? That it's difficult to make
| your stock go up because the SEC has rigged the market?
|
| Read through Tesla's history with the SEC, specifically
| Musk being immature and committing securities fraud on
| Twitter. They've fined him and the company, and there is
| no love lost between the two, but TSLA is still going up.
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| You forget the other company he manages.
| toolz wrote:
| Spend even just a couple hours researching dark pools and
| naked shorts and it becomes blindingly obvious the SEC
| exists to do anything but protect consumers.
|
| The twitter outrage over elon's comments are nothing more
| than a woefully uninformed public hoping to remove the
| tip without addressing the iceburg underneath.
|
| If every one of your competition doesn't have to play by
| the rules, you'll find it hard to beat them playing
| honestly and you'll find that over time the only winners
| left are the cheaters.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| I know all about dark pools and naked shorts and I have
| no idea what you're talking about. Be specific. Give
| details.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| One could argue that's the problem: They got a slap on
| the wrist instead of crippling punishment for illegal
| behavior, and there are companies that may be farther in
| the electric vehicle game than they are today, because
| they _didn 't_ employ a grandiose, law-flouting CEO to
| prop up their stock.
| shkkmo wrote:
| I still see significant issues with using the threat of
| finicial repercussions and criminal charges to force
| dirty executives to comply with illegal efforts to spy on
| their customers.
|
| This is problematic not just because of the violations of
| those customers' rights, but also because it creates
| perverse incentives for the government to encourage the
| success of dirty tech companies as means to circumvent
| constitutional protections.
|
| Thus while I don't doubt Nacchio's guilt, I absolutely
| think that he should have atleast been allowed to use
| that argument as a defense in his court case so that the
| Government is somewhat discouraged from using such
| tactics by the knowledge that it can come to light in
| court.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _still see significant issues with using the threat of
| finicial repercussions and criminal charges to force
| dirty executives to comply with illegal efforts to spy on
| their customers_
|
| I do too. We just have no evidence this happened.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > We just have no evidence this happened.
|
| Any evidence regarding that was suppressed by the judge
| due to the possible revealing of classified information.
| This sort of suppression is precisely my objection as it
| effectively allows the government to operate with
| impunity.
|
| I don't claim to know if the claims were true, I just
| think they should have been assessed in court.
| onetimemanytime wrote:
| >> _Maybe the correct response to unconstitutional, secret
| warrants is to refuse to comply, maybe even refuse to respond?_
|
| Ummmm, no. Correct response is courts and then comply. Pichai
| would lose his job in a minute.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| You are ignoring the fact that Tim Cook fought the government
| on the San Bernardino shooter, and still has his job.
|
| The Board is not going to fire Pichai over this, provided he
| appears to be fighting through the courts rather than
| practicing outright defiance.
| onetimemanytime wrote:
| you can fight until the case is still in the courts. Then,
| it is over. That's what I meant.
| pyrale wrote:
| The recent documents made public have shown that google doesn't
| give a shit about moral integrity. What makes you think that
| they would put themselves at risk for some kind of non-monetary
| public good?
| bduerst wrote:
| According to Forbes (who published the unsealed the docs),
| nothing is known about whether or not Google, Microsoft, and
| Yahoo are even complying with the requests, or to what extent
| if they are.
| tehjoker wrote:
| I know a guy that was working for a defense contractor in the
| 2000s that searched his military ranked boss's name on Google
| and told me he was told the next day not to do that anymore.
| hwers wrote:
| I'm not disputing the idea that he was told this but that's a
| weird thing to be told just for googling someones name. Maybe
| he was just curious about his background and wanted to read
| his wikipedia page.
| dmoy wrote:
| I mean yea, everything you do at work in a defense contractor
| is keylogged. They don't need to ask Google, they know what
| you're doing on their network.
| tehjoker wrote:
| 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).
| lostlogin wrote:
| VPN or company managed device? Seems like something a
| vaguely savvy user would keep in mind though.
| tehjoker wrote:
| I think it was a home device, I don't think this guy was
| super savvy though.
| tyingq wrote:
| 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+ass
| hole+boss+joe+schmoe to get to the .mil hosted bio page,
| they got to see that.
