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Feds order Google to track people searching certain names or details
- nixpulvis 5y agoJust one small step left before we're fully under the control of true life thought police. The effects are alrrady obvious and alarming. We must take dramatic action, even at the cost of convinence and comfort.
- web2sucks 5y agoNext headline “DuckDuckGo is used for terrorism”
- mywittyname 5y agoDuckDuckBoom
- ourmandave 5y agoDuckB4Boom
- colbyhub 5y agoI 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.
- hyproxia 5y agoYou're talking about the "tank man" that was safely escorted out of the scene without getting harmed? What about him? https://youtu.be/qq8zFLIftGk https://youtu.be/qq8zFLIftGk
- emayljames 5y agoThe only people killed where unarmed soldiers, that where burned alive by protesters.
- JaimeThompson 5y agoThat appears to be a someone counterfactual description of what happened. Supporting evidence would be of great help.
- lostlogin 5y agoIt’s just feeding the troll to reply to that account. “Taiwan is China” etc in comment history.
- J5892 5y agoEven the official CCP numbers disagree with you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre#Official_figures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests... > 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 5y agoSounds like those numbers have been “fixed” as the narrative has evolved over the intervening years.
- J5892 5y agoI'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.
- freeflight 5y agoStartpage.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 https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/04/goog-n04.html
- Djrhfbfnsks 5y agoGoogle 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".
- djhn 5y agoHow did you discover this? Any more examples?
- Djrhfbfnsks 5y agoI was trying to find information about a recent scandal and was surprised that I couldn't find any discussion on reddit. Restricting the results to reddit.com made it clear what was going on. These search terms are not censored on Yandex. It seems that they've recently removed some search terms from the blacklist. If I remember correctly, the terms I had searched originally were "qanon" and "pizzagate" , but those are no longer censored. "pedo" and "jailbait" still trigger the censor though.
- elwell 5y agoToo privacy-conscious for DuckDuckGo? That's next level trend setting.
- zic 5y agoI 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.
- akomtu 5y agoYou shouldn't think it's just the Search. Google also owns Chrome and Android.
- hadlock 5y agoI remember downloading anarchists_cookbook.zip off of an AOL BBS in ~1995 at the ripe old age of Late Elementary/Middle School. Trying to imagine how my life would have worked out after being wrung through the Future Crimes division of juvenile detention.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- literallyaduck 5y agoThe only sensible solution is to name JS and CSS frameworks using the keyword list.
- mvdwoord 5y agoThis is genius.
- _fat_santa 5y agoFederal 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.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- coolspot 5y agoCorrection: the suspect was holding an object resembling an improvised explosive device when he was fatally shot.
- jaclaz 5y agoCorrection: the police forces that intervened reported how the suspect was holding an object resembling an improvised explosive device when he was fatally shot.
- angst_ridden 5y agoCorrection: there was an officer-involved explosion when security forces investigated a suspected terrorist's kitchen / chemistry lab.
- adolph 5y agoReal 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge
- intunderflow 5y agoSome 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")
- dvogel 5y agoIf 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 5y agoIt's motion ied not LED
- hellojesus 5y agoI 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 5y agoExactly. 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
- boibombeiro 5y ago[flagged]
- neonate 5y agohttps://archive.md/r5jBp https://archive.md/r5jBp
- cronix 5y agoFor the bottom of your email, website's hidden text, etc. DISCLAIMER: We do not endorse bombs, explosives, (insert other key words).
- waterhouse 5y agoEmacs 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
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y agoIt 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.
- snuser 5y agoI'm in the same boat, but we really need to update our justice system to compensate for the increase in trivial infractions. social credit style systems can make a lot of sense here, eg: micro punishments and rewards
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y agoI don't understand what you mean. Searching for problematic material is not a crime. Heck, it can be even done for legitimate reason such as research. I have a friend who loves watching decapitation videos but is otherwise a pretty amiable person and I hope he never kills someone. Persecuting someone on the basis of what they like to watch or what they search for is out of the question in any Western democracy[0]. When you add "social score" to it, it becomes an abominable dystopia nobody would like to live in. [0] Well, until you actually find CP - it will be placed in your browser cache then, so technically it's on your hard drive now, not a pleasant situation from a legal point of view.
