The article seems to go directly from “this piece of software talks to all the sensors and isn’t well sandboxed” to “Google has directed this software to profile and surveil users” without actually providing evidence to support that leap. Is Google Play Services sampling your location so that it can send it in to Google HQ as part of a secret location tracking operation that runs without user consent or knowledge, or so that it can detect if the device has been stolen by the cops and use its proprietary ML model to activate anti-theft mode to protect the user’s privacy?
If we can actually show mismanagement of user data by Google Play Services, we need to shout it to the hills, because those sorts of scandals are important arguments for increased privacy protections. But we need to actually find that mismanagement occurring, not just assume it must be because Google wrote the code and it isn’t open source.
If you don’t collect the data in the first place, there’s nothing to mismanage.
Rather than users having to prove that Google is mismanaging OUR data, Google should prove it has a need to collect, aggregate, and sell access to that data beyond surveillance capitalism.
The default option should be that only fully anonymized data that is essential to device functions should be collected, and this should be validated through an independent audit. Everything else should be opt-in.
But they aren’t even showing collection of data in the article. For the data to be collected, it needs to leave the phone, not just be touched by Play Services.
Play Services does collect data it shouldn’t collect, by sending it back to Google. But the difference between “I am collecting your data” and “I wrote software you are running” is important and needs defending, because obscuring it is one way that independent developers are prevented from publishing and marketing actually-privacy-preserving software. If I am deemed to have “collected” your personal data every time you type it into a text editor I wrote, I can no longer distinguish my local-only encrypted text editor from Google’s one that stores all your data unencrypted on their cloud. We both have to say we “collect” your data, and nobody non-technical can tell the difference.
Play Services does collect data it shouldn’t collect, by sending it back to Google.
Right. And my argument is that this shouldn’t happen without users opting in.
But the difference between “I am collecting your data” and “I wrote software you are running” is important and needs defending,
I don’t disagree. Not am I arguing the content of the article. I just disagree with your notion that we have to prove negligence or malfeasance to deserve privacy.
Your original post placed the burden on users to prove that Google mismanages the data they collect. That’s not how this should work. I should own that data, just as I own the text I write with a text editor. I shouldn’t have to prove that Google is mismanaging it in order to keep that data private. I shouldn’t need any other reason than “it’s my data and I don’t want to share it beyond what is necessary for this technology to operate.”
I don’t think the burden should be on users, but I do think some of the burden should be on the press. If the press just assumes Google is up to no good and never does the investigative reporting needed to show it, we will miss out on having very politically useful evidence.
Yeah, journalistic integrity is important, and they shouldn’t slander Google, due diligence and what not.
But there wouldn’t even be a need for an article or any investigation if Google and other tech companies weren’t treating user data as something they have a god given right to.
That’s my point. It doesn’t matter what Google does or doesn’t do with the data. They shouldn’t collect it unless I tell them they can. It’s MY data. It’s MY right to keep it private or destroy it as I please. That’s the baseline all tech companies should adhere to.
Why would you ever give the benefit of the doubt to the largest ad company to ever exist whose entire existence and history depends on tracking user data. They literally just had too settle a lawsuit for tracking users when they said they wouldn’t in incognito mode.
There are plenty of little hints in Android that they want to enable tracking (eg. Bluetooth and exact location permissions being linked despite there being no real need to). Y’all need Graphene yesterday. And we all need a new total alternative since Apple is quickly chomping at the bit for ad income.
It’s not that I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, it’s that the article neglects to bring in that whole thread of the argument that you give here. This should all be in the article.
Because he or she works for Google’s image and status management interests.
Does not matter consiously or unconsciously. Does not matter paid or free. Dependent or independent. Good faith or bad. Bot or human. None of it matters.
What matters is the result of their action/speech, and the priorities. And it is loud and clear what those are.
“Google must be trusted and given all the information first. Then, if you can find mismanagement, try to prosecute your grievance AFTER an injury has occured and was proven.”
^^^ We need to flip the script here.
