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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

The police had a warrant for the information.

Whatever is going on here Google doesn't seem to just be forking over mass data at any request, at least not as far as this story goes.

I would argue the issue here is that such a warrant was granted in the first place.

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> I would argue the issue here is that such a warrant was granted in the first place.

I agree that the warrant itself is a huge problem, but I think there's another significant issue here. Google may have just been complying with the law, but that doesn't meant they had to be quiet about it. Unless they had a gag order, they should have publicly stated that the US government was compelling them to hand over search records.

From the article:

> Google declined to disclose how many keyword warrants it's received in the last three years.

They did not say anything about a gag order and, given Google's track record on privacy, I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt here.

The warrant was sealed. I think that means there's a fairly high chance they were told to keep quiet (legally). Not 100% sure but it seems likely.

Maybe things have changed but IIRC the past Google has fought to be able to disclose publicly the extent of some requests made by the government.

Can they not even say what they're not allowed to say?

When prompted about how many warrants they've had, why not just respond with "We are not legally allowed to answer"?

And what is the justification for a gag order like that in the first place?

"Can they not even say what they're not allowed to say?"

In the past they couldn't even say that.

I believe Google and Microsoft have litigated over that point specifically. I don't recall if they won or not.

Disclaimer: Googler

In a broad sense this information is available in the Transparency Report: https://transparencyreport.google.com/

Maybe, but more likely no.

Path of least risk and resistance is for them to declare it internally to be kept quiet. An army of internal counsel would be telling everyone in the room to keep their mouth shut to prevent everything from PR issues to actual legal threats. They don't even need a gag order, they'll do it willingly.

Why does google keep IPs for searches? Are they required by law , and if so , why? It's not even needed for their advertising profiles. It would save them the trouble if the data was just not there

I don't know, but it doesn't surprise me that they would.

Fraud detection, attack mitigation, system health metrics---Google is a large enough surface (and target) that it has need to collect and collate terabytes of data per day to maintain the health of the system.

The mechanisms it uses for attack mitigation alone have to be smart enough to recognize a botnet and drop threat traffic with a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer.

IPs are legitimate for minutes, maybe hours, but not days or weeks if it's about attack mitigation and fraud detection. Size isn't a factor in that, I believe.

It's just one more data point. It doesn't have to be the keystone for everything to be useful.

Sure, but in that sense ("it might help defend against an attack") you could argue that Google should also be allowed to keep & use all interactions listened to by Google Assistant, Google Nest etc. They may very well help.

I'm thinking more along the lines of say external attacks / fraud etc. Not sure Google Nest is a big space for that kind of thing.

> Not sure Google Nest is a big space for that kind of thing.

It's just one more data point ;)

I could easily see it being worthwhile for days/weeks/months for search-fraud detection.

I agree with this thinking. I think Google retaining non-anonymized data for the long term poses enormous privacy risks.

The issue here is that Google has the data in the first place. No data - No Warrant.

I mean it is core to google's service. Targeted ads and all that. It will always have this data, it can't not have it.

Well, they can only do as much as we let them. Sadly, they can spy on the world and nobody cares, because privacy matters don't generate a strong push-back. OTOH, If they had an exec who so much as commented on a woman programmer's looks, he'd be immediately fired after a twitter outrage.

for a long time now courts have become a rubber stamp to the point that "getting a warrant" is almost just a procedural issue.

Sometimes I agree. Although I do think that they still serve a purpose. The warrant itself is some evidence of some of what the government is up to, that's important IMO / has value.

If the basis of the warrant is shown to be BS, that has consequences, not always a sure outcome, but it does happen.

Not that I don't agree with your main point about warrants being too easy, but wouldn't a "rubber stamp" equilibrium be inevitable in any fair system? Eventually the institutional knowledge builds up to have a good idea what requests will be granted before making them.

While that may be true, we have clear and repeated evidience that the warrant process is not a "rubber stamp" because the police are just that good, but instead because judges have stopped reading or even caring about the constitutionality of the warrants they are issuing.

Instead putting the burden on the defendant to challenge them in court at some time later. Which given the state of Plea bargain's, public defense and other factors almost never happens

Has a single judge ever faced negative consequences for illegally rubber stamping a warrant?

When there's no downside for fucking up your job it's all a moot point.

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