Google Will Stop Telling Law Enforcement Which Users Were Near a Crime
(finance.yahoo.com)
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 17 Dec 2023 08:00
https://lemmy.world/post/9666616
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 17 Dec 2023 08:00
https://lemmy.world/post/9666616
Google Will Stop Telling Law Enforcement Which Users Were Near a Crime::(Bloomberg) – Alphabet Inc.’s Google is changing its Maps tool so that the company no longer has access to users’ individual location histories, cutting off its ability to respond to law enforcement warrants that ask for data on everyone who was in the vicinity of a crime.Most Read from BloombergNetanyahu, Under Pressure Over Hostage Deaths, Vows to Press OnMike Johnson May Be the Next House Speaker to Lose His Job‘Underwater’ Car Loans Signal US Consumers Slammed by High RatesUS Navy Shoots Do
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Well that’s an odd and inflammatory headline to use for the issue
Not really. Google is making this change so they have no way to share incidental bystanders location data when its requested/demanded by law enforcement. Google is the only tech company cooperating with police to provide this type of “geofence/general area” location data.
Google will change its app so that it can no longer tell law enforcement its users location data, inline with more privacy focused companies like Apple and their maps app. This change comes after years of advocacy from digital rights groups, but appears to be mainly motivated by negative press coverage.
The headline is specifically about what the article is about.
Wow, surprising that for once Apple is the good guy here. There’s a good reason this is a bad idea, and it’s not reallt hard to see why. Circumstantial evidence isn’t evidence of an actual crime for a reason.
Apple has been pushing digital privacy as a selling point for a while, and actually living up to it a bit.
Well, no, not really. They’re more private than Google, but have also never had issues in the past with geofence dragonets, and only because of public backlash stopped the idea of digging through people’s gallerys to accuse everybody of being a pedophile. Yes, out of the box Apple (may) be a little better, but their descicions change with the wind, and at least on Android we have control to stop what Google does in most cases vs no options on the Apple side.
No, apple pushes “privacy” from companies that are not apple. They collect just as much data as the googs.
Well that’s an extreme exaggeration.
They do collect data, but a drop in the bucket to what Google collects lol.
pushing digital privacy as a selling point and living up to it doesn’t add up when you do compromise privacy behind closed doors
Yall need to read the “a bit” part of that sentence too.
I’m not sure what more they could have done in that situation. Did you expect them to break the (very fucked up) law just to alert the public? Can Signal no longer claim to be privacy-focused if the government forces them to log a suspect’s password?
That is even worse, they knew they were compromising privacy and still boasts about being privacy centric. It’s like Saudi Arabia claiming to be a utopia while actively using modern slavery in the background.
Google doesn’t claim to be a herald of digital privacy, nor its users claim Google is a saint.
Apple users every time any criticism comes up
Ya no shit, we know other companies are bad, however, keeping Apple at the pedestal no matter what is annoyingly cringe.
The only argument I’ve ever heard is that Apple has comparatively better privacy practices than most companies we interact with. I frankly don’t think that argument is particularly unreasonable.
I never did, nor would, claim either of things about Apple.
Circumstantial evidence is all evidence except witness testimony.
There must have been an operational bottleneck with handling the LEOs requests that they decided to prevent the data requested from even existing in order to not be able to reply to such requests. Surely this came down to business and not alturism.
I doubt operational bottlenecks were the issue, more likely the rising volume of requests made Google reassess the policy.
LEOs already press the boundaries of the permissible, and as much as I hate giving props to the big G, good on Google for taking the initiative.
Cops only investigate people they think are guilty, and despite being objectively terrible at their jobs, they have ridiculous amounts of self confidence.
So to them, if they suspect someone of a crime, they can “bend” any rules for stuff like this because “the suspect is clearly guilty anyways, we just don’t have proof”.
Wouldn’t the inability to process the volume of request from LEOs be an apt example of an operational bottleneck?
The article didn’t state that Google had problems responding to LE requests.
Also, Google can have as much capacity as God, whenever they decide to put their will to something.
They also consume data like mortals consume chips, and one bar chart would be all it took for them to address a potential bottleneck, and rising liability, by finally eliminating it.
These are not necessarily mutually exclusive ideals.
From time to time businesses will do things that actually benefit their customers in order to keep their business.
Or self preservation.
Aha. For sure they won’t do that anymore. Nah I won’t buy it.
Then you don’t grasp what’s happening, You think the Goog wants to be in the middle of that shit? That’s time and resources that don’t benefit them. Providing that data puts them in a bad spot Everytime, simply not having the data to provide obsoloves them of that and is in both their and the end users best interest. The push getting worse is because current Stingrays don’t work on 5G, so the internal police spying is very limited now, and getting location records from telcos requires more of a papertrail than going to Google and Apple in the past, and when cops are asking for shit they don’t really need, they don’t want to be in the books for it.
You said a lot without saying a lot
What id ahppening that google doesnt want to be in the middle of?
Also, didnt know that about stingrays, might have to finally upgrade my 4G phone now. Thanks for that
There’s zero benefit for Google to hand over this information, and potentially face a lawsuit because it actually turns out that no it wasn’t legal for this information to be handed over. Google are of course aware that cops don’t necessarily obey the law, so just because you’ve been asked to by a cop to provide something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s legal for you to hand it over.
It’s much simpler if they just don’t have this data. That way they can’t hand it over, so there’s no problem.
In this case an issue avoided is very much an issue solved.
i get what you’re saying, but you did not mention the benefit Google itself got from that data, that they’ll have to forfeit so that they won’t be able to provide it to the police
Honestly, these days there probably wasn’t much benefit. At one point, sure, but looking at it from the standpoint of a non privacy aware person, they’re handing so much data over, ignoring the line of their travel probably does near nothing for them, while having and holding that data is a huge negative since they’ll always be harassed for it from law enforcement. Without it, they can probably dissolve whole departments of people that had to be dedicated to LE ass kissing so the police didn’t have to do their jobs or so they could cast their dragnets and put tons of innocent people through hell while they figured out everything later.
Use GrapheneOS and stop giving power to Google. Google is not a friend of the people for offering “free” services, the user is the product and the companies and the surveillance state are the customer.
Except it would seem not, since you know this news.
why not? the quote is in the present tense - while article claims Google will change policy
and are you sure this is the only service Google is offering to the surveillance state?
Surveillance states demand that Google gives all their data, but corps pay Google for all their data
Are there any phones supported that I can install an SD card on?
No, for security concerns GrapheneOS team only support Pixel devices (unfortunately)
They’re probably going to keep doing it even though they said they’d stop
The police are now required to say please and thank you.
Why would they. Don’t like they gain anything by giving this information to the police.
They probably been forced by other countries to have some kind of effective data protection it’s ridiculous employees have random access to this data.
That means they got better methods of tracking, or send the data straight to the accurate person, cutting the middleman.
As usual, I have to scroll down more than a page to get past all the generic “Google bad” comments to see any discussion of the topic at hand. Never change, Lemmy.
What you’re looking for is effective moderation. It would be nice wouldn’t it.
If you’re looking for an echochamber that is. Just accept that people can have different opinions and views. Besides if you’re a technical person you would know the amount of bullshit and mistrust there is.
Not wanting low effort comments is not an echo chamber. I am perfectly fine with dissenting opinions a lot of the comments on here aren’t at the level of opinions that just knee jerk reactionary comments
Why are you complaining about low effort comments after leaving 2 of them? Practice what you preach
Nice contribution yourself asshole.
Regardless of low you look at it, this is great news.
It’s not a reason to switch back to Google indeed, but people inside this ecosystem just got a little less surveillance.