If you watched certain YouTube videos, investigators demanded your data from Google

Umbrella8335@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 192 points –
If you watched certain YouTube videos, investigators demanded your data from Google
mashable.com
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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.

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.

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.

Google stopped giving location data recently.

hahahaahhahahahaahahhahahahahahah

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.

stopped giving location data recently

Probably so they can start selling it instead

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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?

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