5 ms·

Do we know if Google+ invites are sent deliberately? I think on Facebook you can prove who sent a friend request. That said, being arrested for a friend-reques

by atmosx 13y ago

Do we know if Google+ invites are sent deliberately? I think on Facebook you can prove who sent a friend request. That said, being arrested for a friend-request is silly. She could just block/ban/reject the request and no harm done. I would like to know the name of judge or prosecutor(?) who accepted a Google+ friend request as breach of restraining order. I get the very strong feeling that judges/prosecutors and lawyers loose common sense the minute they start practicing.

rayiner 13y ago
A restraining order means no contact, period. Life isn't kindergarten. Just because it's "online" doesn't mean that kindergarten rules apply. "No touching" doesn't mean "let's see if I can get away with just touching you with one pinky." A friend request, even if easily rejected, is definitely contact, as much as a text message or a phone call (which can also be blocked). The issue isn't how easy it is to block, it's whether the person under the restraining order tried to initiate contact with the person being protected by the restraining order.
- nitrogen 13y ago
  Does this case clarify whether the Google+ invite was sent individually and deliberately, or as part of a mass "find friends" style feature and thus inadvertently?
  - rayiner 13y ago
    I actually know jack-shit about Google+. I assumed what the article was talking about was like a Facebook friend request where you have to individually invite a specific person. Will Google+ really just randomly spam people you've had e-mail conversations with?
    - cbhl 13y ago
      Facebook can and does "randomly spam" people you've had e-mail conversations with if you let them at your address book.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      - jessaustin 13y ago
        True, and furthermore, services like this (FB, G+, LI, etc.) have every incentive to escalate their involuntary contacts over time. Every once in a while they'll go too far too quickly and have to backtrack due to public outcry, but there won't be any outcry about the plight of alleged order-violators. In general you should expect every service that knows your name and any other person's contact info to send that person many messages on your behalf without your consent. It will be nice when the courts figure this out; I don't expect it to take them more than twenty years.
        rayiner 13y ago
        > It will be nice when the courts figure this out; I don't expect it to take them more than twenty years. It would be even nicer if courts put a stop to this madness.
        jessaustin 13y ago
        Eh, maybe. I can't really picture a law forbidding automated email that wouldn't have horrible consequences for most citizens. Perhaps the courts ought to just accept that the world changes and change along with it?
        rayiner 13y ago
        The world changes, but at the end of the day, unwanted, unsolicited contact is the same whether it's via e-mail, text message, phone call, fax, carrier pigeon, etc. The fact that technology makes it easier for companies like Facebook and Google to do stupid things like spam your contact list doesn't mean that courts should change unrelated rules as a result.
        jessaustin 13y ago
        ...unwanted, unsolicited contact is the same whether it's via... You say that as if unsolicited communication is some kind of basic, elemental thing, like murder or robbery. In fact it is a deliberate exception to speech rights, which exception itself has plenty of exceptions. For instance, there doesn't seem to be much caselaw preventing junk mail, perhaps because that's the only thing keeping the USPS in operation. Keep in mind, too, that what courts may include in orders varies among jurisdictions. One could certainly imagine a new law intended to encourage services that send automatic communications to be more careful about violating restraining orders. One could not imagine such a law actually succeeding in its stated purpose, nor could the imagination encompass such a law not having horrible follow-on effects. It's much more plausible to recall that courts may only use their injunction power to achieve equitable remedies, and that in a context of involuntary electronic messages there is nothing equitable about holding someone responsible for communications she did not create.
    - akmiller 13y ago
      I don't think they randomly spam, but sometimes when you login to Google+ it will show you a large window of all your google contacts that are not in your circles with an easy way to invite all of them. It's easy to accidentally click the button to send invites just to close the window and it's also easy to not realize who all you sent them to.
      - chilldream 13y ago
