"Think of the ramifications in the future if everyone who searched something in the privacy of their own home was subject to interviews by federal agents," Spodek said. "Someone could be interested in how people die a certain way or how drug deals are done, and it could be misconstrued or used improperly."
The problem is most people don't think like that. Most people think "why do I care, I search google for sourdough recipes and to see what the heck sus means. The chances of me getting in trouble because I did this is really low." And then they read something like this from the same place...
"After investigators linked Williams to the arson through the keyword warrant, they sent Google another warrant specifically for his account, finding that he looked up phrases like "where can i buy a .50 custom machine gun," "witness intimidation" and "countries that don't have extradition with the United States."
And they'll say "See, see! This works, this should be legal it catches bad people, look at what this guy was doing"
Enough people think like that, and there's no pressure to make this practice illegal, no pressure from the public to get laws passed because while some people look at this practice and see their lives being made worse, many people look at this and see themselves being protected from bad guys.
> Most people think "why do I care, I search google for sourdough recipes and to see what the heck sus means. The chances of me getting in trouble because I did this is really low."
> Enough people think like that, and there's no pressure to make this practice illegal, no pressure from the public to get laws passed because while some people look at this practice and see their lives being made worse, many people look at this and see themselves being protected from bad guys.
Why do you assume this will ever be put to popular vote? I mean you see this as if it's a choice from the people in a democratic republic and then your statement might be right or wrong.
But reality is: the boss of public prosecutor office realises that they need more power to get the numbers they're judged on: "bad guys" put away. Whether they're actually bad is not taken into account by the people evaluating them ... So what's this person to do?
And they're not even bad people, they certainly try to get the bad guys. And, sure, being vilified in the press for going after people is undesirable, but beyond that ... and of course this leads to them pinning everything on poor (ex-)criminals who don't really have a choice, and who are judged by investigators to be "bad people".
Especially in youth law this is bad. Because proof is not required to convict anyone (technically, after all, "they're not convicted", just incarcerated for years), they just catch the first "bad apple" near a crime, and if there is no crime they'll just make one up. Of course the net result is more criminals when these kids lose faith in society protecting them.
People do what they're paid to do. In the case of public prosecutors and investigators that's putting people (all kinds) behind bars.
Why should intellectual curiosity lead to a criminal investigation.
There have been plenty of times I've seen a term on the internet or heard one in a movie that I wasn't familiar with, and upon doing a search learned that it was unsavory. All this does is scare people into not thinking beyond what they already know.
I worked in a bookstore in the '90s and there was a fantastic series of books, for authors, about how poisons worked, how it is like to die in certain situations, all kinds of dark stuff that was designed to help Crime Fiction writers help in areas they normally would not know enough about. Now imagine looking that stuff up on the internet for writing a book.
>And they'll say "See, see! This works, this should be legal it catches bad people, look at what this guy was doing"
You lost me here. Of course people are going to conclude that arresting a person that set fire to a car in order to intimidate a witness in a sexual abuse case is a good thing. And why shouldn't they? That sounds like a slam dunk good thing for society.
Something else that no one has touched on is the asshole dilemma. Something that cops already deal with - sometimes there are just assholes that piss off a lot of people. And because of those assholes there ends up being a lot of people searching for them. Trying to find where they live so they can throw eggs at their car or whatever. Most people don't actually throw eggs at said car.
But hey, this person is pissing off a lot of people, what are the chances that someone does actually murder them? Well, higher than non-assholes. And now you have a murder investigation that may include adding suspects that just fucking hate the guy, but had in no way murdered them. But Google Searching for their address the day before may tell the cops opportunity, and motive isn't hard to get shortly after. That kind of association is what cops will take to court and likely wrongly convict someone on.
Google effectively sells exactly this kind of information to commercial clients openly. That bothers me more than the information being used by police for public safety. Both are bad, but that I can directly market my snake oil to a 90 year old granny with dementia to loot her paltry social security check courtesy of Alphabet seems worse.
I've long ago assumed anything I type into a Web site text box could _potentially_ be pulled out of context and used against me in court. Constricting to have that voice in your head but that's just the reality.
Wasn't there that time right after the Boston bombings where different members of a family had searched for things like 'pressure cooker' and 'backpack' and then got an FBI visit on terrorism suspicions?
While everything you said is true, the constitution is suppose to be what protects the individual from this kind of mob thinking.
General Warrants have been unconstitutional since the founding of this nation, only through some very bad "3rd party rule" exemptions to many constitutional amendments is this even thought about as acceptable.
>The problem is most people don't think like that.
