[sneak]

More importantly: Google is in a jurisdiction that can mandate warrantless surveillance orders that require realtime surveillance of given selectors (i.e. IPs or users). They comply or they go to jail.

Even if the stated and official policy of Google is to never track these, and everyone at Google is 100% on board with this and will never change, they are subject to being Agent Smith'd at any time by the FBI/DHS and NSA and CIA and the rest of the US IC, critically: without probable cause or a search warrant. The US has abandoned the rule of law and the constitutional protections against unreasonable search. This applies to every single US-managed services vendor.

The decision to track or not track is simply not in their hands. If they get handed an NSL, a FISA order, or a regular old search warrant, they have to start turning over everything they have.

[salawat]

Third-Party Doctrine nips pretty much every expectation of privacy in the bud before we even get to things like special carve-outs for Law Enforcement.

As long as SCOTUS holds that business meta-records shared with a third party intermediary waive any expectation of privacy, the 4th Amendment is basically moot unless you self host everything.

Things might change for the better if everyone can get there, it'd basically ruin the raison' de etre of many of the business models currently espoused/searched for opportunities to implement here.

The Government loves when you build a platform. The Government hates when you enable everyone to set up their own platforms.

[Tijdreiziger]

I would assume anyone trying to evade state-level actors wouldn’t be using Google Docs in the first place.

[sneak]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petraeus_scandal

These secrets were kept in gmail drafts.

[lern_too_spel]

> The US has abandoned the rule of law and the constitutional protections against unreasonable search

Those constitutional protections protect US citizens anywhere and noncitizens while they are in the US. Warrantless surveillance of communications affects noncitizens outside the US. The US is still very much a nation of laws.

[sneak]

Human rights to privacy do not hinge upon location or citizenship.

Indeed, the declaration (written by British crown subjects) makes it clear: “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”.

It doesn’t say “all americans”. The constitution doesn’t grant the rights, it merely recognizes the existing ones... but you already know this.

> Warrantless surveillance of communications affects noncitizens outside the US.

We have also learned, again and again, that it affects US citizens, too, in violation of the law. The IC doesn’t care that much beyond keeping up appearances that they comply with the law.

These are the same people who ran torture centers, lied to Congress, got caught, and hacked Congressional computers to delete evidence, then got caught doing that, too. Nobody went to jail or was even charged.

The laws simply do not apply to the CIA.

[lern_too_spel]

> Indeed, the declaration (written by British crown subjects) makes it clear: “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”.

Three problems:

1. The Declaration is not the law of the land, nor does it grant "constitutional protections."

2. None of the inalienable rights it lists are protection against warrantless wiretaps.

3. Some of the rights clearly don't apply to foreigners because the Constitution, which is the law of the land, provides for warmaking.

> The constitution doesn’t grant the rights, it merely recognizes the existing ones... but you already know this.

The Constitution says how the government works. A society can decide to require court orders for surveillance or not. The US government requires them, while the British government does not.

> We have also learned, again and again, that it affects US citizens, too, in violation of the law. The IC doesn’t care that much beyond keeping up appearances that they comply with the law.

We've learned exactly the opposite from both recent leaks and from oversight reports. They try to follow the law closely.