Google Report Shows Governments Want More Private Data 89
judgecorp writes "The latest Google Transparency Report, which tallies the number of times personal data is requested from Google, shows that governments are becoming more inquisitive than ever. Requests for user data have gone up by 70 percent since Google started these reports in 2009 — but the report shows Google is getting better at saying no: in 2009 it complied — fully or partially — with 76 percent of requests, and that figure is now down to 66 percent."
This report is the first to feature requests broken down by the legal process used.
better at saying no? (Score:5, Insightful)
More like governments are overreaching asking for data they have no legal right to than ever before.
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Patriot Act, dude. Gubbermint wrote themselves a blank check with that one. And, they've written more blank checks since then. Everything the Buggermint - I mean GUBBERMINT! wants is "legal". Don't confuse "legal" with "moral", or "ethical", or "right". If the buggerers in gubbermint ever figures out that something they want is illegal, they'll just write some new laws!
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Wait, what? Who do you vote for, Puppet 1 or Puppet 2? It was so obvious in the last election it was creepy, and very few people said a damn thing. My 12 year old Nephew noticed how only certain people ever made media time. How Ron Paul was called "crazy" by media and never shown to say anything from his speeches or the debates. During live debates, the audience would applaud him madly yet the media only replayed the idiocy they wanted people to see. If Ron Paul was interviewed, it was with a question
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If the government started raiding your bank account, the correct reaction would not be to store your money in your mattress, nor to ask that banks hold less money.
The government can't search the inside of my locked car just because it is parked on the street, but when effectively the same thing happens electronically it's open season.
Property laws need to be updated to reflect the reality that many people want to store their email, photos, and other account data on a server somewhere.
The lawmakers have quit
Getting better at saying no. (Score:3, Informative)
I feel more allegiance to Google than the US government tbqh.
Little math here (Score:5, Insightful)
Think about it.
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Came here for this.
Old scheme, 100 requests filed, 76 requests filled.
New scheme, 170 requests filed, 112 requests filled.
Providing more information isn't the same as providing less.
Re: Little math here (Score:2)
So they're getting better at saying "yes", too.
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i think the amount of "yes"s dropped by 10% (66% complied with vs 76%) ...
your point is still valid tho
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Proportions still matter. Google is still expanding, people's use of google is still expanding, and government awareness of google is still expanding. I'd expect more responses. Whether or not 70% is in line with the above growth, I don't know. The drop in granted was only 10%, not 20%.
Still, I can't help but think that as much as we might detest it, sometimes these requests for data is to prosecute valid, serious crime. Various forms of fraud and theft, for example. Cracking, perhaps.
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RTFS, FFS. What part of "requests broken down by the legal process used " did you fail to understand? The link shows only 10% were "other", the rest were subpoenas and warrants.
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Yeah, what AC said.
I have zero problem with a police department doing actual police work, building a case strong enough to warrant reasonable cause, then actually getting a warrant. This is cool - it's what we have police for. Joe Schmuck is suspected of whatever, they find a couple of things on Facebook that indicates he might really be guilty, he's overheard making a couple comments in a bar, and those few things add up to, "Your honor, we believe that Mr. Schmuck is guilty of at least three counts of p
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HOPE you didn't vote for the guy who pretty much guaranteed he'd take more of your money in taxes. Taxes that only help PAY for this kind of crap.
I'm with you on this, man.
Bush's warrantless wiretapping combined with running up a huge deficit, thereby increasing taxes long term pissed me off as well.
Not just warrants (Score:2)
Warrants aren't the be all and end all of information requests. For example, in a civil suit you can't get a warrant for information, you file subpoenas for it. Some of the 'others' might just be for research purposes. Or the CIA asking for information.
That Google rejects nearly half of the requests, at least initially, I like because it indicates that Google isn't 'rolling over'. Police officers and other agencies don't actually need a warrant to simply ask - they need one to force.
