Feds Ordered Google To Unmask Certain YouTube Users. Critics Say It’s ‘Terrifying.’
www.forbes.com
The federal government asked Google to turn over information on anyone who viewed multiple YouTube videos. Privacy experts say the orders are unconstitutional.

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.

    • shortwavesurferEnglish
      862·
      9 months ago

      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@lemmy.worldEnglish
        335·
        9 months ago

        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.

      • einfach_orangensaft@feddit.deEnglish
        123·
        9 months ago

        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).

        • shortwavesurferEnglish
          14·
          9 months ago

          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

        • fishos@lemmy.worldEnglish
          36·
          9 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.