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.

      • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        131·
        8 months ago

        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.

      • shortwavesurferEnglish
        8·
        8 months ago

        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.