Well, the "before Google" was librarians, and they have a history, a long, long history of saying "no" to the feds when it comes to giving out reading and checkout lists of people.
*Of course* Google and friends happily give that information out "pre-warrant".
> Well, the "before Google" was librarians, and they have a history, a long, long history of saying "no" to the feds when it comes to giving out reading and checkout lists of people.
In the US they lost that fight and now reading lists are handed over to the state.
It's a valid point but, is pretty different in its intent from what GP comment is getting at.
This wasn't a result of "let's target this group we've deemed political enemies", it was "we're attempting to enforce this law (mind you, effectively everyone agrees with) via data collection".
I can buy how that's a pretty darn thin line, but, in practice I think it's also true that we haven't seen much evidence of the more shady interpretation that GP's post implies.
I think this example was even worse, because it wasn’t the government asking Google for data about a user, Google went out and proactively offered it (and erased this poor guy’s email and cancelled his phone).
There’s also been plenty of cases where people were charged with a crime on the basis of a warrant to find all phones in a given location at a given time.
The political-dissidents-from-audio-clips sounds a little far fetched, but certainly there have been cases where Alexa recordings were supoenaed and used against their owners. GP was certainly right that companies collecting data about me is a liability for me.
*Of course* Google and friends happily give that information out "pre-warrant".