But what is the problem here anyway? If there's a crime at a location, police detectives will investigate anyone that has any connection to that location. That someone may have searched for that location is certainly relevant to the investigation, but it doesn't imply that those individuals are automatically a suspect. In fact, they will be quickly ruled out.
>...Enough people think like that, and there's no pressure to make this practice illegal, no pressure from the public to get laws passed because while some people look at this practice and see their lives being made worse, many people look at this and see themselves being protected from bad guys.
Exactly, the problem is the people, not the system. I'm pretty sure such nonsense would never happen in a place with strong privacy protections like Germany. But the US is an authoritarian country, so the default stance is to always give more power to law enforcement.
> I would argue the issue here is that such a warrant was granted in the first place.
I agree that the warrant itself is a huge problem, but I think there's another significant issue here. Google may have just been complying with the law, but that doesn't meant they had to be quiet about it. Unless they had a gag order, they should have publicly stated that the US government was compelling them to hand over search records.
From the article:
> Google declined to disclose how many keyword warrants it's received in the last three years.
They did not say anything about a gag order and, given Google's track record on privacy, I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt here.
Why does google keep IPs for searches? Are they required by law , and if so , why? It's not even needed for their advertising profiles. It would save them the trouble if the data was just not there
I don't think it's helpful for this article to equate searching for a street address and searching for a keyword.
One is a lot narrower than the other in the sense that the data which Google delivers to law enforcement is a much shorter list.
If the government makes them hand over data about everyone who searched for a keyword, that's more prone to being dragnet surveillance. If the government asks who search for a specific street address, they may have learned about that address through an investigation of a specific crime.
Of course, you're free to oppose both, but to me the reasoning to oppose one wouldn't necessarily apply to the other. They are different types of queries.
Is there a legal or internal Google policy basis for the distinction that you're setting up?
Otherwise, all this indicates is that, in this specific case, Google gave information about an address, but you have no idea that these "keyword warrants" are limited to the "narrow" conception that you put forth.
In fact, they explicitly reference a case where this keyword warrant was not used to look for an address, but rather a different search query.
Back when I worked for a county government I talked a fair bit with the sheriffs office IT folks. There had been a theft of a $1000 bill from a safe at a residence.
They asked from google for a list of all recent searches for "$1000 bill" for the area and received it. Unfortunately the report was enormous and not useful: apparently some TV show (one of those antique roadshow or storage unit shows) had recently featured one.
If you're as intellectually curious as me, ... perhaps it's better to not think too much about what your search strings look like without context.
It seems to me that keeping a local copy of Wikipedia is becoming increasingly critical for being able to have private thoughts in a world deluged with information.
While you're at it, to help with this specific case, you could also get a local copy of OpenStreetMap. That way you can look up and navigate to addresses without touching the internet.
What I found fascinating is that Google is digitally signing the data given to authorities. This is more than any free or paid user can obtain.
You have a green padlock in your URL but can you prove in court you received a given email? No, because a SSL connection is transient and you can't replay it to show that Google's certificate digitally signed that email in GMail.
I've made a lot of seemingly suspicious google chats/emails though completely facetiously, like when I dropped off some DVD's at a friend's house near Golden Gate Park, I sent him a Hangout's message like:
"I made the drop at the agreed upon location near Golden Gate Park, Please send me the money, small unmarked bills only"
I've often joked about "I hope the police aren't reading this", and it turns out that they might be... thanks to Google.
I see what you are doing. Now that you know that Google keeps proofs of your past criminal activities, you're attempting to create a plausible story that would explain communication with your accomplices as a 'joke'. Nice try.
Makes me think of my own duckduckgo usage. I wonder if Google is the only search engine being leaned on, or if they're just the only one with any publicity around the shared data.
Unfortunately DDG doesn't publish any law enforcement request data :/ They say they have nothing to give, but they don't actually publish any info abount what kind of requests they're receiving and what they're giving in return.
DDG is based in the US. It's under the same laws as Google and has to honor search warrants from the police and has to comply with laws (including FBI's NSLs).
I expect that DDG would make a huge stink about being compelled to do any such thing (Google, too. If people think the government is watching their internet searches, they'll go somewhere else.).
Not an acceptable practice under the Constitution of course it will require court cases to stop or narrow these. Geolocation searches (being in the wrong place/wrong time) are bad enough, but everyone searching for "X" could capture thousands or even millions of people.
I think it's a little unclear whether it's Unconstitutional.
Google's logs of what users did on its service are Google's property, not proeprty of the users. It's like asserting the cops can't issue a warrant to your bank to look for transactions to Capone Real Estate Holdings, Inc... Of course they can.
