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Google was ordered to identify people who watched certain YouTube videos. Privacy experts say the orders are unconstitutional. (www.forbes.com)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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If the linked article has a paywall, you can access this archived version instead: https://archive.ph/zyhax

The court orders show the government telling Google to provide the names, addresses, telephone numbers and user activity for all Google account users who accessed the YouTube videos between January 1 and January 8, 2023. The government also wanted the IP addresses of non-Google account owners who viewed the videos.

“This is the latest chapter in a disturbing trend where we see government agencies increasingly transforming search warrants into digital dragnets. It’s unconstitutional, it’s terrifying and it’s happening every day,” said Albert Fox-Cahn, executive director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. “No one should fear a knock at the door from police simply because of what the YouTube algorithm serves up. I’m horrified that the courts are allowing this.” He said the orders were “just as chilling” as geofence warrants, where Google has been ordered to provide data on all users in the vicinity of a crime.

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[–] [email protected] 83 points 7 months ago (28 children)

I dont think newpipe would protect from this since it still contacts the yt servers to pull the video. Peertube or a VPN would stop this though.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (14 children)

I just found out that Lemmy is not allowing (or has rate-limited, or whatever) VPN connections to post or react.

Not a fan of that at all.

Edit: it's my instance being on Cloudflare, not Lemmy as a whole. My mistake.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 7 months ago (8 children)

Could be your instance. World is behind cloudflare after all.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (3 children)

World and NordVPN. Recommend another instance?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Some instances, like mine, do not require an email address to join .

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (3 children)

The instance my account is on, dbzer0, was set up by a former mod of the piracy subreddit. Can't say for certain, but I'd expect that VPNs would work with it. The admin really seems to know his shit.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Lol they denied my application. Nice.

Edit: it was my own carelessness. Damn.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Having trouble verifying my email. Gonna see if it works without VPN.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Now you've really piqued my interest. This may be the winner.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Hmmm. Im on monero.town obviously and its not behind cloudflare, but i don't have any specific recommendation. Easy way to tell if an instance is behind cf is to run a ping instance.tld from command line. If the average is like 20-40ms its likely cloudflare.