For example, I could
Re:Wouldn't it be nice... (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't wait on it. They're still too busy harassing YouTube users to show their Real Name, and tweaking the same to look more like Facebook (noticed those pics next to the comments? --oh who am I kidding, I'm trying to get people to read YouTube comments to make a point...silly me).
Tough to stop employees from doing something when it's the company goal.
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Which has exactly nothing to do with encrypting the messages themselves. SSL just encrypts the transport, they're still stored in nice, invasion-friendly cleartext.
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If Google voluntarily encrypted messages between Google users (Gmail, GApps), and any message stored on their servers
He's talking about user to gmail server, https covers that. What you're talking about is something like pgp: http://www.instructables.com/id/Encrypt-your-Gmail-Email/ [instructables.com] . Both users need it set up for it to work, but that's how encryption typically works, and it's there if you need it.
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No he's not. He said messages between "Google Users" and "Messages stored on their servers," which seems to pretty clearly put the context on message storage, not transport, which, again, is what SSL does.
And since we're talking about google-to-google communication, there are lots of ways that said encryption could be handled, with various levels of effectiveness against google/government intrusion (none of which really approach "good") with little user hassle.
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No, it would just give you a false sense of security.
If Google does the encryption, then Google has the encryption keys. If an employee can access a user's e-mails, why wouldn't they be able to access the encryption key? (Or, to put it the other way: If you plan on protecting the user's privacy by not letting employees access the encryption keys, why not just use the same mechanism to not let the employees access the user's data, now? It's the same level of protection.)
Encryption isn't magic pixie dust that
Pity (Score:5, Insightful)
Pity that Google even has user's private data to give to governments
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Why is it a pity that Google is held to same legal standard as every other company or individual in the US?
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You misread the comment you replied to.
Pity that Google even has user's private data [...]
That's the key of that comment. Google has heaps of private data of heaps of users. And that's not just the e-mail you ask them to store on your behalf in a gmail account.
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If you didn't give them private data. They don't have it.
Nobody to blame but yourself.
(captcha:blamable That is so weird.)
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Wait a minute, consider what constitutes "giving" Google data. There's the obvious like using GMail or using their search engine, but they also have trackers all across the web. Unless you explicitly block Google's domains, they know a fair amount about what websites you visit (much less if you block their cookies, but Panopticlick [eff.org] showed that blocking cookies doesn't actually protect you from tracking very well). This, of course, doesn't only apply to Google, but Google's analytics is a lot more common tha
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The most problematic is googleapis, because many web sites simply won't work without those.
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You're probably giving Google permission (more likely, pleading) to use it somewhere in their EULA jibber-jabber you accept when hitting the OK button.
Am I reading that correctly? (Score:1)
Requests are up 70%, but compliance is down to 66 percent which still means (napkin math) that Google is servicing 10% MORE requests in total.
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So? Summary says they're "getting better at saying 'no'". Let me exaggerate the numbers a bit to make the point clearer: If 10 people ask me today and I say "no" to 5 of them, and then tomorrow 1000 people ask me, and I say "no" to 990 of them, then okay, I've said "yes" twice as many times today as I did yesterday. But I've most definitely gotten better at saying "no".
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This is more like the same girl going on almost 2X as many dates and only giving head to 50% as opposed to 75% of them, then saying she's become a more discriminating lover.
Privacy not a concern for citizens (Score:3)
I'm not talking about the lip service. I'm talking about what people actually do. I have a placeholder facebook page (not an active user) and I regularly get spammed with activity updates from "friends." People seem to have no hesitation about what they post. And, I don't just mean kids. Until people show they care, it'll just get worse.
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What the fuck does "what people actually do" have to do with anything? It's already been shown that "reasonable expectation of privacy" has absolutely nothing to do with what human beings actually expect in any given situation, so why does it matter what we do when the government will decide that privacy means whatever is convenient for them.
