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Does this mean the content of Google searches now will be sent directly to the U.S. gov't and state gov'ts? It seems like the kind of privacy intrusion that wo
by unyttigfjelltol 6y ago
Does this mean the content of Google searches now will be sent directly to the U.S. gov't and state gov'ts? It seems like the kind of privacy intrusion that would concern everyday people.
- ses1984 6y agoThey aren't already?
- stjohnswarts 6y agoNo they aren't, and unless you have proof that they do it's a conspiracy theory on the level of aliens and the Rothschild Illuminati.
- im3w1l 6y agoDo you want some real paranoia fuel? Foreign governments are likely to have moles with log access.
- juanani 6y agoPRISM should be enough proof, doubt we will see anymore. What's all this concern about the Annunaki?
- gens 6y agoRoom 641A is a similar thing.
- _jal 6y agoIs true. And there is more that can't be proven. But it is also true that Google and ATT are very different companies. The Snowden leaks lead Google to encrypt internal links, once they realized NSA were tapping them; ATT built NSA Room 641A. But this is rather more complicated than that; I'd bet money there are are people employed at Google who wear more than one hat[1], as there have been at tech companies throughout the history of Silicon Valley. And practices at Google makes NSA's life easier - Organizing the World's Advertising Targets is actually a remarkably compatible goal.
- thatguy0900 6y agoIt's funny, it even has an ominous name and everything, fits perfectly in a list with aliens and illuminati
- barbacoa 6y agoUnder prism google gave direct access in real time to all their data to the nsa including search history.
- ggggtez 6y agoCorrect me if I'm wrong, but wasn't PRISM done without the knowledge of Google? Wasn't the whole scandal that the NSA was wiretapping everyone including Google's internal corp network?
- barbacoa 6y agoThe government has the ability to issue national security letters using its expansive surveillance power granted under section 215 of the patriot act. These also have very restrictive gag orders against disclosure. Rank and file employees would be unaware of these searches. If a big tech company went full nuclear with their lawyers it's possible that they could have gotten the whole patriot act ruled unconstitutional. But they didn't. They all cooperated. PRISM took this one step further and was a project where google (and everyone else) gave the government direct searchable access to their databases. There is no reason to think this isn't still going on.
- mda 6y agoThis is also a myth.
- Proziam 6y agoCitation needed
- IncRnd 6y agoThat's ludicrous, misleading, and extremely unhelpful almost to the point of dishonesty. Look for the documents leaked by Glenn Greenwald and informatin on PRISM.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoOnly if you consider The Government a homogeneous whole. Now some more bureaucrats and sys admins can take a peek too.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- stjohnswarts 6y agoI'm sure they (governments of any sort) like this as a side effect
- Black101 6y agoIt seems like it would be temporary because an antitrust case seems like a slam dunk?
- gruez 6y ago>The Alphabet Inc. unit is being asked to share data on how and where users searched in those periods, the quantity of different types of ads, revenue from those ads and what the underlying bids were for them, among other details. The government told the company it wants the information within 30 days. doesn't seem like it.
- testesttest 6y ago> search results and related ad from Feb. 2, 2015 to Feb. 8, 2015 and from Feb. 3, 2020 to Feb. 9, 2020 It's a very specific date range to help build the case. The article was very clear about this.
- generalizations 6y agoIt certainly sets a very bad precident. At the very least, it will be far easier to ask for more, once the basic premise has been established.
- prepend 6y agoPrecedent of meeting discovery requirements? The data delivered should only be used for specified purposes so it’s not like the antitrust prosecutors can just comb through it. Antitrust cases are rare, so even if they did do inappropriate things, it would only happen every antitrust investigation. Plus, these data are already given to NSA in total and large chunks to law enforcement.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoGoogle set the bad precedent by appearing to abuse their monopoly on the search market.
- bagacrap 6y agoI imagine the data will be aggregated/anonymized.
- esperent 6y agoWhy do you think that? Is data usually anonymised in private court orders in the US?
- Romanulus 6y agoI can't imagine proof (or the worth of proof) for something imagined.
- bagacrap 6y agobecause the data is useless if not aggregated. Does the government really want to sift through billions of individual search queries with tons of metadata attached to each? No, they want to see trends from which conclusions can be drawn. Anonymization is partly a result of aggregation, but also I can't see how and PII is relevant to the case here.
- esperent 6y agoHowever, the government may ask for all the unaggregated search data so they can perform statistical analysis on it themselves... and "coincidently" gain access to a huge trove of personally identifying data. This is the US government we're talking about here - they do have a history of overreach in this area.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoIf that does not exempt them from the antitrust allegations it's going to cost them dearly.
- IncRnd 6y agoThat's been happening for a long time. You can see this has happened through programs such as PRISM.
- 3131s 6y agoHN is filled with spooks downvoting the truth.
- andy_ppp 6y agoI wonder about this too, I’m sure there are centres shaping online communities out there if there are programmes like PRISM etc. still about.
- valvar 6y agoIt's a common line of thought that often surfaces and it is listed in the HN guidelines as one of the things that should not be insinuated. So that's why your parent is getting downvoted.
- BrianOnHN 6y agoCommon enough that there's something behind it. However, @dang suggests there is nothing HN can do to insulate us from "sufficiently smart manipulators." [1] [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=sufficiently%20smart%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
- freeflight 6y agoYes, there very much are, just a few examples: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op... https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/4ylml3/reddit_has_removed_their_blog_post_identifying/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/4ylml3/reddit... In the first article they claim to never "broadcast" with their sock puppets in English language, which was a legal barrier set by the Smith-Mund Act at the time, a barrier that was officially removed in 2012: https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-... Tbh I wouldn't be too surprised if those US and Five Eye programs are the first of their kind, yet they have a very easy time flying under the radar because for the most part it's a home-match for them: No Reddit, Twitter or Facebook will ban a bunch of US IPs for allegedly running "propaganda operations", yet with Iranian, Chinese, Russian and whatnot IPs that's a very regular thing. Makes me wonder if Chinese or Russian platforms like WeChat or VKontakte ever banned a bunch of American IPs for similar reasons?
- VirgilShelton 6y agoUhh what have you been searching for?
- charcircuit 6y ago>It seems like the kind of privacy intrusion that would concern everyday people. Privacy is dead. Everyday people are not concerned about privacy. They don't care that someone will potentially see their "How do I cook a hotdog" search.
- zo1 6y agoI'm a tech person that regularly wears the proverbial tin-foil hat and I for the most part also don't agree with a lot of the privacy items. I see a good chunk of it as a sort of religious tech-age form of "luddism", whilst the other chunk as a conspiracy being pushed by large-tech companies precisely because "privacy" suits them.
- grep_name 6y agoHow can you wear a tinfoil hat if you don't think privacy is important?
- ggggtez 6y agoThe article seems to imply that it's just aggregated data about what ads were shown and stuff.