| tehjoker wrote:
| 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.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It's not made up. They monitor key sites including social
| media and those peddling in sensitive information.
| EO12333 makes warrantless searches legal for anyone with
| a clearance. It's also a convenient cover for why they
| need this extra-judicial domestic surveillance apparatus.
| drcoopster wrote:
| I'll be the part of the story he didn't tell you is more
| interesting.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| If Sundar decided to fight this (I'm not saying he would), then
| Google would probably file for an injunction to quash the
| request. No arrests, no raids.
| mindslight wrote:
| The government and Google are symbiotic entities. Why would
| this ever happen?
| xxpor wrote:
| Not even close. This sort of rhetoric just numbs people to
| actual abuses when they happen.
|
| If you want to see actual symbiotic entities, go look at
| social media in China or American defense contractors.
| beebeepka wrote:
| What's the difference? Sam must have invested in Google
| before 2005. At least that was the time it became somewhat
| apparent
| mindslight wrote:
| Without backing up your assertion, we're just talking past
| one another. Google the entity relies upon USG's system of
| laws for what it can and cannot do. Without Google (et al),
| USG would have a much harder time gathering information on
| citizens. That's symbiosis.
|
| There is real downside to Google if it decided to go
| against USG's de facto interests, even if it technically
| has the de jure ability to do so. What is the upside? The
| only large company that has made an attempt to rebuke the
| general desires of USG is Apple, which has since
| backpedaled with its on device spyware.
|
| Could this relationship be reformed through the little bit
| of leverage that US citizens have over USG? Perhaps. If
| you've got another concrete proposal aimed at doing do,
| then bring it up. But unless we're discussing a specific
| proposal, it's prudent for individual citizens to model the
| two as cooperating attackers rather than getting distracted
| with hopeful dichotomies such as "government" vs "private
| company".
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Google the entity relies upon USG 's system of laws
| for what it can and cannot do_
|
| You've defined symbiosis in a way that incorporates every
| person, company--and hell protected species--that touches
| American law. That makes the term useless for purposes of
| discussion.
| mindslight wrote:
| Eh, kind of. I agree I could have done a better job. I
| was trying to quickly summarize this distinction -
|
| A corporation literally cannot exist without a government
| charter.
|
| Google is able to collect all this surveillance data with
| impunity due to the state. Google is able to wash its
| hands of responsibility for the results of its actions
| due to the state. Google is able to force its workers to
| be loyal (eg not embezzle for themselves or competitors)
| due to the state. Google wouldn't have such outsized
| financial resources without the state printing reams of
| fiat money.
|
| Heading off the common retort that a private person can
| do whatever a corporation can do - the relevant issue is
| scale. It's simply impractical for an individual or a
| simple group of individuals to scale up to the level of a
| large corporation.
|
| And yes, this definition does end up catching any
| corporation as an intrinsic organ of the state. While
| jarring (because in the US power flows both ways), this
| is still a fundamental truth. For example if you attempt
| to set up an LLC or corporation that operates at odds
| with government policy (eg selling drugs), you'll find
| out how quickly a corporate veil will be discarded.
| Actions that are at odds with government policy are
| defined criminally, and thus all corporate activity is
| inherently government chartered.
|
| Of course all of this is only useful as a lemma to reach
| another conclusion. But that's what I was doing - why
| would Google ever choose to rock the boat? It's not
| impossible (cf Apple), it's just that there would need to
| be some explicit incentive for Google beyond mere
| citizens' hope.
| iammisc wrote:
| Honestly this forced choice (either google is in bed with
| government or Raytheon et Al are) is just needless
| politicization.
|
| Why don't we just condemn both? I mean... Google is going
| down the same path as the defense contractors and instead
| of stopping it from evolving into something like them,
| you're essentially arguing to look the other way
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Pichai certainly could be arrested for refusing to comply with
| warrants and court orders.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| In principle, by the letter and spirit of the law (bad as it
| is in this case), sure. In practice, I very much doubt anyone
| would dare arrest someone with Sundar Pichai's money and
| social standing for anything less than murder or insider
| trading basically.
| karmasimida wrote:
| I don't think so.
| amelius wrote:
| How does that work for EU residents?
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