Google Will Stop Telling Law Enforcement Which Users Were Near a Crime

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 332 points – Google Will Stop Telling Law Enforcement Which Users Were Near a Crime
finance.yahoo.com

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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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.

pushing digital privacy as a selling point and living up to it doesn't add up when you do compromise privacy behind closed doors

  1. Apple and Google are both guilty of this. Frankly, however, neither of them are particularly “guilty”, as
  2. Both Apple and Google were legally obligated not do disclose this practice until recently. It was revealed by Apple as soon as this embargo was lifted.

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.

Apple and Google are both guilty of this. Frankly, however, neither of them are particularly “guilty”,

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

Other companies do it too…

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.

Google doesn't claim to be a herald of digital privacy, nor its users claim Google is a saint.

I never did, nor would, claim either of things about Apple.

Yall need to read the "a bit" part of that sentence too.

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.

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Circumstantial evidence is all evidence except witness testimony.

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