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Google was ordered to identify people who watched certain YouTube videos. Privacy experts say the orders are unconstitutional. (www.forbes.com)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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The court orders show the government telling Google to provide the names, addresses, telephone numbers and user activity for all Google account users who accessed the YouTube videos between January 1 and January 8, 2023. The government also wanted the IP addresses of non-Google account owners who viewed the videos.

“This is the latest chapter in a disturbing trend where we see government agencies increasingly transforming search warrants into digital dragnets. It’s unconstitutional, it’s terrifying and it’s happening every day,” said Albert Fox-Cahn, executive director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. “No one should fear a knock at the door from police simply because of what the YouTube algorithm serves up. I’m horrified that the courts are allowing this.” He said the orders were “just as chilling” as geofence warrants, where Google has been ordered to provide data on all users in the vicinity of a crime.

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[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 43 points 8 months ago (27 children)

Well... the part they quoted is a little misleading.

The two situations they talked about at least on the face of it were:

An undercover agent was in contact with someone, and sent them a link to something in the expectation they'd click it and then that undercover agent could track down what was the IP/identity of the person who clicked the link. Pretty standard stuff. The only weird part is that it was a stock Youtube link and they asked Google to be involved to give them identifying information after (and that for whatever reason there were 30,000 people who watched the video and they asked for the info about all 30,000).
Law enforcement got a bomb threat, then they learned that there had been a livestream of them while they were looking for the bomb. That doesn't automatically mean anything about the person who was livestreaming (maybe they just saw something exciting happening?), but wanting to talk with that person makes 100% sense to me.

So, to me both of those seem pretty reasonable. But of course the on-the-face-of-it explanation for #1 doesn't completely make sense for a couple of different reasons. But I wouldn't automatically class either of these as abuse by law enforcement without knowing more.

[–] metaldream@sopuli.xyz 72 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (11 children)

It's crazy to me that this got 61 upvotes while the main concern here, that 30,000 unrelated people had their data handed over to the government, is just an aside in point 1.

It really concerns me that people think any of this reasonable. If this is "reasonable" then there's nothing stopping cops from getting all of our data, whenever they want it. All they have to do is find one suspect who watched one video.

That's fucking crazy and clearly unreasonable. Take my downvote for having an exceptionally bad opinion on this topic.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 3 points 8 months ago

30,000 unrelated people had their data handed over to the government

It doesn't say it happened. It said Google received a court order. People challenge court orders sometimes, there's just a process you have to go through to do it.

The whole article is honestly just weird. E.g. "Privacy experts from multiple civil rights groups told Forbes they think the orders are unconstitutional because they threaten to turn innocent YouTube viewers into criminal suspects." That is... that's not what "unconstitutional" means at all. Sometimes cops will question innocent people or knock on doors when they're investigating crimes. If they're doing it without court oversight, that's dangerous. If "crimes" include things that aren't actually crimes, that's dangerous. If "knocking on doors" includes more than just actually asking questions to investigate, that's dangerous. But I'm a little doubtful that they showed up at anyone's door just because that person watched a YouTube video and started asking them questions related or unrelated to the specific crime they were investigating.

The article's written in a way where you genuinely can't tell some important details -- they don't say whether the video was public or unlisted, they don't say whether the cops were the ones that uploaded it, there are important things like that that they don't make clear. But the idea that the constitution says the cops can't gather data under any circumstances to investigate a crime seems like just a knee-jerk "cops bad" reaction.

I don't even necessarily disagree with your broader point. If the cops took a publicly-listed YouTube video and asked a court for the identities of 30,000 people who happened to watch it, and then the court agreed, and then Google gave them the data instead of pushing back legally (which the article claims they do sometimes), then sure, that's wrong. But literally every one of those elements is unclear from the article whether it happened.

there's nothing stopping cops from getting all of our data

At the end of the article is an instance where the cops went to the court for a "geofencing" warrant and the court threw out their request because it was too broad. That's the point of oversight and why having to get a warrant is an important step.

Like I say I'm honestly not completely disagreeing with you here. I definitely think too much data gets harvested about what every person does online and the cops are too freely able to access it with too little oversight. Depending on the details, maybe that's what happened here, or maybe it was legit. I'm just saying I'm don't agree with the assertion that it's always wrong.

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