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People look at me weird when I make any attempt to explain what Facebook does with their data. People over the age of fifteen seem to forget that very recently they did stuff for which they would be embarrassed today. Prepubescent children do a lot of weird, disgusting things. People over the age of 20 forget that they were freaky-ass zit-faced punks very recently, and that the conduct that seemed so amusing a couple years ago would be very embarrassing today.
But - they continue to post all manner of stu
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Ah yes, the right to be forgotten. It's impossible to have stuff forgotten these days.
Supplying more private data that it appears (Score:1)
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While the statistics are indeed vague, we are meant to understand that Google is scrutinizing each request harder. But let's look at the potential causes for them to say "no":
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and they don't even accept requests from China
You missed the whole "Google pulls out of China" thing?
Move along nothing to see here (Score:3)
Move along - nothing to see here. It should be obvious to anyone who stops and thinks, for even a brief moment, that as more people move more and more of their life online that there will be more requests to access that information.
And when you break down the numbers it works out to about a hundred a day, and since Google doesn't specify that this is limited to Feds, one is forced to assume it includes all governmental bodies at all levels. As a result, I'm not horrified that the number is so high but rather I find it interesting that the number is so low.
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It probably does not include requests that Google is not allowed to talk about. Like stuff under things like that patriot act, and probably some more scary and secret(ive) laws you guys have.
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Even so, the number is *still* pretty low considered on a per capita or per annum basis, even if it seems pretty big and scary spun as a $BIGNUM.
Let's just.. (Score:1)
so google is giving out more info... (Score:2)
Requests for user data have gone up by 70 percent since Google started these reports in 2009 â" but the report shows Google is getting better at saying no: in 2009 it complied â" fully or partially â" with 76 percent of requests, and that figure is now down to 66 percent."
unless this is worded poorly, Google is giving out even more info...
if in 09 they had 100 requests and they complied with 76% that would be 76 records... but if requests have gone up 70% (170 requests) and its "down" to 66%
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In other words your postin
The obvious concern: (Score:3)
At least for US citizens should be the fact that the US government has increased their requests by astronomical amounts, and is the majority of the requests. 21,389 requests for private data of 33,634 This makes it obvious that these requests are not all "give me info on John Doe", but rather "Give me info on Jane and John. Now to the point I start with: According to this [blogspot.co.uk], the US owns at least a third of all of the requests. You _should_ be asking why and not just shrugging off this information.
No, we are not suffering from a rash of terrorism in the US (unless we go and rightfully call what the self proclaimed elites are doing terrorism). The Government is systematically shutting up anyone that observes their first amendment rights, especially those that begin to make headway with the sheople. OWS and the admitted collusion between DHS, FBI, TSA, Local Police departments, and Banks should be more than an obvious glimpse at how big the problem is. Better get to waking up the neighbors, this won't get better on it's own.
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This word has only ever been used by those it describes. There has never been an exception.
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the US government has increased their requests by astronomical amounts
A 33% rise over one year is high, but certainly not astronomical (at least not by any measure we used in astronomy class.) The question is who and why. Is it more requests from local governments, or more from the FBI? Are they asking about local drug dealers, violent felons, drunken frat party pictures, or is it "did Abdul al Tikrit search for a copy of PowerPlantBlueprints.pdf?" Have they moved on to asking "what church does he belong to?" or "what political party does he donate to?"
I'd certainly like
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I'm pretty sure that this one has an obvious answer. "what political party does he donate to?" It has become public information that Ron Paul supporters were put on DEA and DHS watch lists labelled as potential terrorists. I won't even get in to how the media treated anyone not in the "program", which by the way even my 12 year old nephew could notice.
I agree that we don't know what they are asking for, if that was your point. My point still stands, that we should be concerned and demanding clarity on w
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"what political party does he donate to?" It has become public information that Ron Paul supporters were put on DEA and DHS watch lists labelled as potential terrorists.
