Buried in complaint 3, "Make Chrome’s ‘Incognito mode’ actually incognito"
"One example: Just this week, my colleague Tatum Hunter reported that Google (as well as Facebook and TikTok) was sent personal information when patients use the Planned Parenthood website scheduling pages. The problem was marketing embedded in the code of the page — and Chrome does little to stop that kind of tracking."
You scheduled an abortion. Planned Parenthood’s website could tell Facebook (June 29)
This is really an important point. The owner of a website or app has to comply with regulations, and HIPAA should apply to people seeking medical care, especially those seeking care that is politically or otherwise sensitive. This is literally what HIPAA was trying to prevent: disclosure of medical info to third parties without direct consent of the patient. A click should not be enough to consent.
Third party tags have no place in the DOM on these sites.
Chrome's Incognito mode is doing its job here, by making sure that the user is logged out of her Facebook account during that browsing session. What the tracking code does is a different matter altogether, and even Facebook has tried and failed to stop it from sending all sorts of sensitive data, including stuff that might well fall under HIPAA.
Only in part. Ultimately it's the browser that's sharing the data from PP to FB. It's not like PP is making a direct connection from their backend to FB's backend. It's Chrome that's connecting to FB.
Apple has demonstrated with Safari that browsers can fight this tracking if they want to. Google has no interest in doing so because their browser doesn't work for the user. It works for the likes of Google, FB, and yes, PP.
This is exactly what the Google Container add-on for Firefox protects against. It stops Google from tracking you across the web because your Google login does not exist when you visit other websites. It only exists within the container.
Unfortunately, it does not have Mozilla’s “Recommended” seal of approval. I assume Mozilla cannot do this because Firefox development is funded by Google, so Mozilla has to tolerate Google’s tracking to some degree.
I’m still using this add-on because I cannot imagine my web browsing life without it.
I don't entirely follow the logic of this article: abortion is illegal in some states and Google knows your search and location history. So it seems like it's saying police will scour account data to target women with the intention of getting an abortion. How?
We know that at the federal level the government can dig into our Google profile data or that a police officer might ask you to hand over your phone. Short of a court order I don't see how our data is compromised like this article implies.
States can pass laws requiring, eg., google to provide location data relevant to the crime (in that state) of abortion.
It's also pretty trivial to "suspect" someone of a crime for "being in some area" and then get a warrent for the data.
Abortion being illegal in some states seems like it might be a shock to the privacy system that's needed. If US states are clearly abusing their citizens en-mass in a way most people disagree with, corporate american enabling this will not be seen positively.
I think the implication is that local police would seek court orders for this kind of data. That’s not a particularly difficult step for them, and Google is unlikely to resist a lawful court order. Hence the need to make those lawful orders as fruitless as possible.
One way mentioned in the article: geofenced subpoenas. E.g. Ohio police tell Google to give them the information of all the people who went to an abortion clinic in Indiana (the geofenced) because they are suspected of a crime, then the Ohio police can check the list of those people and see if any of them fall under their jurisdiction
A few years ago, not far from where I live, a pregnant woman was given a water bottle by her ex boyfriend. The water tasted bitter, so she spit it out. She took it to the police. Her ex-boyfriend had ground up an abortion pill and put it in her water.
How did he get the pill? From a website that sold the pills to “pregnant women” who couldn’t get them legally, no questions asked.
The police seized the website owners assets, and her client list.
She was sentenced to probation, but decided to spent her time in probation smoking pot, and so got a slightly longer probation with more drug tests.
The police had no problem hunting down a black market purveyor at abortion pills using DNS and email.
In this area abortion is now illegal. If this same situation had happened now, that list of clients would become a list of future defendants.
I heard the police did check the client list to make sure the site wasn’t primarily a way for men to force women to have abortions.
If you told me in 1996 (first year on the internet, quite a hopeful young lad) that in the future, $MEGACORP would know where I was within meters every minute of every day, I would have told you it was a dystopia, regardless of what they planned to use that data for.
This is a digital dystopia that we sleepwalked into.
My (someone uncharitable) interpretation of the article is:
- People who thing big corps and the government are their friend are not worried about data privacy.
- The government suddenly made a change that made a lot of people realize that is is not necessarily their friend (aka they are no longer comfortable with the government have access to there entire life's worth of data).
