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Google keyword warrants give U.S. government data on search users

289 points by spzx 5y ago

farmerstan 5y ago
On one hand I totally believe that our privacy needs to be protected companies that facilitate government surveillance should be boycotted. On the other hand, the fact that no one can find Brian Laundrie indicates to be that generally government is incompetent and can’t mask all these things together to do anything really useful.
- annoyingnoob 5y ago
  How does the internet collect data (and share it) about someone offline (presumably in the wilderness)?
- stickfigure 5y ago
  If he's in the belly of some crocodile, he's probably not using electronic devices.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    If the crocodile looked him up on Google, we basically already got it.
dukeofdoom 5y ago
Its all over twitter today AG Merrick Garland Instructed FBI to Mobilize Against Parents Who Oppose Critical Race Theory, Covid Mandates in Public Schools. I can see how Google might play a helpful to find these deplorables by their search history. So government can send them for re-education. Before they disrupt any meetings. Pre crime style.
randombits0 5y ago
From my perspective, this ability was generally assumed to be true but confirmation is interesting. Heck, it’s even a running stand-up joke. “Ask your wife if you can look up something on her phone. Google “How to kill your husband” and hand it back to her. Congrats, you’re safe for another month!
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  > Google “How to kill your husband” and hand it back to her. Congrats, you’re safe for another month! Sure, google's search results suck nowadays, but she could always just go to the library.
  - paleotrope 5y ago
    First 20 results are SEO sites with words Husband and Husbandry in them.
    - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      makes perfect sense, there's lots of killing in animal husbandry.
- rbobby 5y ago
  > safe for the another month Not so fast there buddy. Best check what autocompletes for "how to dispose of a b..." and "best place to b...".
  - jfk13 5y ago
    I get "how to dispose of a broken tv", and "best place to buy a used car". And your point was...?
    - rbobby 5y ago
      No body/bury = good
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  Yeah, honestly, this kind of thing slightly terrifies me. I know I have definitely Googled for totally random things that, when taken out of context, would look pretty bad. I remember once watching a show where someone was knocked out with chloroform, and I googled something like "Does chloroform really work?" or "Can you really knock someone out with chloroform?" I turned to my partner and joked "You better not be huffing any chloroform in the near future." That's the light side of it, but the scary side of it, and why these sort of "fishing expeditions" are so dangerous, is that statistically it's probably the case that if you're keywords are pretty specific (googling a person's name or address in a very time limited window), that 90-95% of the time if someone popped up they were doing something suspicious - but that means 5-10% of the time you'd get a false positive. Given revelations of people who have been released fro death row for rather flimsy evidence, I don't have confidence that the authorities would do much besides try to find someone guilty once they got a hit.
wongarsu 5y ago
In principle I don't have a problem with the police getting a warrant to find out who searched for a specific name or place in a constrained time frame. It's a bit like the police asking the library who checked out a specific book. The problem is that this could obviously be used with keywords that target a wide group of people, e.g. finding everyone who plans to attend a protest. If we continue to allow keyword warrants we should add a law limiting their reach, e.g. by limiting the number of people who can be revealed in the answer to any one such warrant.
- Kim_Bruning 5y ago
  I always thought that it was generally accepted that if people tried to get hold of your library-loan records; that that was a red line. You can't call a place a free country if the police can ask for your library information. For instance: In the Netherlands, libraries tend(ed) to destroy your loaned-book information ~ when the books were returned. (They seem to have since picked up some data-mining habits?)
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    That's certainly not a bright line in any American jurisdiction. Courts can and do order the production of library loan records. In general an American court can order the disclosure of any record maintained anywhere by anyone for any purpose. There are no records that are private and privileged against a court order, with a few narrow exceptions. The police can't order someone to produce anything; they need a court order to do it.
    - Kim_Bruning 5y ago
      Hmm, this appears to be a relatively new power. https://www.propublica.org/article/remember-when-the-patriot-act-debate-was-about-library-records https://www.propublica.org/article/remember-when-the-patriot...
      - jeffbee 5y ago
        No, American courts can order the production of any kind of records, and always have done so. Law enforcement goes to the court, shows "probable cause" regarding a current case, swears to the facts of the case, and the court orders some third party to produce the information. The third party is obligated to comply or contest. This is the legal process to which people are due in the phrase "due process of law". The Section 215 powers you refer to move jurisdiction of certain matters from one court to another. That's perhaps not great but the main effect of it is giving law enforcement a more secret venue in which to seek warrants.
AlbertCory 5y ago
What I don't know, even though I was in the same building with the people who handled these orders in Google Legal, is: If you clear your Google history (as you should), can they still respond to an order like this with your name? What if you did the search from Brave or Safari, where you were not logged into Google?
