2 ms·

Small nit to start, this sets a precedent. This does not necessarily set precedence. Those are two different things. Again, though, this is a hard hill to wa

by taeric 3y ago

Small nit to start, this sets a precedent. This does not necessarily set precedence. Those are two different things. Again, though, this is a hard hill to want to set the battle on. If this was a case of "searching for contentious thing" than I would be worried, as well. This was literally, "any evidence that someone scoped out a specific location where a crime that we all agree is a crime happened?" And saying there is no oversight is silly. This had a warrant. It went through a process. To claim there is no oversight is overstating the situation and is a bad faith argument. To contrive how this could have led to a lot of false positives completely ignores that it was such a well directed search that it did not, in fact, do that. Last number I heard was that it literally hit single digits in how many results it had. That is beyond well scoped for this sort of thing.

ttyprintk 3y ago
These are good points, and supported by the court explicitly stating that they’re not making a judgement on all such warrants, but on the constitutionality of using evidence gathered this way. I think this evidence cannot be used constitutionally, but practically I might be mistaking the application of this ruling to “good” warrants as well as “bad” ones. This might be a well-directed warrant which supports the public good with statistics satisfying a reasonable observer. But, can we tell that apart from a “bad” warrant in which we do not have access to refuting statistics? Honest question, should the search engine’s legal department be the only ones who can make the counter argument.
- taeric 3y ago
  Fair. I can certainly see how this is close to things that are bad. And I'm all for keeping the watch up, as it were. To your specific question, I don't have an answer. I'm assuming some judgement was made at Google, as well? In that, if they felt it was an unconstitutional request, they can push back. The link someone gave to what libraries can/should do supports that view.

by taeric 3y ago

ttyprintk 3y ago

These are good points, and supported by the court explicitly stating that they’re not making a judgement on all such warrants, but on the constitutionality of using evidence gathered this way. I think this evidence cannot be used constitutionally, but practically I might be mistaking the application of this ruling to “good” warrants as well as “bad” ones. This might be a well-directed warrant which supports the public good with statistics satisfying a reasonable observer. But, can we tell that apart from a “bad” warrant in which we do not have access to refuting statistics? Honest question, should the search engine’s legal department be the only ones who can make the counter argument.

taeric 3y ago
Fair. I can certainly see how this is close to things that are bad. And I'm all for keeping the watch up, as it were. To your specific question, I don't have an answer. I'm assuming some judgement was made at Google, as well? In that, if they felt it was an unconstitutional request, they can push back. The link someone gave to what libraries can/should do supports that view.