Next: Judge disturbed by the fact that Verizon still sees what number you called when you use a throw away phone.
I don't get why on HN such clickbait articles get upvoted to the front page.
I don't get why on HN such clickbait articles get upvoted to the front page.
Tracking, trading of personal information and profiling are very important topics in computer ethics but when these topics hit the courts, the judge can get hung up by just the wording of the incognito mode, which, as we all know, opens with a page that explicitly states, in non-technical terms so as many people as possible can understand, that this information will still be collected.
All of the well thought-out narratives on these topics can be worthless when a judge bans a practice because they didn't read the instructions when they opened incognito mode.
> Koh, 45, has become the de facto face of law in Silicon Valley. "She has an almost peerless reputation for fairness and efficiency in judging the issues of the 21st century," said Tracy Beth Mitrano, director of the Internet Culture, Policy and Law Program at Cornell University. "She gets the Internet in a way that other judges just don't," she said. "Our laws are so out of sync with current social norms and technology. What Koh represents is the hope that somebody gets it."
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/In-Silicon-Valley-Luc...
– ‘Koh said she’s “disturbed” by Google’s data collection practices’
– ‘Koh said she finds it “unusual” that the company would make the “extra effort” of data collection if it doesn’t use the information to build user profiles or targeted advertising‘
– ‘The judge demanded an explanation “about what exactly Google does,” while voicing concern that visitors to the court’s website are unwittingly disclosing information to the company. “I want a declaration from Google on what information they’re collecting on users to the court’s website, and what that’s used for”’
None of this implies that this judge, who has specialised in litigation involving SV tech companies for a decade, can’t understand “basic aspects about web browsers.”
The quotes make it clear that the judge is confused about what incognito mode is supposed to do. The judge appears to think incognito mode is supposed to somehow prevent tracking scripts from loading. Like Google is supposed to add a fingerprint to web requests in incognito mode which reveals to web servers that the user has incognito mode, and then all the web tracking companies are supposed to detect this fingerprint and stop tracking when they detect it. That doesn't sound like a person who understands basic aspects about web browsers.
And yes, it's especially galling that when you use one Google product in a mode that's supposed to be private another Google product still tracks you.
It'd be similar to the cctv recording what aisles you visited in the shop while you had your mask on
I think it's a double edged sword. Alsup took the time to learn Java, and it probably had an impact in his decision to rule that APIs weren't copyrightable.
> There's a growing disconnect between what we in the industry consider acceptable and what the non-technical public would consider acceptable.
I'm not sure I agree with this either. Most of the arguments I see that aren't from people who -work- at the companies that do the tracking. Otherwise typically what I hear from technical people is at worst a 'defeatist' argument; that it would require all of the world's governments to enforce such regulations against tracking, otherwise it's a zero sum game.
It's all too easy to assume that everyone knows what http requests are and how a browser works when working in the tech industry, but the _vast_ majority of the population has no idea whatsoever how the (modern) technology they use and depend on works, on even basic levels.
Most people understand that when you phone someone, it has to go through a telecoms company. For some reason, the internet doesn't have that same understanding and people are still stuck with this idea that browsing to a website is still just a two-party transaction between them and the website they visit.
By not knowing that sites work based on requests and responses. And that site operators can see the contents of the requests, otherwise they wouldn't be able to respond.
> How is 3rd-party analytics essential and obvious to the functioning of a website?
Whether it's essential or not isn't related to incognito mode. If that were a problem, I'd think it would be a problem all the time, not just for incognito.