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  > If you clear your Google history (as you should), can they still respond to an order like this with your name? Assuming they still have the data (didn’t delete it, just “cleared” it), then yes.
- spzx 5y ago
  >If you clear your Google history Also what if you are logged into Google, but your Google search history was always switched off? >What if you did the search from Brave or Safari, where you were not logged into Google? Relevant quote from the article: >In Wisconsin, the government was hopeful Google could also provide “CookieIDs” belonging to any users who made the searches. These CookieIDs “are identifiers that are used to group together all searches conducted from a given machine, for a certain time period. Such information allows investigators to ascertain, even when the user is not logged into a Google account, whether the same individual may have conducted multiple pertinent searches,” the government wrote.
  - AlbertCory 5y ago
    CookieIDs are specific to one browser, are they not? As for the argument that they can still find it: The laws usually allow for the company to decline on the grounds that complying would be an "undue burden." In other words, if their usual method is to run some program they wrote to handle the common case, and this time they'd have to write a new program, they might claim that's an undue burden. Might. If they feel like it.
- mandeepj 5y ago
  > If you clear your Google history (as you should), can they still respond to an order like this with your name? They can still trace you via your IP Address. Ironically, Incognito is not really an incognito
annoyingnoob 5y ago
Don't want to be swept up in a dragnet? Don't want to be a suspect based on normal everyday activities? Then you better not use Google, try DuckDuckGo or another private search engine. Edit: downvote all you want. dealing with google is like talking to the police, whatever you say/do will be used against you. in googles case for advertising/influencing you or by the government using the google gold mine. you can spare yourself by using a different search engine.
- lmilcin 5y ago
  > Edit: downvote all you want. Complaining about being downvoted is shunned upon on HN and is unlikely to cause people to stop downvoting. It brings nothing interesting to discussion and actually reduces density of interesting things.
  - annoyingnoob 5y ago
    You only posted a piece of my edit. I did also clarify my point. Was not meant as a complaint as much as a clarification and invitation for discussion. Wish more down votes would comment. My style tends to be terse/short and perhaps I don't always make my point well.
    - stickfigure 5y ago
      It still detracts from the conversation and invites distracting meta-threads like this one (and yes, I'm contributing). It's really better to let your original point stand on its own. Don't be disheartened by a few downvotes in the short period while a comment is still editable. You may get many more upvotes as time goes on. Or not, but don't take it personally either way. There are also people like me that upvote interesting comments even if we disagree with them (especially if they are unfairly negative). Meta-commentary on votes tends makes them much less interesting.
      - annoyingnoob 5y ago
        Fair enough.
goalieca 5y ago
DuckDuckGo famously does not save your search history but the way things are going I fear that one day such a thing will be mandated.
- panarky 5y ago
  DDG famously blocked people in countries that aren't China from searching for topics that China censors. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925
  - celsoazevedo 5y ago
    That was caused by Microsoft (DDG uses Bing search results): https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jun/04/microsoft-bing-tiananmen-tank-man-results https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jun/04/microsoft... Don't get me wrong, it doesn't make them look good, but the problem was the with the source of their results, not them censoring "tank man".
    - panarky 5y ago
      No thanks, I prefer a search engine that doesn't implement Chinese censorship when I'm not in China.
      - celsoazevedo 5y ago
        Did you mean to reply to someone else? Because as explained, DDG didn't implement any censorship.
        panarky 5y ago
        If I use DDG outside of China, and its results are sanitized of anything that offends the CCP, I will hold DDG accountable for that. It doesn't matter if under the hood DDG sources search results from somewhere else, DDG is the one serving me censored results. DDG "implemented" censorship. DDG is accountable.
ufmace 5y ago
Interesting to confirm that this has actually been done. I wonder if there's really any process around it. It doesn't seem so bad to do it for something super-specific, like the home address of the victim of a crime, in the timeframe that the crime was committed, where you expect to get under 10 individuals. What's more worrying is how broad could this get? Are there any actual legal limits, or does Google just give the Government whatever they ask for? It seems more and more like some of the tech majors are so big and so dominant over the industry and our lives that it makes less sense to treat them as private companies. In theory, under current legal dogma, Google is a private corporation, and I have no rights at all to data it gathers, so it can hand it over to the Government anytime it feels like it with no knowledge or due process. Even if they claim they only share information for the Right Cases, how do you know, how can you trust them? Do you have any recourse if you think your case was not justified?
- mywittyname 5y ago
  > where you expect to get under 10 individuals. Maybe. If this person was, for example, online dating, a member of a popular club, had a YT/TikTok channel, or shared a name with someone who does or is otherwise notable, this could be a big list. How would you feel being suspected in a murder case because you searched for a d-list celeb who shares a name with the victim?