That's an almost unbelievable accusation to simply take your word on. As it's public information, could you please post a citation for the Ron Paul donors ending up on a DHS watchlist? By citation, I don't mean an episode number of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh or another Rupert Murdoch source, or an interview with a tea party fancier like Michelle Bachmann. I would need to see actual proof before I would believe such a claim. That proof would include the watch list in question, authenticated by the DHS, as
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Those accusations are all searchable. In fact /. had a hefty discussion due to the article which revealed the collusion between DHS, FBI, Police and Banks within the last few weeks. The slander and libel in media was apparent to anyone that watched any of the numerous specials on the government controlled media depicting OWS as a bunch of potheads that only wanted handouts and never wanted to work. Every major network had at least one "special report". Nothing is hidden if you actively search.
For the Ro
Not all that useful (Score:2)
Interesting on the face of it but without data by requesting agency it really doesn't tell us too much. Are most of the requests coming from municipal or state authorities? Federal? If the latter, which agencies? Short of a NSL they should have no legal problem providing that kind of summary info.
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You do realize that your rhetoric is the easiest to spot, even by the mobs that can't critically think for themselves. You at least have to toss a strawman out there to make the ad hominem less obvious. Thanks for trolling though, good to see the noobs are out there trying.
Other? (Score:2)
What is the "other" category that the US government is using outside of search warrants or subpoenas?
Define better. (Score:1)
While their compliance rate has indeed gone down, a 70% increase coupled with only 10 pp decrease mean that they actually comply with more requests. In fact, it works out to be a 15% increase in the total amount of requests that were complied with.
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According to the Weekly Standard (Score:2)
Google Complies With Government Requests for User Data 88% of the Time
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/google-complies-government-requests-user-data-88-time_697551.html [weeklystandard.com]
Google is complying *more* now (Score:2)
Uhm, if the number of requests went up by 70%, and Google now complies with 66% of requests instead of 76%, that means they are now giving away 47.63% more data than in 2009.
What about the data google has (Score:2)
Check out Canada's request and compliance rate... (Score:2)
I find it interesting that the request for Canadian data is so low (38 requests, vs. the US at 8,438 requests [google.com]), and that even with this low request rate, the rate of compliance by Google for Canadian data requests is less than 25%...interesting indeed.
Maybe our government just hasn't heard of teh google yet? :)
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Partially due to population, that should be obvious. Also, Canada is already a socialist nation where the people have a laughable amount of control. I don't remember ever seeing anything other than a small strike in Canada. OWS and Teaparty type movements simply don't exist. What on earth does the Canadian Government have to worry about with Canadian citizens, compared to the US especially. The NWO took over Canada fully about 40 years ago. Long live the Queen eh?
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Partially due to population, that should be obvious. Also, Canada is already a socialist nation where the people have a laughable amount of control. I don't remember ever seeing anything other than a small strike in Canada. OWS and Teaparty type movements simply don't exist. What on earth does the Canadian Government have to worry about with Canadian citizens, compared to the US especially. The NWO took over Canada fully about 40 years ago. Long live the Queen eh?
Hmmm, you do seem to have some funny and completely inaccurate ideas about Canada.
A socialist nation? Because we have publicly funded healthcare, and don't let people just die in the street no doubt. Oh, and a stable banking system, let's not forget that. Although we did have those pesky OWS demonstrations too, as I recall. In fact, it was Canadians that started them [wikipedia.org] (sad to say). And yes, our Unions are quite active, if maybe not quite as militant, as their counterparts are south of the border. You n
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I don't disagree with your statement "Seriously, it's time you guys brought your government back in line down there :)", in fact I quite agree. I was just pointing out some of the obvious reasons for the discrepancies. Canada AFAIK is a Socialist nation, just like the UK is a Socialist nation. It's not just "national health care", there are numerous factors involved. Canada (and the UK), at least to the US has been Socialist since the Monarchies dissolved.
Media coverage for OWS in the US was abysmal for