In these cases, do they actually have evidence a search engine query was made? How do they decide which search engines to subpoena? Do they just subpoena multiple search engines?
To search your house for evidence, they must have reliable information showing probable cause of evidence specifically in your house, and not somewhere else. If they don't know where the evidence is, or what it is, they aren't allowed to do the search.
But in the arson case, do they have evidence the suspect used Google in the course of the crime? If not, how do they have probable cause for the warrant?
Liberal democracies have forgotten they are liberal . They are democracies with a market and an army. There were monarchies in the past with better individual protections.
I'm really surprised no one has mentioned the short story by Cory Doctorow "Scroogled" [0] (Not to be confused with the MS ad campaign). It's about US officials using what ads you were served to vet you, not too far off from using your search results.
I guess this is what happens when a single company has a monopoly over the search engine market. This couldn't have happened if law enforcement had to request information from say, hundreds of search engines in order to carry out keyword warrants.
It’s interesting to try to unpack why this “monopoly” bothers technologists a lot less than, say, one of a half dozen vertically integrated digital stores for gaming and app devices such as Switches, Xboxes, and iPads.
[+] [-] blakesterz|5 years ago|reply
The problem is most people don't think like that. Most people think "why do I care, I search google for sourdough recipes and to see what the heck sus means. The chances of me getting in trouble because I did this is really low." And then they read something like this from the same place...
"After investigators linked Williams to the arson through the keyword warrant, they sent Google another warrant specifically for his account, finding that he looked up phrases like "where can i buy a .50 custom machine gun," "witness intimidation" and "countries that don't have extradition with the United States."
And they'll say "See, see! This works, this should be legal it catches bad people, look at what this guy was doing"
Enough people think like that, and there's no pressure to make this practice illegal, no pressure from the public to get laws passed because while some people look at this practice and see their lives being made worse, many people look at this and see themselves being protected from bad guys.
[+] [-] fsflover|5 years ago|reply
Even though many people think like that, there is also this: https://www.socialcooling.com/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363).
[+] [-] mywittyname|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] candiodari|5 years ago|reply
Why do you assume this will ever be put to popular vote? I mean you see this as if it's a choice from the people in a democratic republic and then your statement might be right or wrong.
But reality is: the boss of public prosecutor office realises that they need more power to get the numbers they're judged on: "bad guys" put away. Whether they're actually bad is not taken into account by the people evaluating them ... So what's this person to do?
And they're not even bad people, they certainly try to get the bad guys. And, sure, being vilified in the press for going after people is undesirable, but beyond that ... and of course this leads to them pinning everything on poor (ex-)criminals who don't really have a choice, and who are judged by investigators to be "bad people".
Especially in youth law this is bad. Because proof is not required to convict anyone (technically, after all, "they're not convicted", just incarcerated for years), they just catch the first "bad apple" near a crime, and if there is no crime they'll just make one up. Of course the net result is more criminals when these kids lose faith in society protecting them.
People do what they're paid to do. In the case of public prosecutors and investigators that's putting people (all kinds) behind bars.
Also: what does sus mean ?
[+] [-] reaperducer|5 years ago|reply
Does it matter if "most" people don't?
Why should intellectual curiosity lead to a criminal investigation.
There have been plenty of times I've seen a term on the internet or heard one in a movie that I wasn't familiar with, and upon doing a search learned that it was unsavory. All this does is scare people into not thinking beyond what they already know.
[+] [-] vinbreau|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelmrose|5 years ago|reply
I have no plans to shoot anyone, intimidate witnesses, or flee the united states.
[+] [-] treis|5 years ago|reply
You lost me here. Of course people are going to conclude that arresting a person that set fire to a car in order to intimidate a witness in a sexual abuse case is a good thing. And why shouldn't they? That sounds like a slam dunk good thing for society.
[+] [-] coding123|5 years ago|reply
But hey, this person is pissing off a lot of people, what are the chances that someone does actually murder them? Well, higher than non-assholes. And now you have a murder investigation that may include adding suspects that just fucking hate the guy, but had in no way murdered them. But Google Searching for their address the day before may tell the cops opportunity, and motive isn't hard to get shortly after. That kind of association is what cops will take to court and likely wrongly convict someone on.
[+] [-] SN76477|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sk2020|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] im3w1l|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emodendroket|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sobani|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeeMassive|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] syshum|5 years ago|reply
General Warrants have been unconstitutional since the founding of this nation, only through some very bad "3rd party rule" exemptions to many constitutional amendments is this even thought about as acceptable.
[+] [-] macspoofing|5 years ago|reply
But what is the problem here anyway? If there's a crime at a location, police detectives will investigate anyone that has any connection to that location. That someone may have searched for that location is certainly relevant to the investigation, but it doesn't imply that those individuals are automatically a suspect. In fact, they will be quickly ruled out.