ren_engineer 5y ago
as always with government power you should ask if you would be alright with your political enemies on the other side of the aisle having full access to abuse the new government power, because they probably will at some point.
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
Argh. Clickbait article header. The header sounds like a "blanket trawl," which, I suspect, would require an NSA-grade computer to manage (which they have, so it's not beyond belief). They were sending warrants to people that searched for particular names, addresses, etc. Not news. We all know this has been going on for many years. It's fairly standard, in many "capital crime" cases.
- ziml77 5y ago
  I got the same impression from the title. The request is limited to searches for a couple specific people over a short timeframe. They had legitimate reason for it. There's no issue here.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - trutannus 5y ago
    The headline in the post has been modified too from the original. The original is Exclusive: Government Secretly Orders Google To Identify Anyone Who Has Searched A Name, Address And Telephone Number. The A there does a lot of heavy lifting, and implies that the warrants are for specific items. The title on HN here is Exclusive: Government Secretly Orders Google To Identify Anyone Who Has Searched Name, Address And Telephone N, which implies that this is for all searches that are for any of these sorts of items.
- ziddoap 5y ago
  >Not news. We all know this has been going on for many years. Who is the 'we' here? Many people may have assumed this is happening... But according to the article itself, there's less then a handful of these specific warrants being recorded/unsealed/reported in the news. Do you have access to sources which Forbes does not where more of these warrants are documented? From the article: >Before this latest case, only two keyword warrants had been made public. One revealed in 2020 [...]
  - 5y ago
binkHN 5y ago
If you haven't already, you've been able to "auto-delete" the data Google keeps on you for a while now. I think Google should be turning this on by default for everyone, but, if you are not doing this, a little more detail may be found at https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/automatically-delete-data/ https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/automatically....
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  This is only the data that Google keeps for you, not the data that Google keeps on you.
- Ir0nMan 5y ago
  This only applies to "Web Activity" and "Location History" which you can also just turn off completely instead of the "auto delete every x months" option.
  - binkHN 5y ago
    This includes your searches, which you can see at https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity.
icarus_gh 5y ago
As a person neither leaning East nor West who is an avid HN reader it's always interesting to read the comments under such topics where the collusion between US private companies come up. Comparing it to the reactions when tenous connections between Chinese companies and the CCP are characterised as a threat to freedom and human rights. It reminds me to be wary of my own biases. Because from where I stand they are all two sides of the same coin.
- stickfigure 5y ago
  Courts in the US are generally quite independent of the political process. Abuse of the court system is prosecuted fairly heavily. This is "rule of law". On the other hand, courts in China do whatever the CCP tells them. These are not equivalent.
  - etc-hosts 5y ago
    How do you feel about Steven Donziger ? https://www.reuters.com/world/us/lawyer-who-sued-chevron-sentenced-six-months-contempt-case-2021-10-01/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/lawyer-who-sued-chevron-sen...
  - a_large_rat00 5y ago
    Where is this judicial fantasyland you live in with apolitical judges and independent laws? They're written, passed, judged, and enforced by heavily partisan actors, now more than ever. You're kidding yourself, and no one else, if you think the US judicial system is politically independent.
    - hnfong 5y ago
      Given that judiciary being subservient to the Party is an intentional feature in China, no competent western system would do "worse" in judicial independence than China. The GP is literally always correct in relativistic terms. If that makes people in the West feel more comfortable with the government, I guess I could say good for them? :)
air7 5y ago
> so-called geofence warrants, where investigators ask Google to provide information on anyone within the location of a crime scene at a given time. It's amazing we've become so tethered to our phones that it's just implicitly obvious that your phone's location is the same as your location. Authoritarian governments rejoice! People will voluntarily pay and cling to their tracking devices, no need to track them personally.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- cma 5y ago
  Basically everyone has an ankle monitor.
sneeeeeed 5y ago
This is why everybody should do all their browsing with Tor, excepting maybe banking and shopping.
_yoqn 5y ago
Time to stop using Google Search or any of their services. Realistically the only one that's not replaceable ATM is YouTube but hopefully soon will be with other platforms gaining speed. Personally I use Brave Search for 99% of my searches. They are definitely privacy based, unlike some other alternatives.
einpoklum 5y ago
This story is a smoke screen. The government in general - that is, some branches of the government starting with the NSA - already obtains all this information, and more, automatically from Google, whether willingly or otherwise. No warrant, no specific orders, no nothing. That is part of Edward Snowden's revelations: https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Guardian_and_Snowden_revelations_2013 https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Guardian_and_Snowden_r... Many large media outlets have basically buried this fact rather quickly after the initial coverage of the revelations, and now we can have stories about how "the keyword warrant" being "one of the more contentious". Sure, it's contentious, since _more_ government bodies get easier access to some of the information, but its infraction of people's privacy is nothing compared to the vast public spying. One should also mention the mechanism of "National Security Letters", in which the executive branch of the US federal (only?) government can compel non-govenrment entities, in secret, to provide them with whatever information they deem necessary for national security purposes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter
stevens37 5y ago
TOR browser + duckduckgo
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
RobRivera 5y ago
So anyone who searched A SPECIFIC Name...this title is grossly misleadung
atok1 5y ago
This over reach is so terrifying it's almost funny. Always use a VPN and/or Tor.
m0zg 5y ago
Sounds like a huge fishing expedition that violates what little currently remains of the 4th amendment. This kind of shit should be plainly, unequivocally illegal, and people who approved this in the first place need to be in jail.
Railsify 5y ago
Buy guns.
A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
As sad as it is to admit it, it is not surprising to me. Worse, given the nature of my job, it is almost a given that some of my searches and queries are a part of an undesirable list somewhere. It is a problem. I am not trying to diminish it. But the real problem is that general population has zero to no issue with it. They barely comprehend the scope of what is happening. I am not sure it registers at all. Last time I talked to my wife about it, she said she has nothing to hide and I had to resist the urge to just plop her internet history open to make it a teachable moment. I had this conversation once before. It is not fun and I don't want a repeat.
- sjg007 5y ago
  I think tht even today with the internet it takes a good detective to sort through all of the evidence. There are easy answers and there are the correct answers, in between truth. With AI it will only get more difficult. You have shot spotters, license plate reader and gps with no warranty.
- lsiebert 5y ago
  I suspect there may be some bias in your data gathering, because that's not what's reflected in the statistical surveys I've seen. "Americans are concerned about how much data is being collected about them, and many feel their information is less secure than it used to be. The majority of Americans say they are at least somewhat concerned about how much data is collected about them by both companies (79%) and the government (64%). Additionally, seven-in-ten Americans say they feel their personal information is less secure than it was five years ago. This compares with just 6% who say they feel their information is more secure, and about one-quarter (24%) who feel it’s about the same." https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/11/15/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-about-privacy-surveillance-and-data-sharing/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/11/15/key-takeawa...
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
    It is possible. My social circle is relatively small and may not be representative of the zeitgeist. But despite the data shown, the question is what an average American is doing. While there is interest in non-google, non-apple devices, those are still niche markets with some technical knowhow necessary. Apart from that, both Apple and Google are doing rather well. I certainly did not see a decrease in sales of various panopticon enabling devices. Far from it. Amazon joined the fray and along with other players convinced people to install wiretaps in their own homes. There is an actual joke about it so I am not sure if it is a question of social proof or cognitive dissonance. I agree there is an improvement, but I am not as optimistic it since I don't see it affecting profits.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
Does anyone have links to Apple complying with geofence warrants? I searched and didn’t get very far, this is one that might need someone’s recollection.
zanethomas 5y ago
just another reason to use duckduckgo
mlindner 5y ago
The problem is that Google is even retaining logs of this kind of thing in the first place.
raxxorrax 5y ago
Using a VPN provider in a country outside US jurisdiction would be recommended. Sure, they can also request the data from there with enough political pressure, but it is about putting up barriers. This screams of government being acutely overstrained as it is but no reason to give them a hand with such deed. You should also search for this person too. They requested data and data should be served.
phkahler 5y ago
This is one of those slippery slopes, but I dont think the uses here have gone down that slope yet. An open ended search might be on terms related to bomb making, where curiosity might get someone labeled a potential terrorist. Here a specific person went missing and they were looking for people who searched on that specific person. It's still a net, but it's not that wide and its focused on something that already happened. They even put date ranges on the search. I see the problem though. It's probably just a matter of time before the specificity is loosened a lot, and that would be bad.
londons_explore 5y ago
It's time Google notifies every user whose data was searched for these warrants. The notification should say: Google has searched your data in response to a legal request from XYZ court. Google searched for the keyword "John Smith" in your Google search history. No matches were found, so no further action was taken. For more information, click HERE.
therealbilly 5y ago
It should be clear by now that Google serves the state. The government knows Google collects all this information and they also know Google never deletes this information. Both Google and the government have an ongoing relationship where information is provided on demand. One can easily imagine that the government is very protective of their relationship with Google. They even invested in Google during the early years.

