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Google Helps Government Conduct Warrantless Searches, Alleges EPIC (tomshardware.com)
schwit1 quotes Tom's Hardware: The Electronic Privacy Information Center ("EPIC"), a civil liberties group based in Washington D.C., filed an amicus brief in the United States vs. Wilson case concerning Google scanning billions of users' files for unlawful content and then sending that information to law enforcement agencies.
EPIC alleges that law enforcement is using Google, a private entity, to bypass the Fourth Amendment, which requires due process and probable cause before "searching or seizing" someone's property.
As a private entity, Google doesn't have to abide by the Fourth Amendment as the government has to, so it can do those mass searches on its behalf and then give the government the results. The U.S. government has been increasingly using this strategy to bypass Fourth Amendment protections of U.S. citizens and to expand its warrantless surveillance operations further.
Google and a few other companies have "voluntarily" agreed to use a database of image hashes from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to help the agency find exploited children.
More than that, the companies would also give any information they have on the people who owned those images, given they are users of said companies' services and have shared the images through those services.
EPIC alleges that law enforcement is using Google, a private entity, to bypass the Fourth Amendment, which requires due process and probable cause before "searching or seizing" someone's property.
As a private entity, Google doesn't have to abide by the Fourth Amendment as the government has to, so it can do those mass searches on its behalf and then give the government the results. The U.S. government has been increasingly using this strategy to bypass Fourth Amendment protections of U.S. citizens and to expand its warrantless surveillance operations further.
Google and a few other companies have "voluntarily" agreed to use a database of image hashes from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to help the agency find exploited children.
More than that, the companies would also give any information they have on the people who owned those images, given they are users of said companies' services and have shared the images through those services.
If you put things in "public" you have no expectation of privacy or that LEO can't go digging in it. You put your trash bin on the curb, they can go into it. If you're using Google to keep secrets secret, you are fucking up sir.
My gmail account is not, or should not be, considered public.
You are a corporate shill and very dumb as well.
The real answer here is google is evil. Government + corporations working together = fascism.
The real fascism, not the bullshit nonsense where idiots scream nazi at anyone who disagrees with them.
Welcome to your dystopian nom[rivacy future, today.
Is your private gmail account count as in "public"? Google listening in on your private email conversations should be no different than the phone company listening in on your phone call.
Or as I have renamed them, "Be Evil"
Be Excellent To Each Other
So of course they side with the gestapo. Be it German American, or Chinese.
Corporatism != Free Market
"My gmail account is not, or should not be, considered public." Explain legally why you think that, and cite where the TOS says it grants that privacy? Exactly. Good luck, lol.
"You are a corporate shill and very dumb as well." - I'm not defending it, I'm pointing it out, ya dumb cunt. You went full retard instantly because you don't know the law.
"The real answer here is google is evil" - Oh, bravo. Do you wear a cape? Adults are talking.
"Government + corporations working together = fascism." - And don't forget fluoridated water and interstate highways are evil socialism... and reality.
The realest fascism AFAIK was the Nazi fascism that took over Europe by force... not sure what you're whining about like a bitch....
Did you just wake up or something, frog in pot? It's been this way. Crying incoherently as if I personally caused it... just lol. Go back to sleep child.
Well. our Palo Alto IT janitor sure does a lot of warrantless stuff as well. It`s interesting to know that he pretends to work for a 3 letter agency and to have worked for Google as well.
Why do stories like this come conflated with things like missing/exploited children? It seems that "protecting children" is the gateway to all manner of surveillance. I think, perhaps, they consider us to be those children.
DO YOU OWN IT? If you decided to stop using Google could you take your gmail account and walk away? Of course not. Their rules apply, they own your account, any rights you think you have are extremely watered down.
"Google listening in on your private email conversations should be no different than the phone company listening in on your phone call." - Which phone companies are actually "allowed" to do on some level, yes.
Their rationale for doing so may be assailable in court, or not, but they absolutely have that right in some instances and to determine where to draw the bright legal line is a lot of money - and it keeps moving also.
In vacuum-theory of course I would agree with you but in practice it's much, much more legally complex than people ever consider when using such services. See: Facebook.