[+] [-] x86_64Ubuntu|5 years ago|reply
Exactly, the problem is the people, not the system. I'm pretty sure such nonsense would never happen in a place with strong privacy protections like Germany. But the US is an authoritarian country, so the default stance is to always give more power to law enforcement.
[+] [-] duxup|5 years ago|reply
Whatever is going on here Google doesn't seem to just be forking over mass data at any request, at least not as far as this story goes.
I would argue the issue here is that such a warrant was granted in the first place.
[+] [-] CivBase|5 years ago|reply
I agree that the warrant itself is a huge problem, but I think there's another significant issue here. Google may have just been complying with the law, but that doesn't meant they had to be quiet about it. Unless they had a gag order, they should have publicly stated that the US government was compelling them to hand over search records.
From the article:
> Google declined to disclose how many keyword warrants it's received in the last three years.
They did not say anything about a gag order and, given Google's track record on privacy, I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt here.
[+] [-] cblconfederate|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ksk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] syshum|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrianmonk|5 years ago|reply
One is a lot narrower than the other in the sense that the data which Google delivers to law enforcement is a much shorter list.
If the government makes them hand over data about everyone who searched for a keyword, that's more prone to being dragnet surveillance. If the government asks who search for a specific street address, they may have learned about that address through an investigation of a specific crime.
Of course, you're free to oppose both, but to me the reasoning to oppose one wouldn't necessarily apply to the other. They are different types of queries.
[+] [-] whimsicalism|5 years ago|reply
Otherwise, all this indicates is that, in this specific case, Google gave information about an address, but you have no idea that these "keyword warrants" are limited to the "narrow" conception that you put forth.
In fact, they explicitly reference a case where this keyword warrant was not used to look for an address, but rather a different search query.
[+] [-] nullc|5 years ago|reply
Back when I worked for a county government I talked a fair bit with the sheriffs office IT folks. There had been a theft of a $1000 bill from a safe at a residence.
They asked from google for a list of all recent searches for "$1000 bill" for the area and received it. Unfortunately the report was enormous and not useful: apparently some TV show (one of those antique roadshow or storage unit shows) had recently featured one.
If you're as intellectually curious as me, ... perhaps it's better to not think too much about what your search strings look like without context.
It seems to me that keeping a local copy of Wikipedia is becoming increasingly critical for being able to have private thoughts in a world deluged with information.
[+] [-] makuto|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fierarul|5 years ago|reply
You have a green padlock in your URL but can you prove in court you received a given email? No, because a SSL connection is transient and you can't replay it to show that Google's certificate digitally signed that email in GMail.
[+] [-] Johnny555|5 years ago|reply
"I made the drop at the agreed upon location near Golden Gate Park, Please send me the money, small unmarked bills only"
I've often joked about "I hope the police aren't reading this", and it turns out that they might be... thanks to Google.
[+] [-] Andrew_nenakhov|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ColanR|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] izacus|5 years ago|reply
Google does: https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview?hl=...
Apple does too: https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/
[+] [-] Jerry2|5 years ago|reply
This is why I don't use a US-based search engine.
[+] [-] ISL|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carapace|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carapace|5 years ago|reply
https://duckduckgo.com/spread
[+] [-] coldcode|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shadowgovt|5 years ago|reply
Google's logs of what users did on its service are Google's property, not proeprty of the users. It's like asserting the cops can't issue a warrant to your bank to look for transactions to Capone Real Estate Holdings, Inc... Of course they can.
[+] [-] tantalor|5 years ago|reply
To search your house for evidence, they must have reliable information showing probable cause of evidence specifically in your house, and not somewhere else. If they don't know where the evidence is, or what it is, they aren't allowed to do the search.
But in the arson case, do they have evidence the suspect used Google in the course of the crime? If not, how do they have probable cause for the warrant?
[+] [-] diebeforei485|5 years ago|reply
1. https://lers.google.com
[+] [-] 1cvmask|5 years ago|reply
Reminds me of this judge who made a pretty penny and ruined the lives of thousands:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/08/11/139536686...
[+] [-] cblconfederate|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshstrange|5 years ago|reply
[0] https://craphound.com/scroogled.html
[+] [-] tsjq|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dest|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fattegourmet|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pessimizer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] electrondood|5 years ago|reply
This is why privacy matters. Because you cannot trust the people who collect information about you to interpret that information correctly.
You also cannot trust those people to exploit that information for their own purposes.
[+] [-] soraminazuki|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Terretta|5 years ago|reply