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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] 82 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] 9 points 7 months ago (11 children)

VPNs protect your from geting caught torrenting, but it cant protect you from the US-goverment.

First of all most of the advertized VPN's are Honeypots and/or back/bugdoored by the NSA.

And even if they where not...so much of the internet runs on servers/services/isp's that are related to american companys that Timing attacks are possibe (for example your ISP logs and shared your encrypted traffic and the NSA then compares Timing patterns of requests with other services).

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (9 children)

Right, but if Google is collecting your IP address to give to the government, then using a VPN would put another step in their path, and they would have to go to the VPN provider to try to figure out who it was.As long as that VPN provider is in another country like proton VPN and does not keep logs Then there's a good chance that they won't know who it was that requested the YouTube video

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I mean what makes u think that proton isnt just another NSA operation.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It could be, that's definitely true. At some point, you either have to trust something or self-host everything, though.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What if unicorns are real but invisible and we can't touch them?

I can make up outlandish "facts" too.

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

there's a teapot that I think you'd be quite fond of, orbiting the earth right behind the moon just where we can't see it