        Yes, and even worse, there's no "Don't ask me again" button, which is actually enough to singlehandedly keep me from ever using G+ voluntarily.
- xtirpation 13y ago
  You're right of course, but I struggle to view the world in such a black-and-white manner to be honest especially when there are black boxes like in play, Google+'s source code in this case. How much proof would have to be provided that the Google+ invitation was sent deliberately by the user? Sworn testimony from a Google employee? There can of course exist bugs that send invites erroneously that nobody knows about. Revealing of the source code and analysis by experts? Unknown bugs can still exist, especially in systems as large as Google's. Stepping back from this particular case, what about apps that scan your contact list and automatically send invites and/or messages? These situations aside, it's far too easy to accidentally send an invitation. Hell, I don't doubt that many people reflexively agree to prompts on websites they think they're familiar with. Of course the argument can be made that people with restraining orders must be more careful, but it just doesn't seem sane to me that people can get jail time for clicking a button on a prompt that most people wouldn't think twice about.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    When someone has taken a restraining order out you've lost your rights to shades of grey. The order is designed to be black and white to provide clear, firm, boundaries over which you will not pass. Before the restraining order there are several levels of allowance which let people obey the spirit (no contact) or to experiment with boundaries. When under a restraining order you need to take special steps to ensure complyance.
    - xtirpation 13y ago
      Sure, I agree that special steps should be taken, but in our age of automatic/transparent updates and data longevity I think we need to re-evaluate the immediate responses taken by law enforcement when restraining orders are violated. It's not at all far-fetched for scenarios where apps automatically send messages to current/previous contacts without the user's consent (in fact we've seen this time and time again). Should the immediate response really be to jail the offender, especially if the process for proving intention one way or another can be long and arduous? Because if that's the case, what we're really asking is for people with restraining orders to become technology-shunning luddites since they can't guarantee the apps they use won't have mined their connections in the past, or that apps they've stopped using after the restraining order don't send messages on their behalf.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > A restraining order means no contact, period. No, a restraining order means whatever the restraining order says. A restraining order may or may not say "no contact, period" (and, in fact, it is unlikely to say "no contact, period", especially in the case of a TRO which is always issued in the context of a lawsuit between the parties, which necessarily requires contact by certain channels). > A friend request, even if easily rejected, is definitely contact A request to link accounts that isn't initiated by the person who is a subject of order, even if it is presented to the person who is protected by the order by an online service as an invitation to connect to the subject of the order cannot, OTOH, be a violation of the restraining order, as there is no act by the subject of the order involved.
jessaustin 13y ago
...judges/prosecutors... [lose] common sense the minute they start practicing. The system actually selects for the most vindictive, Procrustean, authoritarian candidates for these positions. So if you're an attorney with an ounce of decency or common sense, you don't even get the chance to "lose" that as a judge or prosecutor, because you never become one of those.
darklrd 13y ago
I think Google+ auto sends an invite when you add someone to a specific circle.
mcv 13y ago
> That said, being arrested for a friend-request is silly. She could just block/ban/reject the request and no harm done. There's no such thing as a "friend request" in G+. You can follow someone, which means you get to see their public posts. The other person will get a notification of that, but won't see anything you post. Of course the other person can decide to follow you, and then you get to also see their non-public posts that they share with a circle you're in. And of course they get to see your posts (public and appropriate circles). But even if people don't follow you, G+ can still suggest that you might want to follow them. And this being Google, that could probably be based on the fact that you emailed each other a lot 2 years ago. So the big question here is: was it a notification that the restrainee followed the restrainer? Or was it Google inadvertently suggesting that the restrainer might want to follow the restrainee?