- tehwebguy 5y agoMaybe 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 5y agoI 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.
- Teknoman117 5y agoJust 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.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> 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 https://www.sec.gov/news/press/2005-36.htm
- JumpCrisscross 5y agoAre these keyword warrants signed off on by a judge?
- gowld 5y agoYes.
- thegabez 5y agoBrave and Brave search have been great.
- nbzso 5y agoHardened Firefox and https://searx.me/ https://searx.me/ are great to.:)
- beebeepka 5y agoHow does one harden Firefox? What's there beyond Tor browser and/or noscript?
- AzzieElbab 5y agoit is like regular Firefox but really hard to install. It will also kill you if it crashes
- circularfoyers 5y agohttps://github.com/arkenfox/user.js 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.
- wolverine876 5y agoHow does Brave search compare to DuckDuckGo, Startpage, and Qwant?
- thegabez 5y agoI've only used DDG and Brave search. I prefer Brave search probably because it mixes in Google results.
- dhosek 5y agoAnyone else finding themselves wanting to go to Google and try all these searches?
- djKianoosh 5y agojust 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
- _trampeltier 5y agoAny idea about, what the blacked words would be?
- Jolter 5y agoNames, phone numbers, addresses.
- zerd 5y agoAlso "ied package" and "eagle feather" according to the docs (from different cases) linked in https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/10/04/google-keyword-warrants-give-us-government-data-on-search-users/?sh=4b4a41177c97 https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/10/04/googl... Next up, "winnie the pooh" and "tank man".
- WalterBright 5y agoI'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.
- AlbertCory 5y agoI'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.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gowld 5y agoYour first paragraph contradicts the next two paragraphs.
- UIUC_06 5y agoWould you care to explain that?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- iammisc 5y agoDoes the current administration follow SCOTUS rulings? Edit: why am I being downvotes? The president explicitly stated his plan to ignore another SCOTUS ruling
- dahfizz 5y ago>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.
- 5y ago
- tyingq 5y agoI'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".
- t-writescode 5y agoPeople who do these things don't think about the constitutionality and are decidedly "ends justify the means".
- tyingq 5y agoThey do have have to get a judge to sign it though. So presumably the judge at least thinks about the implications.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ectopod 5y agoI 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.
- Lendal 5y agoThe 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 5y agoI 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/2021/10/06/15/48837793-10063665-The_most_sweeping_federal_keyword_warrant_made_public_was_a_keyw-a-7_1633530996145.jpg https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/10/06/15/48837793-10063665... 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.
- Maximus9000 5y agoIs there a better source on this? Daily Mail is terrible: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/daily-mail/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/daily-mail/
- bduerst 5y agoIt's blog-/reprint-spam of the original Forbes Article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/10/04/google-keyword-warrants-give-us-government-data-on-search-users/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/10/04/googl...
- jdgoesmarching 5y agoThe Daily Mail is terrible, but so is Media Bias fact check. Their methodology is a joke regardless of your politics.
- alexpw 5y agoWhich alternative to MBFC is preferred? AllSides or AdFontesMedia or?
- exhilaration 5y agoForbes appears to be the original source and is linked in the article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/10/04/google-keyword-warrants-give-us-government-data-on-search-users/?sh=289c1f717c97 https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/10/04/googl...
- myfavoritedog 5y agomediabiasfactcheck 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.
- altacc 5y ago
- t-writescode 5y agoI recall reading stories about librarians actively refusing to give, effectively, exactly the same information back in the day. How we have fallen.
- Mountain_Skies 5y agoSame 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.
- greenail 5y agoIt 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?
- amelius 5y agoHow does that work for EU residents?
- nathias 5y agoOf 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'?
- NN88 5y agoAnyone get the sense we're in a post-Wikileaks era? These leaks seem... like they would get someone indicted...
- verisimi 5y ago"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.
- willis936 5y agoI'd like to point out that "technocracy" means society gives decision-making power to the experts.
