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As much as I hate the idea of government surveillance, I think Google is absolutely not at fault here. They followed a narrow set of warrants to the letter [1].
by eyegor 7y ago
As much as I hate the idea of government surveillance, I think Google is absolutely not at fault here. They followed a narrow set of warrants to the letter [1]. However, I hate that private companies are legally allowed to collect this much information from us citizens. Even worse is the rare times that a company makes it optional, they are allowed to make it opt out. Letting this continue in the era of ring cameras, smart speakers, and home DNA tests is almost certainly going to inspire malicious actors (please remember that the Nazis used secular census data collected to track down Jews). This is a legislative issue, plain and simple.
[1] > The requests, outlined in two search warrants obtained by Forbes, demanded to know which specific Google customers were located in areas covering 29,387 square meters (or 3 hectares) during a total of nine hours for the four separate incidents.
- vunie 7y ago> I think Google is absolutely not at fault here. Well I do. If they had narrowed what information they collected to the absolute minimum and deleted it as soon as it was no longer required, then they wouldn't have any information to give. Information is a "toxic" liability. Google chose to hoard it. They are absolutely liable.
- bagacrap 7y agoTechnically the users chose to keep it by turning on location services, which is a specific Google-wide setting that tracks your location. I find it extremely useful so I leave it on. I have asked Google to store my location.
- boring_twenties 7y agoPretty sure Location History was never on by default for my Google account, I had to explicitly turn it on. In fact on every new device I seem to have to enable it separately.