I would expect this to end up in the Supreme Court eventually.
For context, this court is 5-2 in party affiliations.
As of January 2024, five judges on the court were elected in partisan elections as Democrats and two judge were elected as Republicans.
The article, while one sided, seems to make
some really good points. I’m a little disturbed by this ruling if the facts in that article are as it says.
The case.
Guess this ruling would be a good reason
to use a VPN service.
This has to be a violation of some type of privacy law?
Everyone should use one, regardless.
It’s bad for privacy, but I think the court ruled correctly. They didn’t use this guy’s anything, they asked Google for the data and they complied as highlighted in their ToS. That’s all pretty above board.
Should you need true privacy yep you need a vpn, to not use Google or any other major engine, and phone wise either use GrapheneOS or Apple is pretty good. As well a never use biometrics as your passkey sheets passwords or pins. As you can be compelled to give your fingerprint or face.
The postoffice doesn’t own the contents of mail. They’re carriers. How is an ISP any different?

What about the requirement for probable cause? We’re talking about fishing expeditions.
Just clear your browsing history.
There’s absolutely a privacy issue with using it as fishing or a dragnet. But I’m also struggling with finding a legal issue to side with the appealer in this case. The law went to Google and Google gave them the info.
I’m not familiar with the full case, if they used the Google info to find the suspect then developed an actual case like gathering DNA Then I have a hard time siding with the defendant. Now if the whole case is “convicted rapist googled address and bad thing happened, therefore he did it” with no additional evidence. I do have a legal issue with that.
@norbert deleting your browsing history keeps anyone on your computer from seeing it. Kind of like “incognito mode” it doesn’t save your info to the computer it still goes to Google. So your S/O might not see “Brazilian BDSM midget fart porn” NTTAWWT, but that’s in the Google data cloud now.
That’s my Coogfans password!
Until someone actually decides they want privacy, it will not exist in the US for the internet. Google exists to buy and sell your private info so of course the govt can also use it as everyone agrees to let google (and meta) have it. and the invasiveness and no opt out option is getting worse every month.
Same way most any form of opting out is disappearing. Until people actually tell their congressmen to do something all info is fair game.
To try to sue for privacy on an internet search is completely silly.
Yeah that’s the end point of the argument if you use Google that data they scrape is no longer yours it’s theirs. To use as they seem for whether to sell it for ad’s/marketing or to turn over to law enforcement when they ask. Google could say no, but why would they?
Google’s not this person’s ISP, though, or at least, they didn’t attain the data in question by acting as an ISP. Using the mail analogy, this is more like if you mailed a check to your landlord to pay the rent and the government found a note in the landlord’s checkbook about it.
Yeah, I want to be on the side of privacy and everything. But laws as currently written, I just can’t in this case the legal basis just isn’t there.
This SC has shown it will trample on the constitution to give broader power to those in power.
I always found it funny when I came across people that would complain to all ends about the govt/NSA/etc tracking their info but were happy to use all the google services for “free”. Not to mention google ads are on most every page you visit regardless of how you got there, and now the opt out buttons are disappearing as I guess their requirements have dropped.
Google has always been more invasive than the govt ever was at least for digital. At they save it for years and years.
Until people realize that, nothing will change. But at least they get some “free” apps to use.
I found it funny when people were saying that there were tracking chips in the covid vaccine so “they” could track you and all. I’m like, why would they spend the money for that when we already pay “them” money to be tracked everywhere by our mobile devices?