- Now we have to end surveillance capitalism because it is dangerous...
I agree with the conclusion, but it is depressing that it has taking this long for people to reach it.
Either you agree with Google collecting data in a way that facilitates enforcing the law, or you don't. You can't be picky about Google facilitating the laws that you happen to like or not.
> You can't be picky about Google facilitating the laws that you happen to like or not.
This is silly, because there's nothing magic about it being law that makes it just, especially in a highly politicised environment. People argue about ignoring law they don't like all the time, especially in the future tense.
> We know there’s zero chance Google will overnight exit the lucrative personal data business. And frankly, Congress has been asleep at the wheel on protecting our data rights for decades.
Google is part of the state apparatus. Congress is not asleep, it is lobbied by this and other companies. This naive idea that you can just ask Big Tech companies to find two cents in their moral bank is old and tiresome. Control of Congress must be taken back before any real change can be effected.
Don't forget the courts and executive. Without consistent (or at least truly random) enforcement laws are worthless paper or selective tools to punish those without power.
It seems more reasonable solutions already exist, like not logging in to Google when doing searches you want to keep anonymous. Google probably still logs stuff (IP, user agent, and search term) but it gives you plausible deniability and you have the option of using a public WiFi or VPN if you don't want your IP address logged. Or more simply, just use DuckDuckGo instead.
How well do you think that's going to go if you are charged with murder? It doesn't matter a damn what /you/ (or me, or anyone) think about the ethics of the situation. Plausible deniability is going to be a very weak crutch to be relying on when charged with something with an equivalent consequences to a charge murder. Defence of google policy on that basis is really a non-starter, imho. I imagine google won't actually do that themselves they'll just remain silent with PR drafted press releases talking about just how important something or other is to them with the usual total lack of substance.
Are google's socially progressive positions purely marketing and they'll drop and and all of them like a hot brick if it might cost them some money or market share? Are we the baddies?
GLS is built into Android (via Google Play Services). The data collected is "anonymous". Just like the anonymous person that is in my house motionless from 12-8am every night.
My take: Ok so for the "crimes" that we do not currently like Google should not log to protect us.
That is naive.
The article is naive. Now when a class of people is affected they realize the issue with Google collecting data or providing location history information (incorrect or not) to the authorities.
Google has a history of actively i) resetting opt out settings, ii) making location tracking de facto mandatory on android, iii) pushing for AMP (which pushes their ampanalytics), etc.
Time to actually push for privacy.
How about: "Hey Google, to protect people, stop tracking anything." (Which for Google would imply to stop existing per se.)
Google, like other industries, where build on the ideas that what they did was more or less harmless. As we learn more about what massive data collection entails, we also have to reconsider the laws surrounding it.
Google will never stop on their own, as you say that would mean that they'd stop existing. It's the same with oil or tobacco companies, and few would cry foul if Philip Morris would be forced to shutdown.
I no longer believe that tracking and data collection can be done safely and it's time to dismantle those business that rely on it. Give Google, and others, five to ten years to close down their data collection business and after that they can stop existing if they can't cope.
It'd be great if the code processing highly sensitive personal information were open source, which seems like a whole lot higher priority than the printer drivers that got Stallman hot and bothered in the 1970s. Holy crap did we miss his message over trivialities.
There's an interesting contradiction at the heart of US law regarding free speech. Does the first amendment give you the right to merely voice your opinions, or does it give you the right to amplify those opinions via mass media?
Citizens United pretty thoroughly says it's the latter. But calls to reign in Fake News and to force tech companies to censor their users contradict this.
First Amendment prevents the government from restricting speech. It says nothing about letting other private individuals/companies promote your speech.
Good example of how surveillance capitalism is a cancer in society that no one is safe from. I am really tired of people telling me that they have nothing to hide! The historical record if full of examples of folks who had "nothing to hide", but suddenly became the target of oppression or exploitation.
Privacy needs to be everyone's concern because by the time you realize you have things you need to keep private, it will be too late!
It's a bit bizarre that this is the route that folks are becoming aware that privacy has been decimated in the last decades. I'll take it I suppose. Yes, everyone deserves privacy until a lawful warrant has been issued. Not the current reality unfortunately.
If you want to know what a privacy dystopia looks like, check the Yandex search engine (from Russia), where you can do reverse image search with face detection.
