this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
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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] 91 points 7 months ago (5 children)

Why, would you look at that - apparently surveillance is fine and dandy, as long as it's the US doing it. Fucking hypocrites.

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[–] [email protected] 72 points 7 months ago (3 children)

“But sir, downloading viewings for ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ could blow up the entire Internet!”

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

"Why bother? By now everyone on the planet has already seen it twice."

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago

The headline made me think of back when phone networks were just starting to be fast enough to watch YouTube on data, a guy at the job I was working was caught watching videos of young girls in supposedly lacking state of dress splashing in inflatable pools or something along those lines. Dunno what happened to him but everyone thought he was a nice guy the day before and then suddenly everyone was grossed out by his mere existing.

My immediate concern though is do they account for people who were tricked into watching like with Rick rolling?

[–] [email protected] 43 points 7 months ago (17 children)

Well... the part they quoted is a little misleading.

The two situations they talked about at least on the face of it were:

  1. An undercover agent was in contact with someone, and sent them a link to something in the expectation they'd click it and then that undercover agent could track down what was the IP/identity of the person who clicked the link. Pretty standard stuff. The only weird part is that it was a stock Youtube link and they asked Google to be involved to give them identifying information after (and that for whatever reason there were 30,000 people who watched the video and they asked for the info about all 30,000).
  2. Law enforcement got a bomb threat, then they learned that there had been a livestream of them while they were looking for the bomb. That doesn't automatically mean anything about the person who was livestreaming (maybe they just saw something exciting happening?), but wanting to talk with that person makes 100% sense to me.

So, to me both of those seem pretty reasonable. But of course the on-the-face-of-it explanation for #1 doesn't completely make sense for a couple of different reasons. But I wouldn't automatically class either of these as abuse by law enforcement without knowing more.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 7 months ago (6 children)

Neither of these is reasonable.

  1. There certainly are situations where this could be reasonable; however, when your parameters return 30,000 people it's not nearly tailored enough.

  2. To get a warrant you need probable cause that a person committed a crime, I don't see how a live stream could meet that burden unless it starts prior to the arrival of the police.

These are both abuses by law enforcement, or more clearly, a path that allows their job to be easier by infringing on people's rights.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

My theory for #1 is that it's an unlisted video targeted at extremists or maybe a "How to make an illegal item" guide

Which I also think can be reasonable

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago

Sounds like it wasn't really illegal (just a mapping / drone thing), as well as the behavior they were looking into wasn't something that was for-certain illegal (just trading cash for crypto, which is I guess "illegal adjacent" but not in itself illegal). IDK. The story as it was told was a little confusing / didn't completely make sense to me on the face of it as the complete story.

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The kind of things why I use NewPipe..

[–] [email protected] 83 points 7 months ago (14 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) (3 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] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Using RiseupVPN with no problem 👍👍

[–] [email protected] 46 points 7 months ago (1 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.

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[–] [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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

I appreciate that.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'm on a VPN without issue

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

World seems to be blocking NordVPN. Recommend another instance?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I use mullvad which hasn't given me any issue

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

That's my next stop after this contract runs out.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Lovely. Wonder what the videos were?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago

ASMR videos of a parent proud of me

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago

Dream face reveal

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