289 points by spzx 5y ago

On one hand I totally believe that our privacy needs to be protected companies that facilitate government surveillance should be boycotted. On the other hand, the fact that no one can find Brian Laundrie indicates to be that generally government is incompetent and can’t mask all these things together to do anything really useful.

annoyingnoob 5y ago
How does the internet collect data (and share it) about someone offline (presumably in the wilderness)?
stickfigure 5y ago
If he's in the belly of some crocodile, he's probably not using electronic devices.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  If the crocodile looked him up on Google, we basically already got it.

dukeofdoom 5y ago

Its all over twitter today AG Merrick Garland Instructed FBI to Mobilize Against Parents Who Oppose Critical Race Theory, Covid Mandates in Public Schools. I can see how Google might play a helpful to find these deplorables by their search history. So government can send them for re-education. Before they disrupt any meetings. Pre crime style.

randombits0 5y ago

From my perspective, this ability was generally assumed to be true but confirmation is interesting. Heck, it’s even a running stand-up joke. “Ask your wife if you can look up something on her phone. Google “How to kill your husband” and hand it back to her. Congrats, you’re safe for another month!

bryanrasmussen 5y ago
> Google “How to kill your husband” and hand it back to her. Congrats, you’re safe for another month! Sure, google's search results suck nowadays, but she could always just go to the library.
- paleotrope 5y ago
  First 20 results are SEO sites with words Husband and Husbandry in them.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    makes perfect sense, there's lots of killing in animal husbandry.
rbobby 5y ago
> safe for the another month Not so fast there buddy. Best check what autocompletes for "how to dispose of a b..." and "best place to b...".
- jfk13 5y ago
  I get "how to dispose of a broken tv", and "best place to buy a used car". And your point was...?
  - rbobby 5y ago
    No body/bury = good
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
Yeah, honestly, this kind of thing slightly terrifies me. I know I have definitely Googled for totally random things that, when taken out of context, would look pretty bad. I remember once watching a show where someone was knocked out with chloroform, and I googled something like "Does chloroform really work?" or "Can you really knock someone out with chloroform?" I turned to my partner and joked "You better not be huffing any chloroform in the near future." That's the light side of it, but the scary side of it, and why these sort of "fishing expeditions" are so dangerous, is that statistically it's probably the case that if you're keywords are pretty specific (googling a person's name or address in a very time limited window), that 90-95% of the time if someone popped up they were doing something suspicious - but that means 5-10% of the time you'd get a false positive. Given revelations of people who have been released fro death row for rather flimsy evidence, I don't have confidence that the authorities would do much besides try to find someone guilty once they got a hit.

wongarsu 5y ago

In principle I don't have a problem with the police getting a warrant to find out who searched for a specific name or place in a constrained time frame. It's a bit like the police asking the library who checked out a specific book. The problem is that this could obviously be used with keywords that target a wide group of people, e.g. finding everyone who plans to attend a protest. If we continue to allow keyword warrants we should add a law limiting their reach, e.g. by limiting the number of people who can be revealed in the answer to any one such warrant.

Kim_Bruning 5y ago
I always thought that it was generally accepted that if people tried to get hold of your library-loan records; that that was a red line. You can't call a place a free country if the police can ask for your library information. For instance: In the Netherlands, libraries tend(ed) to destroy your loaned-book information ~ when the books were returned. (They seem to have since picked up some data-mining habits?)
- jeffbee 5y ago
  That's certainly not a bright line in any American jurisdiction. Courts can and do order the production of library loan records. In general an American court can order the disclosure of any record maintained anywhere by anyone for any purpose. There are no records that are private and privileged against a court order, with a few narrow exceptions. The police can't order someone to produce anything; they need a court order to do it.
  - Kim_Bruning 5y ago
    Hmm, this appears to be a relatively new power. https://www.propublica.org/article/remember-when-the-patriot-act-debate-was-about-library-records https://www.propublica.org/article/remember-when-the-patriot...
    - jeffbee 5y ago
      No, American courts can order the production of any kind of records, and always have done so. Law enforcement goes to the court, shows "probable cause" regarding a current case, swears to the facts of the case, and the court orders some third party to produce the information. The third party is obligated to comply or contest. This is the legal process to which people are due in the phrase "due process of law". The Section 215 powers you refer to move jurisdiction of certain matters from one court to another. That's perhaps not great but the main effect of it is giving law enforcement a more secret venue in which to seek warrants.

