[shadowgovt]

Google doesn't sell it, is the thing.

Unless you're somehow claiming that your browsing history was used to train an AI for identifying tanks or terror connections, in which case for the former that makes no sense and for the latter the data is so emulsified that it can't really be considered your data any more than you could lay claim to a cat recognizer that was trained on a billion cat photos, some of which happen to be from your blog.

(And that's even assuming one accepts the premise that Google's cache of browsing data was used to train the AI that the Israeli government is using. In reality, that information is deeply firewalled and doesn't see the light of day for other applications).

[always2slow]

You're arguing in bad faith, making this about browser history, this is about data collection of the sensor array that is your smart phone device, two very different things. It's hilarious to claim that what google is doing by disabling app access matters at all when google created the problem and profits from it in a really shady way all the while pretending to be doing you a service by protecting you from those 'shady' apps (and 3rd party app stores like say.. f-droid). And then using that data to _literally_ kill people. I'm not saying those apps aren't shady, I'm saying google pretending to protect you is shady.

[shadowgovt]

Sorry; I just don't follow. Google isn't "protecting" me from F-droid; I have it on my Android right now. Nor is Google using cellphone telemetry to kill people. Nor is Google (AFAIK; if there's evidence to the contrary I'd be interested to see it) providing cellphone data to nations that are targeting them for death (Google doesn't even own a cell tower deployment). Nor is geotargeting people based on cellphone data a system limited to Google's architecture; that's a feature of cellphones, because they're little radios we carry in our pockets that continuously broadcast to a mesh network in an attempt to allow connection to it.

I don't think I'm arguing in bad faith, but I am trying to argue with someone who seems to be operating from a source of facts I don't have access to. You seem to be upset that Google makes cellphones? What am I missing here?

[always2slow]

>Sorry; I just don't follow. Google isn't "protecting" me from F-droid

Yes, they give you a warning to scare off normal users and you have to enable installing from 3rd party sources. My point isn't that they're "protecting" you at all, my point is it's security theater.

>Nor is Google (AFAIK; if there's evidence to the contrary I'd be interested to see it) providing cellphone data to nations that are targeting them for death

Various subsystems on android are controlled by Google and they enable Google to collect and consolidate all of the telemetry/usage data etc (effectively google is root on your phone).

Google is also part of PRISM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM#Media_disclosure_of_PRIS...

This information is used to select targets and kill people:

"Since 2002, and routinely since 2009, the U.S. government has carried out deliberate and premeditated killings of suspected terrorists overseas. In some cases, including that of Anwar Al-Aulaqi, the targets were placed on “kill lists” maintained by the CIA and the Pentagon. According to news accounts, the targeted killing program has expanded to include “signature strikes” in which the government does not know the identity of individuals, but targets them based on “patterns” of behavior that have never been made public. The New York Times has reported that the government counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent."

https://www.aclu.org/cases/al-aulaqi-v-panetta-constitutiona...

I'm upset that google is basically just the data collection arm of giant murder machine and it's being automated.

[shadowgovt]

You're not bringing much evidence to the table to single out Google for your frustration. Targeted tracking of individuals with cellphones is enabled by every cellphone, by virtue of the fact that it's a radio and signal strength and connection is logged and forwarded by the towers themselves; there's nothing special Google is doing to modify that process. So I don't know why we should focus on Google and not, say, T-Mobile or AT&T or TracFone or the entire cellular infrastructure.

You seem to be alleging that Google is brokering third-party access to data stored on the phone or generated by the phone (beyond the telemetry that's natural to every cellphone), but there's no evidence to support that hypothesis. Have I misunderstood what you're alleging?

[hulitu]

> Google doesn't sell it, is the thing.

Then they give it for free.

[shadowgovt]

They don't do that either.

Google's value in tracking is in providing services to users with the tracked data and (in the ads arm) linking advertisements to potential interested users (which is a system they broker internally).

They don't hand data to third-parties; third-parties hand data to Google, and Google might kick out answers to questions, but it does not kick out answers to questions like "Hey, is this person a terrorist?" There's no program for that. Hell, Google doesn't even kick out answers to questions like "Would Bob like to buy my shoes," the entire ad network is architected to minimize the ways an advertiser could glean the identity of a specific user who saw their ad.