Hacker News Reader

Comment by ColanR | Hacker News Reader

Makes me think of my own duckduckgo usage. I wonder if Google is the only search engine being leaned on, or if they're just the only one with any publicity around the shared data.

View on HN

Unfortunately DDG doesn't publish any law enforcement request data :/ They say they have nothing to give, but they don't actually publish any info abount what kind of requests they're receiving and what they're giving in return.

Google does: https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview?hl=...

Apple does too: https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/

DDG is based in the US. It's under the same laws as Google and has to honor search warrants from the police and has to comply with laws (including FBI's NSLs).

This is why I don't use a US-based search engine.

I expect that DDG would make a huge stink about being compelled to do any such thing (Google, too. If people think the government is watching their internet searches, they'll go somewhere else.).

Unless they publish some canary they may not be able to do that.

There are some differing opinions on the effectiveness of a canary. [1] The legal team where I work have the same opinion as Moxie's lawyers.

[1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20141027143819/https://github.co...

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Spoiler alert: Congress did.

It can try, but that doesn't make the law constitutional.

Unless the government forces them to save user identifying information, it's sort of pointless to ask for anything. But in France several bar owners were arrested for not complying with a law requiring they track every user if their free wifi.

These documents are making me begin the switch to ddg today. Google should never allow this mass disclosure of data. I don't trust it anymore and won't with my email either.

DDG doesn't record search information in the first place.

> DDG doesn't record search information in the first place.

That's not entirely true. DDG saves user searches. They don't save identifying information (IP, UA, etc.) along with the user search.

The below is directly from their privacy policy [0]:

"We also save searches, but again, not in a personally identifiable way, as we do not store IP addresses or unique User agent strings. We use aggregate, non-personal search data to improve things like misspellings."

[0] https://duckduckgo.com/privacy

if there is no PII to connect then there is nothing for cops to find?

In a world of secret court trials, NSL's and parallel construction, there's truly no way to prove this until it's tested in court.

Note that logging (record) and monitoring (observe) are not the same.

TBC, I’m not saying they’re monitoring, just that search warrants are for tangible things, while wiretap warrants are for listening in.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com