Google anonymizes reverse image search with people in them. You get generic results like "person in t-shirt".
Google hides the lost of existing privacy and makes tools that expose it only available to corporations, states, and insiders-- for good and bad uses. In this case, yandex is exposing the loss of privacy and making the tools to benefit from its beneficial use available to everyone.
Hiding the loss of privacy makes it harder to resist, it doesn't make it go away.
> Google provides useful products, and in exchange we might be targeted with annoying ads. Big whoop. Until now.
Enter a cage willingly, with barely any complaint, for minor convenience, then cry when you're taken to the slaughterhouse. It's sad that despite all the warnings, people are so myopic and apathetic that it takes something this big and obvious to make them react.
> Four ways to build civil rights into Google products
A laughable chapter of the article, void of any actually effective suggestions, such as compelling Google properties to stop blocking the Tor network (duckduckgo and yandex allow Tor), or using free software that is actually under the user's control.
The problem is that would give users actual power and autonomy. But what the authors really want is for Google and other corporations to keep acting as internet police, but only enforcing rules they agree with, and not any others. That's why they want to build "civil rights" into products, and not "user freedom". That's why they get comments from an establishment Harvard professor, and not the FSF.
[+] [-] game-of-throws|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ksherlock|3 years ago|reply
"One example: Just this week, my colleague Tatum Hunter reported that Google (as well as Facebook and TikTok) was sent personal information when patients use the Planned Parenthood website scheduling pages. The problem was marketing embedded in the code of the page — and Chrome does little to stop that kind of tracking."
You scheduled an abortion. Planned Parenthood’s website could tell Facebook (June 29)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/29/planned...
https://archive.ph/3HHtt
That's on Planned Parenthood.
[+] [-] indymike|3 years ago|reply
This is really an important point. The owner of a website or app has to comply with regulations, and HIPAA should apply to people seeking medical care, especially those seeking care that is politically or otherwise sensitive. This is literally what HIPAA was trying to prevent: disclosure of medical info to third parties without direct consent of the patient. A click should not be enough to consent.
Third party tags have no place in the DOM on these sites.
[+] [-] zozbot234|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] js2|3 years ago|reply
Only in part. Ultimately it's the browser that's sharing the data from PP to FB. It's not like PP is making a direct connection from their backend to FB's backend. It's Chrome that's connecting to FB.
Apple has demonstrated with Safari that browsers can fight this tracking if they want to. Google has no interest in doing so because their browser doesn't work for the user. It works for the likes of Google, FB, and yes, PP.
[+] [-] zagrebian|3 years ago|reply
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-contai...
Unfortunately, it does not have Mozilla’s “Recommended” seal of approval. I assume Mozilla cannot do this because Firefox development is funded by Google, so Mozilla has to tolerate Google’s tracking to some degree.
I’m still using this add-on because I cannot imagine my web browsing life without it.
[+] [-] WebbWeaver|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] havblue|3 years ago|reply
We know that at the federal level the government can dig into our Google profile data or that a police officer might ask you to hand over your phone. Short of a court order I don't see how our data is compromised like this article implies.
[+] [-] mjburgess|3 years ago|reply
It's also pretty trivial to "suspect" someone of a crime for "being in some area" and then get a warrent for the data.
Abortion being illegal in some states seems like it might be a shock to the privacy system that's needed. If US states are clearly abusing their citizens en-mass in a way most people disagree with, corporate american enabling this will not be seen positively.
[+] [-] woodruffw|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zinodaur|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pyuser583|3 years ago|reply
How did he get the pill? From a website that sold the pills to “pregnant women” who couldn’t get them legally, no questions asked.
The police seized the website owners assets, and her client list.
She was sentenced to probation, but decided to spent her time in probation smoking pot, and so got a slightly longer probation with more drug tests.
The police had no problem hunting down a black market purveyor at abortion pills using DNS and email.
In this area abortion is now illegal. If this same situation had happened now, that list of clients would become a list of future defendants.
I heard the police did check the client list to make sure the site wasn’t primarily a way for men to force women to have abortions.
[+] [-] titzer|3 years ago|reply
This is a digital dystopia that we sleepwalked into.
[+] [-] jlkuester7|3 years ago|reply
- People who thing big corps and the government are their friend are not worried about data privacy. - The government suddenly made a change that made a lot of people realize that is is not necessarily their friend (aka they are no longer comfortable with the government have access to there entire life's worth of data). - Now we have to end surveillance capitalism because it is dangerous...