by atmosx 13y ago

rayiner 13y ago

A restraining order means no contact, period. Life isn't kindergarten. Just because it's "online" doesn't mean that kindergarten rules apply. "No touching" doesn't mean "let's see if I can get away with just touching you with one pinky." A friend request, even if easily rejected, is definitely contact, as much as a text message or a phone call (which can also be blocked). The issue isn't how easy it is to block, it's whether the person under the restraining order tried to initiate contact with the person being protected by the restraining order.

nitrogen 13y ago
Does this case clarify whether the Google+ invite was sent individually and deliberately, or as part of a mass "find friends" style feature and thus inadvertently?
- rayiner 13y ago
  I actually know jack-shit about Google+. I assumed what the article was talking about was like a Facebook friend request where you have to individually invite a specific person. Will Google+ really just randomly spam people you've had e-mail conversations with?
  - cbhl 13y ago
    Facebook can and does "randomly spam" people you've had e-mail conversations with if you let them at your address book.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - jessaustin 13y ago
      True, and furthermore, services like this (FB, G+, LI, etc.) have every incentive to escalate their involuntary contacts over time. Every once in a while they'll go too far too quickly and have to backtrack due to public outcry, but there won't be any outcry about the plight of alleged order-violators. In general you should expect every service that knows your name and any other person's contact info to send that person many messages on your behalf without your consent. It will be nice when the courts figure this out; I don't expect it to take them more than twenty years.
      - rayiner 13y ago
        > It will be nice when the courts figure this out; I don't expect it to take them more than twenty years. It would be even nicer if courts put a stop to this madness.
        jessaustin 13y ago
        Eh, maybe. I can't really picture a law forbidding automated email that wouldn't have horrible consequences for most citizens. Perhaps the courts ought to just accept that the world changes and change along with it?
        rayiner 13y ago
        The world changes, but at the end of the day, unwanted, unsolicited contact is the same whether it's via e-mail, text message, phone call, fax, carrier pigeon, etc. The fact that technology makes it easier for companies like Facebook and Google to do stupid things like spam your contact list doesn't mean that courts should change unrelated rules as a result.
        jessaustin 13y ago
        ...unwanted, unsolicited contact is the same whether it's via... You say that as if unsolicited communication is some kind of basic, elemental thing, like murder or robbery. In fact it is a deliberate exception to speech rights, which exception itself has plenty of exceptions. For instance, there doesn't seem to be much caselaw preventing junk mail, perhaps because that's the only thing keeping the USPS in operation. Keep in mind, too, that what courts may include in orders varies among jurisdictions. One could certainly imagine a new law intended to encourage services that send automatic communications to be more careful about violating restraining orders. One could not imagine such a law actually succeeding in its stated purpose, nor could the imagination encompass such a law not having horrible follow-on effects. It's much more plausible to recall that courts may only use their injunction power to achieve equitable remedies, and that in a context of involuntary electronic messages there is nothing equitable about holding someone responsible for communications she did not create.
  - akmiller 13y ago
    I don't think they randomly spam, but sometimes when you login to Google+ it will show you a large window of all your google contacts that are not in your circles with an easy way to invite all of them. It's easy to accidentally click the button to send invites just to close the window and it's also easy to not realize who all you sent them to.
    - chilldream 13y ago
      Yes, and even worse, there's no "Don't ask me again" button, which is actually enough to singlehandedly keep me from ever using G+ voluntarily.
xtirpation 13y ago
You're right of course, but I struggle to view the world in such a black-and-white manner to be honest especially when there are black boxes like in play, Google+'s source code in this case. How much proof would have to be provided that the Google+ invitation was sent deliberately by the user? Sworn testimony from a Google employee? There can of course exist bugs that send invites erroneously that nobody knows about. Revealing of the source code and analysis by experts? Unknown bugs can still exist, especially in systems as large as Google's. Stepping back from this particular case, what about apps that scan your contact list and automatically send invites and/or messages? These situations aside, it's far too easy to accidentally send an invitation. Hell, I don't doubt that many people reflexively agree to prompts on websites they think they're familiar with. Of course the argument can be made that people with restraining orders must be more careful, but it just doesn't seem sane to me that people can get jail time for clicking a button on a prompt that most people wouldn't think twice about.
- DanBC 13y ago
  When someone has taken a restraining order out you've lost your rights to shades of grey. The order is designed to be black and white to provide clear, firm, boundaries over which you will not pass. Before the restraining order there are several levels of allowance which let people obey the spirit (no contact) or to experiment with boundaries. When under a restraining order you need to take special steps to ensure complyance.
  - xtirpation 13y ago
    Sure, I agree that special steps should be taken, but in our age of automatic/transparent updates and data longevity I think we need to re-evaluate the immediate responses taken by law enforcement when restraining orders are violated. It's not at all far-fetched for scenarios where apps automatically send messages to current/previous contacts without the user's consent (in fact we've seen this time and time again). Should the immediate response really be to jail the offender, especially if the process for proving intention one way or another can be long and arduous? Because if that's the case, what we're really asking is for people with restraining orders to become technology-shunning luddites since they can't guarantee the apps they use won't have mined their connections in the past, or that apps they've stopped using after the restraining order don't send messages on their behalf.
dragonwriter 13y ago
> A restraining order means no contact, period. No, a restraining order means whatever the restraining order says. A restraining order may or may not say "no contact, period" (and, in fact, it is unlikely to say "no contact, period", especially in the case of a TRO which is always issued in the context of a lawsuit between the parties, which necessarily requires contact by certain channels). > A friend request, even if easily rejected, is definitely contact A request to link accounts that isn't initiated by the person who is a subject of order, even if it is presented to the person who is protected by the order by an online service as an invitation to connect to the subject of the order cannot, OTOH, be a violation of the restraining order, as there is no act by the subject of the order involved.

jessaustin 13y ago

...judges/prosecutors... [lose] common sense the minute they start practicing. The system actually selects for the most vindictive, Procrustean, authoritarian candidates for these positions. So if you're an attorney with an ounce of decency or common sense, you don't even get the chance to "lose" that as a judge or prosecutor, because you never become one of those.

darklrd 13y ago

I think Google+ auto sends an invite when you add someone to a specific circle.

mcv 13y ago

> That said, being arrested for a friend-request is silly. She could just block/ban/reject the request and no harm done. There's no such thing as a "friend request" in G+. You can follow someone, which means you get to see their public posts. The other person will get a notification of that, but won't see anything you post. Of course the other person can decide to follow you, and then you get to also see their non-public posts that they share with a circle you're in. And of course they get to see your posts (public and appropriate circles). But even if people don't follow you, G+ can still suggest that you might want to follow them. And this being Google, that could probably be based on the fact that you emailed each other a lot 2 years ago. So the big question here is: was it a notification that the restrainee followed the restrainer? Or was it Google inadvertently suggesting that the restrainer might want to follow the restrainee?