AlbertCory 5y ago

What I don't know, even though I was in the same building with the people who handled these orders in Google Legal, is: If you clear your Google history (as you should), can they still respond to an order like this with your name? What if you did the search from Brave or Safari, where you were not logged into Google?

colejohnson66 5y ago
> If you clear your Google history (as you should), can they still respond to an order like this with your name? Assuming they still have the data (didn’t delete it, just “cleared” it), then yes.
spzx 5y ago
>If you clear your Google history Also what if you are logged into Google, but your Google search history was always switched off? >What if you did the search from Brave or Safari, where you were not logged into Google? Relevant quote from the article: >In Wisconsin, the government was hopeful Google could also provide “CookieIDs” belonging to any users who made the searches. These CookieIDs “are identifiers that are used to group together all searches conducted from a given machine, for a certain time period. Such information allows investigators to ascertain, even when the user is not logged into a Google account, whether the same individual may have conducted multiple pertinent searches,” the government wrote.
- AlbertCory 5y ago
  CookieIDs are specific to one browser, are they not? As for the argument that they can still find it: The laws usually allow for the company to decline on the grounds that complying would be an "undue burden." In other words, if their usual method is to run some program they wrote to handle the common case, and this time they'd have to write a new program, they might claim that's an undue burden. Might. If they feel like it.
mandeepj 5y ago
> If you clear your Google history (as you should), can they still respond to an order like this with your name? They can still trace you via your IP Address. Ironically, Incognito is not really an incognito

annoyingnoob 5y ago

Don't want to be swept up in a dragnet? Don't want to be a suspect based on normal everyday activities? Then you better not use Google, try DuckDuckGo or another private search engine. Edit: downvote all you want. dealing with google is like talking to the police, whatever you say/do will be used against you. in googles case for advertising/influencing you or by the government using the google gold mine. you can spare yourself by using a different search engine.

lmilcin 5y ago
> Edit: downvote all you want. Complaining about being downvoted is shunned upon on HN and is unlikely to cause people to stop downvoting. It brings nothing interesting to discussion and actually reduces density of interesting things.
- annoyingnoob 5y ago
  You only posted a piece of my edit. I did also clarify my point. Was not meant as a complaint as much as a clarification and invitation for discussion. Wish more down votes would comment. My style tends to be terse/short and perhaps I don't always make my point well.
  - stickfigure 5y ago
    It still detracts from the conversation and invites distracting meta-threads like this one (and yes, I'm contributing). It's really better to let your original point stand on its own. Don't be disheartened by a few downvotes in the short period while a comment is still editable. You may get many more upvotes as time goes on. Or not, but don't take it personally either way. There are also people like me that upvote interesting comments even if we disagree with them (especially if they are unfairly negative). Meta-commentary on votes tends makes them much less interesting.
    - annoyingnoob 5y ago
      Fair enough.

goalieca 5y ago

DuckDuckGo famously does not save your search history but the way things are going I fear that one day such a thing will be mandated.

panarky 5y ago
DDG famously blocked people in countries that aren't China from searching for topics that China censors. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925
- celsoazevedo 5y ago
  That was caused by Microsoft (DDG uses Bing search results): https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jun/04/microsoft-bing-tiananmen-tank-man-results https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jun/04/microsoft... Don't get me wrong, it doesn't make them look good, but the problem was the with the source of their results, not them censoring "tank man".
  - panarky 5y ago
    No thanks, I prefer a search engine that doesn't implement Chinese censorship when I'm not in China.
    - celsoazevedo 5y ago
      Did you mean to reply to someone else? Because as explained, DDG didn't implement any censorship.
      - panarky 5y ago
        If I use DDG outside of China, and its results are sanitized of anything that offends the CCP, I will hold DDG accountable for that. It doesn't matter if under the hood DDG sources search results from somewhere else, DDG is the one serving me censored results. DDG "implemented" censorship. DDG is accountable.

ufmace 5y ago

Interesting to confirm that this has actually been done. I wonder if there's really any process around it. It doesn't seem so bad to do it for something super-specific, like the home address of the victim of a crime, in the timeframe that the crime was committed, where you expect to get under 10 individuals. What's more worrying is how broad could this get? Are there any actual legal limits, or does Google just give the Government whatever they ask for? It seems more and more like some of the tech majors are so big and so dominant over the industry and our lives that it makes less sense to treat them as private companies. In theory, under current legal dogma, Google is a private corporation, and I have no rights at all to data it gathers, so it can hand it over to the Government anytime it feels like it with no knowledge or due process. Even if they claim they only share information for the Right Cases, how do you know, how can you trust them? Do you have any recourse if you think your case was not justified?

mywittyname 5y ago
> where you expect to get under 10 individuals. Maybe. If this person was, for example, online dating, a member of a popular club, had a YT/TikTok channel, or shared a name with someone who does or is otherwise notable, this could be a big list. How would you feel being suspected in a murder case because you searched for a d-list celeb who shares a name with the victim?