I agree with the conclusion, but it is depressing that it has taking this long for people to reach it.
[+] [-] braingenious|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] madeofpalk|3 years ago|reply
> [...]
> Short of a court order
You cannot give data you do not have in response to a court order.
[+] [-] random_upvoter|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] madeofpalk|3 years ago|reply
Why can managers at Google not make a decision to collect less of the data that could be used to prosecute under a law they don't think is just?
[+] [-] pjc50|3 years ago|reply
This is silly, because there's nothing magic about it being law that makes it just, especially in a highly politicised environment. People argue about ignoring law they don't like all the time, especially in the future tense.
[+] [-] titzer|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] juunpp|3 years ago|reply
Google is part of the state apparatus. Congress is not asleep, it is lobbied by this and other companies. This naive idea that you can just ask Big Tech companies to find two cents in their moral bank is old and tiresome. Control of Congress must be taken back before any real change can be effected.
[+] [-] paulryanrogers|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foota|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olalonde|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] harry8|3 years ago|reply
Are google's socially progressive positions purely marketing and they'll drop and and all of them like a hot brick if it might cost them some money or market share? Are we the baddies?
[+] [-] titzer|3 years ago|reply
GLS is built into Android (via Google Play Services). The data collected is "anonymous". Just like the anonymous person that is in my house motionless from 12-8am every night.
[+] [-] hiptobecubic|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MomoXenosaga|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eftychis|3 years ago|reply
The article is naive. Now when a class of people is affected they realize the issue with Google collecting data or providing location history information (incorrect or not) to the authorities.
Google has a history of actively i) resetting opt out settings, ii) making location tracking de facto mandatory on android, iii) pushing for AMP (which pushes their ampanalytics), etc.
Time to actually push for privacy.
How about: "Hey Google, to protect people, stop tracking anything." (Which for Google would imply to stop existing per se.)
[+] [-] mrweasel|3 years ago|reply
Google, like other industries, where build on the ideas that what they did was more or less harmless. As we learn more about what massive data collection entails, we also have to reconsider the laws surrounding it.
Google will never stop on their own, as you say that would mean that they'd stop existing. It's the same with oil or tobacco companies, and few would cry foul if Philip Morris would be forced to shutdown.
I no longer believe that tracking and data collection can be done safely and it's time to dismantle those business that rely on it. Give Google, and others, five to ten years to close down their data collection business and after that they can stop existing if they can't cope.
[+] [-] titzer|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] superb-owl|3 years ago|reply
Citizens United pretty thoroughly says it's the latter. But calls to reign in Fake News and to force tech companies to censor their users contradict this.
[+] [-] madeofpalk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlkuester7|3 years ago|reply
Privacy needs to be everyone's concern because by the time you realize you have things you need to keep private, it will be too late!
[+] [-] mixmastamyk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cute_boi|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 29athrowaway|3 years ago|reply
Google anonymizes reverse image search with people in them. You get generic results like "person in t-shirt".
[+] [-] nullc|3 years ago|reply
Hiding the loss of privacy makes it harder to resist, it doesn't make it go away.
[+] [-] majkinetor|3 years ago|reply
If you dont want to delete my data let my data be garbage.
[+] [-] onion2k|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mikl|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MomoXenosaga|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AinderS|3 years ago|reply
Enter a cage willingly, with barely any complaint, for minor convenience, then cry when you're taken to the slaughterhouse. It's sad that despite all the warnings, people are so myopic and apathetic that it takes something this big and obvious to make them react.
And despite this, they remain willfully blind to other threats, that are smart enough to stay below the threshold: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/censorship-by-algori...
> Four ways to build civil rights into Google products
A laughable chapter of the article, void of any actually effective suggestions, such as compelling Google properties to stop blocking the Tor network (duckduckgo and yandex allow Tor), or using free software that is actually under the user's control.
The problem is that would give users actual power and autonomy. But what the authors really want is for Google and other corporations to keep acting as internet police, but only enforcing rules they agree with, and not any others. That's why they want to build "civil rights" into products, and not "user freedom". That's why they get comments from an establishment Harvard professor, and not the FSF.
[+] [-] classified|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quest88|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lotsofpulp|3 years ago|reply