My gmail account is not, or should not be, considered public.
Nor should it be considered private. You did after all consent to google scanning your emails for keywords to better target advertisements towards you.
Government + corporations working together = fascism. The real fascism, not the bullshit nonsense where idiots scream nazi at anyone who disagrees with them.
What about the bullshit nonsense where idiots scream fascism anytime a corporation is involved?
You don't understand fascism. Under fascism both the people and the corporations are under state/party control directly or indirectly. The two are often played off against each other to keep each other weak, to maintain government control of both.
What a sorry excuse for a website.
See his new sock puppet account here:
Real Data Collection, CDR backward, you are such a genius Chris!
https://slashdot.org/~Real+Dat...
>The real answer here is google is evil.
Such a simplistic view. What are you, 13?
Google is complying with the law. Specifically, 18 U.S. Code 2258A. Reporting requirements of providers
(a) Duty To Report.—
(1) In general.—
(A)Duty.—In order to reduce the proliferation of online child sexual exploitation and to prevent the online sexual exploitation of children, a provider—
(i) shall, as soon as reasonably possible after obtaining actual knowledge of any facts or circumstances described in paragraph (2)(A), take the actions described in subparagraph (B); and
(ii) may, after obtaining actual knowledge of any facts or circumstances described in paragraph (2)(B), take the actions described in subparagraph (B).
(B)Actions described.—The actions described in this subparagraph are—
(i) providing to the CyberTipline of NCMEC, or any successor to the CyberTipline operated by NCMEC, the mailing address, telephone number, facsimile number, electronic mailing address of, and individual point of contact for, such provider; and
(ii) making a report of such facts or circumstances to the CyberTipline, or any successor to the CyberTipline operated by NCMEC.
Technically, Google is not directly helping the government as the NCMEC is a private non-profit organizaton who makes the decision to report suspected violations to law enforcement.
1 Law for electronic communications service providers to report instances of child sex exploitation.
2. Publicly traded company has duty to shareholders to comply with laws
3. Google has legal as well as fiduciary obligations to make sure it systems are not abused.
4. Google uses automated systems to detect abuse and spells that out for users in its TOS:
When we detect spam, malware, illegal content, and other forms of abuse on our systems in violation of our policies, we may disable your account or take other appropriate action. In certain circumstances, we may also report the violation to appropriate authorities.
5. User assume privacy violations risk by using systems they do not control and by tacit agreement of a company's TOS by using their system.
6. EPIC, EFF, ACLU don't have legal leg to stand on.
Get bent, EPIC. Until this gets overturned they can do whatever they like to stuff you store in the cloud.
>"As a private entity, Google doesn't have to abide by the Fourth Amendment as the government has to, so it can do those mass searches on its behalf and then give the government the results. The U.S. government has been increasingly using this strategy to bypass Fourth Amendment protections of U.S. citizens and to expand its warrantless surveillance operations further."
This has always puzzled me. How can it be legal for the government to "buy" or "be given" information which collecting, itself, would be illegal. I would think as a FIRST STEP to start a privacy revolution, this should be shut down. I blame both for eroding our privacy and Constitutional protections, but don't blame the corporations as much as I do the government... it is the government that is not following the spirit (or word) of the Constitution, the corporations are not under that obligation.
Up until the last two decades, every parent had a binder of 'child pornography' in the form of your baby photos. Up until the 80s-2000s, photography of people 13+ wasn't considered child pornography unless actively involved sexual themes. Nudity was often acceptable. Somehow in the time since, basically everything involving persons aged under 18 is now child pornography, and much like streaking (which used to be a slap on the wrist, and often a hazing or graduation ritual for some people) is now a sex offender class felony that will ruin your life and keep you from living near schools or other places children may congregate.
This has really been a categoric redefining of the goal posts, similar to marijuana, to nail as many 'undesirables' as possible under legal and social mandates that help destabilize one's ability to defend their actions, while at the same time giving the government a moral high ground for their actions, no matter how questionable those actions may be.
For another example of this, go look at Britain or Catholicism and their treatment of pedophiles, while at the same time protecting members within their own ranks or using their power, influence and status to take advantage of younger members of their clergy, or in the British case, orphans who are both naive and easily embarrassed/fearful thanks to their rigid upbringing and when abused believe their own voices will not be heard.
