• IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    63
    arrow-down
    13
    ·
    8 months ago

    Ok, so the headline is a bit clickbait-y. It’s not not everyone who ever watched the video that they are interested in, it’s one person they are trying to track down. Still concerning from a privacy standpoint, but it’s not like they are trying to say that watching the video was itself a crime.

    • CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      114
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      8 months ago

      Thats not the issue.

      Its the same as when feds ask google for location data for everyone near a crime at a given timestamp. Its violating innocent peoples privacy in large swathes.

      Google stopped giving location data recently. Hope they keep going.

        • glimse@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          37
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          8 months ago

          “We are going to stop doing [action]” is megacorp lingo for “We are going to stop telling you that we do [action]”

            • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              5
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              8 months ago

              A long time ago, between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of the sons of Aryas, Google had a business model where it’d keep all the private data and no-one would get to look directly at it. Then some technicians stocked their exes. Then courts required them to cooperate with police warrants. For a while Google advertised they had a legal team to resist all warrants, and make sure they were absolutely positively legal with all the ducks in order, but then they stopped not being evil. So here we are.

              That is to say, Google tried, but then it enshittified.

      • TechNerdWizard42@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        13
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        8 months ago

        Exactly. Nobody should be ok with random data being given out “just in case”. This should be illegal and never happen. But it is perfectly acceptable in today’s subpoena world and that’s a scary thing.

        The agent could have done the same thing in many different ways to get an ip address. It’s also concerning that agents are still using IP address as a vouch of identity in 2024.

      • umbrella@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        8 months ago

        Google stopped giving location data recently.

        hahahaahhahahahaahahhahahahahahah

      • Otter@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        8 months ago

        The other comments are justifiably suspicious, but I think what they said they stopped doing was uploading the location data to the cloud. You can only check your history on the device itself rather than the web interface.

    • Crikeste@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      Is anyone asking the question of: Why do they need 30,000 accounts to try and determine if 1 watched the video? What the fuck kinda investigation is that?

      Why would being able to prove this one person watched one video mean anything?

      And is that evidence worth violating the privacy of 30,000 people? How could it be?

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    26
    ·
    8 months ago

    Once upon a time, FBI tracked everyone who read certain books from the library. This was illegal and against the spirit of the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States (this was before the PATRIOT act and countless SCOTUS carve-outs since). But they did it anyways, and invented parallel constructions to how they detected the guys they wanted.

    For now, because you add on a computer or on the internet makes it a new instance, it’s still legal for them to do dragnet surveillance.

    But then the people are the enemy of the justice system and government institutions, which should tell you something.