- ineedasername 5y agoYes-- I think "technologically-enabled fascism" is probably more accurate for that sentiment.
- csomar 5y agocorporatic-fascism.
- CptFribble 5y agoVarious 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 5y agoWhile 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-cia-and-nsa-research-grants-for-mass-surveillance/ https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci...
- tootahe45 5y agoThey 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.
- jijji 5y agosame topic from Oct 8th: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24719416 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24719416
- astkaasa 5y agoReminds me in the movie Se7en, the detectives get the library records of people who have read certain books.
- armSixtyFour 5y agoThat's not just something from the movies though. Part of the patriot act compels libraries to provide information about who is checking out what books. SF public library has a page dedicated to how they will comply to those demands but also cannot inform people who's records they provide: https://sfpl.org/about-us/confidentiality-and-usa-patriot-act https://sfpl.org/about-us/confidentiality-and-usa-patriot-ac...
- collsni 5y agoYo anybody got that keyword list? I wanna know what lists I'm on
- codazoda 5y agoThere are so many projects that I think would show up in these searches. Things like “package bomb” when searching for the YouTuber who made glitter and fart bombs into cardboard packages, set them on his porch, and waited for thieves to steal and open them.
- ordiel 5y agoThere is a surprise white van visit scheduled to the house of anyone opening that on chrome ;)
- jayp1418 5y agoWe need more Linux Phones available globally
- sam345 5y agoI'm not as criminal lawyer but are these properly considered warrants or even a search and seizure of the suspect? This is more like a subpoena against a third party not the suspect.Even if the data is considered the suspect's, does a person have reasonable expectation of privacy when he knowingly and voluntarily uses search engines that are built specifically to profile users so that data can be sold or used for ads ?If he was using a VPN may be different story but particularly Google users should by now have no reasonable explanation of privacy.
- anonymouswacker 5y agoThe golden age of the centralized Search Engine is over. We need something like a decentralized, Search-Engine-As-A-Service that holds data, allows customizable algorithms/censorship/etc.
- minusSeven 5y agoI guess this means they are already doing this in secret. I wonder if private browsing even works at this point. Make sense to move out of google for those searches.
- toto444 5y agoLast time I was translating Final Fantasy 7 dialogues into easy Japanese using Google Translate. At some point it occured to me that using Google Translate to translate 'bombing mission' was very dumb. I made sure to add 'Final Fantasy 7' and 'Mako reactor' to my translations...
- raxxorrax 5y agoThis is an example of the chilling effects if when think you are watched. Of course it is not stupid to search for 'bombing mission' as there are thousands of benign contexts to do so. It is a crime to put people under suspicion like that. It is wrong that you need to justify yourself before authorities. It is the other way around actually. In democracies at least.
- no_time 5y agoReminds me of this site posted here a few months ago. https://www.socialcooling.com/ https://www.socialcooling.com/
- LinuxBender 5y ago"bomb" There was a bomb cyclone off the coast of California recently. How many people searched for that I wonder?
- amelius 5y agoIt sucks to be a journalist, I guess.
- ebanana 5y agoits okay guys, at least we'll have vaccine passes soon so it will all work out.
- qwerty456127 5y agoSo, anybody curious about bombs and explosions gets on the list at the FBI? I searched that on a number of occasions. Mostly when I was younger and had more spare time. Out of pure curiosity and intention to know everything, also be prepared for postapocalypse (which I, unlike crazy prepper guys, don't consider highly probable yet don't consider impossible either). Never ever meant to use such knowledge during peace time and hoped to never need to use that ever. Just curious. And I believe there are many such curious people and curiosity is not a crime.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- johnmato 5y agoI do think that this is just the start. Once they get in touch with better technology, these precautions will probably start ramping up.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bayouborne 5y agoUsing Google's Public Nameservers 8.8.8.8 / 8.8.4.4 is presumably a similarly huge exposure too.
- dp-hackernews 5y agoIs Your Privacy An Illusion? (Taking on Big Tech) - Smarter Every Day 263 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMtrY6lbjcY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMtrY6lbjcY