The irony about this is that children can't consent to sex/contracts/etc, but adults aren't required to consent to anything done to them, whether surveillance, police abuse (even when innocent), credit checks, or simply some asshole posting their picture on Facebook leading to a shadow profile they never wanted, needed, or approved. In the former case they are officially protected by default, in the latter case they aren't protected at all, unless they have the money, time, and/or lawyers to win the case for them.
Except if you use Chrome or any Google extensions, then Google is scanning your LOCAL storage. I actually notice this when I installed the Google Play Music extension on Vivaldi in order to upload (which still didn't work, they want you on Chrome) and it started thrashing my drive. I quickly killed and purged the Google malware from that system.
Instead, I now just upload my music to my Box.com account, which allows me to upload anything from any browser without a proprietary app or extension and can be accessed directly through many apps and through WebDAV.
Here is what the 4th amendment actually says.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
It doesn't say anything about who's performing the search. It says that being secure against searches is a right, and it "shall not be violated". Nothing in there about this only applying to searches by the government. How can anyone read that and claim it doesn't apply if the government gets a private company to do the searching for them?
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
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My gmail account is not, or should not be, considered public.
But it is. this has been known for many years. (Google reads your gmail in order to do targeted advertising, among other things. Test: send yourself a mail mentioning some product, see if you get ads for just that.)
So why do you use gmail then? There are tons of other mail services that isn't doing this. You can easily get a free mail where they don't snoop, and they don't let cops snoop unless they show up with a warrant. The basic privacy we always expected from email.
Fascism is fascism. Controlling all aspects of life through the active cooperation of government and corporations. You must have gone to a government school if you think google colluding with the government in this way, scanning private files and sending them to the government in violation of our constitutional rights is somehow ok just because they are not killing people en masse.
You are a government stoolie, corporate shill, and dumb as a brick.
Dystopian future is now, dummy. Wake up.
Except, of course, that Google isn't a common carrier, you explicitly opted into this service, and you agreed with the TOS that clearly say that they will report illegal behavior, and they are very explicit that they're scanning your email.
So, not at all like a cell phone company. Progressive fail, try again.
The phone company owned the phone lines but the government was still required to get a warrant before listening in. And yes there is an expectation of privacy in phone calls and email.
You've been a bit slack lately.
https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=183137&cid=15131630
said on ./ at least 13 years ago: "Child porn is the root password to the Constitution."
as a Pizzagate'r, i would be all for the NSA + TLA's turning their awesome mass surveillance superpowers towards dismantling and persecuting and utterly crushing the Elite pedorings. but as we have seen from the phony Russiagate hoax, and the "Insurance Policy", the NSA & friends cannot be trusted to use their superpowers to Do The Right Thing. instead, they participate in Palace Coups and in sabotaging the will of the voters and in actively destroying America with all of the blowback from the unintended consequences of their stupid beyond belief covert ops around the world.
what is to be done to crush the pedos? how come instead of this debate always falling into the 2 extreme camps of:
1. OMG Nazi Gestapo Fascists!
2. Trust Us Marty, we're the Good Guys
instead of these false dichotomy choices, why can't our NSA/CIA/FBI do their fucking jobs properly, and use their illegal surveillance powers to investigate
and arrest and indict the real Baddies, while not crossing the red line into abusing their powers for political interference and for financial fraud and for petty corruption?
Sex laws in this country are batshit insane. We can't keep putting up more and more barriers to sexual activity, and criminalizing everything somehow related to sex.
Most teens share nudes, fact. Most of them are felons. Distributors of "child pornography".
The only reason young people are traumatized by sex is that it's stigmatized socially. There's nothing biological that says you shouldn't have sex at 14, 15, 16, or 17.
We should really ask what the fuck "child abuse" even is. Jealous parenting? Overprotective nonsense?
Sex education, not sex criminalization ans stigmitization, is the correct way forward. We should roll back the age of consent to 14, remove child pornography laws (because we are making 90% of our teens felons) and make birth control and condoms more widely available, and accept that sex is a normal human biological desire.