this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
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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 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by ForgottenFlux to c/technology
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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] 84 points 10 months ago (3 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.

[–] balancedchaos 27 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 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] 46 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] balancedchaos 8 points 10 months ago (3 children)

World and NordVPN. Recommend another instance?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 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.

[–] balancedchaos 1 points 10 months ago

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

[–] balancedchaos 1 points 10 months ago

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

[–] balancedchaos 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Lol they denied my application. Nice.

Edit: it was my own carelessness. Damn.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 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.

[–] balancedchaos 3 points 10 months ago

I appreciate that.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

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

[–] tyrant 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm on a VPN without issue

[–] balancedchaos 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

World seems to be blocking NordVPN. Recommend another instance?

[–] tyrant 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I use mullvad which hasn't given me any issue

[–] balancedchaos 6 points 10 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Using RiseupVPN with no problem 👍👍

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (2 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 10 months ago (2 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 10 months ago (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 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.

[–] fishos 5 points 10 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 10 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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Damn! That would be epic and well played for sure. Not advocating.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Nice rare instance!

[–] fishos -3 points 10 months ago

You have no clue how vpns work and shouldn't be giving anyone advice on tech. You are full of shit. I'm not even gonna be polite about it because you are spouting nonsense with complete confidence.