[jdavis703]

> would love someone to prove me wrong though

The burden of proof lies on the person making claims. I'm not asserting that your claims are wrong, but if you want people to take your statements seriously you need to provide proof.

In order to practice what I teach, here's an article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy).

EDIT: Fixed paragraph formatting

[craftyguy]

I mean, it's literally no secret that Google collects user information, contents of emails, browsing history, etc and uses it to target advertisements to users. If you use a google product or service for more than 5 minutes, you literally see it happening.

[jdavis703]

OK, I guess that depends on how you define surveillance. I think of surveillance as having some kind of relation to the state, for example a private investigator looking into a court matter, a company sharing information with the government (outside of warrants), etc. If we're taking surveillance to mean general tracking, then yes the OP's statement probably doesn't need further evidence.

[craftyguy]

I think most folks associate surveillance with this definition of the word: "continuous observation of a place, person, group, or ongoing activity in order to gather information"

[conductr]

The distinction is basically none. Allowing tracking is a kin to state surveillance. If the data is tracked, you should assume the government has it and I’d cite Snowden and the political climate chipping away at privacy rights.

[kakaorka]

Thanks for this. I assumed anyone that visits HN knows what Google does, especially after the whistleblowing and revelations in the past few years. I agree that it would’ve been better for me to add a few citations or proof, so here’s [0] the first search result when searching for google+surveillance on DDG. [0]:https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/18/google...