Here's the article without the paywall
So basically, the police were trying to catch a single person, and so the requested the personal details for all the user accounts that made up 30,000 views on a youtube video. Obviously, some accounts could have viewed it more than once, but we're still likely talking about 20,000+ users whose privacy they were going to violate because it might help catch one single person. Absolutely ridiculous.
It's important to recognize that the privacy violation doesn't end with that one investigation. Plenty of people will say "I don't mind if you violate my privacy if you're catching terrorists and pedophiles."
Once your information is associated with an account or an IP address, anybody monitoring online activity will have that info. The police don't give back anonymity. Looking for an abortion? Legal marijuana? Your local polling place? A satanic book club? Maybe you have strong feelings about police brutality, or want to organize a union, or think billionaires shouldn't be able to hoard resources. And that's just the stuff your local PD might want to know about you. Maybe they share with other agencies, or political action committees, or kommunity organizations to which they may be members.
The police have demonstrated that they cannot be trusted. Protect yourself, and protect the future.
The show The Wire basically showed the police destroying by the thousands US citizens' privacy to catch a few drug dealers.
What they have done to the least of us they will do to all of us.
In the TV show Blue Bloods, my favorite scene occurs when the Chief of Police confronts a cell phone company CEO. They portray him as a strawman and attempt to guilt-trip him into providing them with backdoor access to everyone's phones.
I don't recall The Wire ever showing someone innocent getting wiretapped. They always need a judge to sign off that there is probable cause for every single wiretap they get. It's even a plot point a few times that they aren't sure how to prove probable cause for a particular SIM card. Obviously there's the question of whether or not drug trafficking should be illegal, but you have to accept the premise that the characters in the show are fighting the war on drugs.
I thought each "view" was unique?
The practice of deanonymizing individuals by cross-referencing bulk webpage visitation data within known windows of time that they visited those separate pages, while previously known to be theoretically possible, has now been shown to be actively employed by law enforcement. This emphasizes the significance of employing a VPN at all times and maintaining a high degree of separation between online identities to hinder comparisons based on similarity.
I feel like there are instances where if you're watching a video before it's hit the algorithm there might be curiosity as to why you know about something happening...
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
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