ren_engineer 5y ago

as always with government power you should ask if you would be alright with your political enemies on the other side of the aisle having full access to abuse the new government power, because they probably will at some point.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

Argh. Clickbait article header. The header sounds like a "blanket trawl," which, I suspect, would require an NSA-grade computer to manage (which they have, so it's not beyond belief). They were sending warrants to people that searched for particular names, addresses, etc. Not news. We all know this has been going on for many years. It's fairly standard, in many "capital crime" cases.

ziml77 5y ago
I got the same impression from the title. The request is limited to searches for a couple specific people over a short timeframe. They had legitimate reason for it. There's no issue here.
- deleted 5y ago
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- trutannus 5y ago
  The headline in the post has been modified too from the original. The original is Exclusive: Government Secretly Orders Google To Identify Anyone Who Has Searched A Name, Address And Telephone Number. The A there does a lot of heavy lifting, and implies that the warrants are for specific items. The title on HN here is Exclusive: Government Secretly Orders Google To Identify Anyone Who Has Searched Name, Address And Telephone N, which implies that this is for all searches that are for any of these sorts of items.
ziddoap 5y ago
>Not news. We all know this has been going on for many years. Who is the 'we' here? Many people may have assumed this is happening... But according to the article itself, there's less then a handful of these specific warrants being recorded/unsealed/reported in the news. Do you have access to sources which Forbes does not where more of these warrants are documented? From the article: >Before this latest case, only two keyword warrants had been made public. One revealed in 2020 [...]
- 5y ago

binkHN 5y ago

If you haven't already, you've been able to "auto-delete" the data Google keeps on you for a while now. I think Google should be turning this on by default for everyone, but, if you are not doing this, a little more detail may be found at https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/automatically-delete-data/ https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/automatically....

kwhitefoot 5y ago
This is only the data that Google keeps for you, not the data that Google keeps on you.
Ir0nMan 5y ago
This only applies to "Web Activity" and "Location History" which you can also just turn off completely instead of the "auto delete every x months" option.
- binkHN 5y ago
  This includes your searches, which you can see at https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity.

icarus_gh 5y ago

As a person neither leaning East nor West who is an avid HN reader it's always interesting to read the comments under such topics where the collusion between US private companies come up. Comparing it to the reactions when tenous connections between Chinese companies and the CCP are characterised as a threat to freedom and human rights. It reminds me to be wary of my own biases. Because from where I stand they are all two sides of the same coin.

stickfigure 5y ago
Courts in the US are generally quite independent of the political process. Abuse of the court system is prosecuted fairly heavily. This is "rule of law". On the other hand, courts in China do whatever the CCP tells them. These are not equivalent.
- etc-hosts 5y ago
  How do you feel about Steven Donziger ? https://www.reuters.com/world/us/lawyer-who-sued-chevron-sentenced-six-months-contempt-case-2021-10-01/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/lawyer-who-sued-chevron-sen...
- a_large_rat00 5y ago
  Where is this judicial fantasyland you live in with apolitical judges and independent laws? They're written, passed, judged, and enforced by heavily partisan actors, now more than ever. You're kidding yourself, and no one else, if you think the US judicial system is politically independent.
  - hnfong 5y ago
    Given that judiciary being subservient to the Party is an intentional feature in China, no competent western system would do "worse" in judicial independence than China. The GP is literally always correct in relativistic terms. If that makes people in the West feel more comfortable with the government, I guess I could say good for them? :)

air7 5y ago

> so-called geofence warrants, where investigators ask Google to provide information on anyone within the location of a crime scene at a given time. It's amazing we've become so tethered to our phones that it's just implicitly obvious that your phone's location is the same as your location. Authoritarian governments rejoice! People will voluntarily pay and cling to their tracking devices, no need to track them personally.

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cma 5y ago
Basically everyone has an ankle monitor.

sneeeeeed 5y ago

This is why everybody should do all their browsing with Tor, excepting maybe banking and shopping.

_yoqn 5y ago

Time to stop using Google Search or any of their services. Realistically the only one that's not replaceable ATM is YouTube but hopefully soon will be with other platforms gaining speed. Personally I use Brave Search for 99% of my searches. They are definitely privacy based, unlike some other alternatives.

einpoklum 5y ago

This story is a smoke screen. The government in general - that is, some branches of the government starting with the NSA - already obtains all this information, and more, automatically from Google, whether willingly or otherwise. No warrant, no specific orders, no nothing. That is part of Edward Snowden's revelations: https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Guardian_and_Snowden_revelations_2013 https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Guardian_and_Snowden_r... Many large media outlets have basically buried this fact rather quickly after the initial coverage of the revelations, and now we can have stories about how "the keyword warrant" being "one of the more contentious". Sure, it's contentious, since _more_ government bodies get easier access to some of the information, but its infraction of people's privacy is nothing compared to the vast public spying. One should also mention the mechanism of "National Security Letters", in which the executive branch of the US federal (only?) government can compel non-govenrment entities, in secret, to provide them with whatever information they deem necessary for national security purposes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter

stevens37 5y ago

TOR browser + duckduckgo

deleted 5y ago
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RobRivera 5y ago

So anyone who searched A SPECIFIC Name...this title is grossly misleadung

atok1 5y ago

This over reach is so terrifying it's almost funny. Always use a VPN and/or Tor.

m0zg 5y ago

Sounds like a huge fishing expedition that violates what little currently remains of the 4th amendment. This kind of shit should be plainly, unequivocally illegal, and people who approved this in the first place need to be in jail.

Railsify 5y ago

Buy guns.

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago

As sad as it is to admit it, it is not surprising to me. Worse, given the nature of my job, it is almost a given that some of my searches and queries are a part of an undesirable list somewhere. It is a problem. I am not trying to diminish it. But the real problem is that general population has zero to no issue with it. They barely comprehend the scope of what is happening. I am not sure it registers at all. Last time I talked to my wife about it, she said she has nothing to hide and I had to resist the urge to just plop her internet history open to make it a teachable moment. I had this conversation once before. It is not fun and I don't want a repeat.

sjg007 5y ago
I think tht even today with the internet it takes a good detective to sort through all of the evidence. There are easy answers and there are the correct answers, in between truth. With AI it will only get more difficult. You have shot spotters, license plate reader and gps with no warranty.
lsiebert 5y ago
I suspect there may be some bias in your data gathering, because that's not what's reflected in the statistical surveys I've seen. "Americans are concerned about how much data is being collected about them, and many feel their information is less secure than it used to be. The majority of Americans say they are at least somewhat concerned about how much data is collected about them by both companies (79%) and the government (64%). Additionally, seven-in-ten Americans say they feel their personal information is less secure than it was five years ago. This compares with just 6% who say they feel their information is more secure, and about one-quarter (24%) who feel it’s about the same." https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/11/15/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-about-privacy-surveillance-and-data-sharing/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/11/15/key-takeawa...
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  It is possible. My social circle is relatively small and may not be representative of the zeitgeist. But despite the data shown, the question is what an average American is doing. While there is interest in non-google, non-apple devices, those are still niche markets with some technical knowhow necessary. Apart from that, both Apple and Google are doing rather well. I certainly did not see a decrease in sales of various panopticon enabling devices. Far from it. Amazon joined the fray and along with other players convinced people to install wiretaps in their own homes. There is an actual joke about it so I am not sure if it is a question of social proof or cognitive dissonance. I agree there is an improvement, but I am not as optimistic it since I don't see it affecting profits.

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SV_BubbleTime 5y ago

Does anyone have links to Apple complying with geofence warrants? I searched and didn’t get very far, this is one that might need someone’s recollection.

zanethomas 5y ago

just another reason to use duckduckgo

mlindner 5y ago

The problem is that Google is even retaining logs of this kind of thing in the first place.

raxxorrax 5y ago

Using a VPN provider in a country outside US jurisdiction would be recommended. Sure, they can also request the data from there with enough political pressure, but it is about putting up barriers. This screams of government being acutely overstrained as it is but no reason to give them a hand with such deed. You should also search for this person too. They requested data and data should be served.

phkahler 5y ago

This is one of those slippery slopes, but I dont think the uses here have gone down that slope yet. An open ended search might be on terms related to bomb making, where curiosity might get someone labeled a potential terrorist. Here a specific person went missing and they were looking for people who searched on that specific person. It's still a net, but it's not that wide and its focused on something that already happened. They even put date ranges on the search. I see the problem though. It's probably just a matter of time before the specificity is loosened a lot, and that would be bad.

londons_explore 5y ago

It's time Google notifies every user whose data was searched for these warrants. The notification should say: Google has searched your data in response to a legal request from XYZ court. Google searched for the keyword "John Smith" in your Google search history. No matches were found, so no further action was taken. For more information, click HERE.

therealbilly 5y ago

It should be clear by now that Google serves the state. The government knows Google collects all this information and they also know Google never deletes this information. Both Google and the government have an ongoing relationship where information is provided on demand. One can easily imagine that the government is very protective of their relationship with Google. They even invested in Google during the early years.