Protect your iterests first. Google’s interests mean nothing to you.
If Google can serve my interests they get paid. They don’t get freebies or deference or first dibs or ownership of the phone, or part ownership, or benefit of doubt, fucking NOTHING. They get just what they need to render a service. That’s it.
If Google does not like that they are to serve, and instead Google’s managers have aristocratic ambitions, we need to talk.
I disagree that we need to find mismanagement first.
Never mind that Google is 100% opaque from outside and is not subject to inspections by its users.
Even if Google had an open door policy inviting and empowering any and all citizen auditors, I would still disagree that Google gets the benefit of doubt by default, and only after something blows up can we begin asserting our interests.
I think we can assert our interests any time, for any reason, and for no reason at all, with arbitrary aggressiveness, limited only by our own practical considerations.
Instead of waiting for things to go wrong, we can protect our interests before there is even a chance of things going wrong.
Can.
Will we? Each person has to consider their situation pragmatically, but if they considered everything and decided to assert themselves, we would be idiots to insist Google gets the first dibs, they have the initiative, and so how dare we want to limit Google in any way without first PROVING harm. Horse. Shit.
I take the same view toward any monopolies in general. We should not bother proving harm. We should break all monopolies as a matter of principle, even if they are “harmless.”
And Google shound be given as close to zero information as possible. As a matter of principle.
The problem is that without evidence of mishandling, what can we achieve? How can we force Google to be more transparent? The only way I see is via the courts, and they require proof.
No. We need to start thinking and talking like me first. There must be anger and a demanding atmosphere.
Courts are not the only way.
Other ways: legislation, direct action, economics.
We have to impose our will. Don’t act lke a warmed over fish.
The trick is to stop thinking like a rabbit. Rabbits expect to be attacked and think defensively. Rabbit acts late, which is why they are dinner. Even rabbits dig some escape tunnels in advance of dangerous encounters, so they are not totally late. But compared to predators they are late.
Predators don’t focus most of their energy on “how will I get attacked, and how will I avoid it?” They think, “who will I eat today? How will I attack?” Even predators can get attacked. Even lions get attacked. But they don’t put more than 30% of their mental energy into defence. Rabbits put 100% of their energy into defence. Even eating for a rabbit is defence.
Do you watch boxing? Can a boxer win on just defence? And only by reacting after the fact, without their own offensive plan?
I am tired of everyone playing helpless. Helplessness starts with victim or prey mentality. Try putting yourself in a role of a predator for 5 minutes a day.
Humans are apex predators. We aren’t helpless, just waiting to accept the crumbs that the corporations and the aristocrat-wannabes give us. That is not what we are.
I want a comrade who will help me govern my world.
I don’t want a dead weight that requires a lot of persuation before they can even let out a fart.
I am thinking ahead. I can persuade you now, and tomorrow I will have to persuade you again. Anytime I want cooperation I will need to persuade you. And you are just one person. I am going nowhere fast with that approach. The default for you becomes one of passivity. And then I have to start persuading you after things have gotten already very bad. That’s late action.
In a democracy there will be persusion in the form of arguments.
But in a democracy the demos is not actively or low-key campaigning to give away their power, to put the interests of economic royalists ahead of their own.
In other words, the quality of energy is not defensive when someone tells you to be more proactive, faster, more zealous in defending your own interests.
The first functioning democratic governance was practiced by the pirates. Why? Each pirate could kill half the crew at night. And they all knew this fact about each other. So they did the rational thing: nobody’s voice can be ignored, or there are dire consequences.
The only way democracy works is if most people will want to govern, make policy, make and change the rules of the game, own the game, and are not content merely passively playing the ruleset they inherited from their ancestors.
Once you encounter someone who lacks that hunger to be an administrator, and not merely a passive and reactionary player, more arguments is the wrong way to go. These passive people cooperatively bind to economic royalists and their entire view of life is not 1, 5, or 10000 arguments away. The enablers together with the economic royalists are an obstacle, not some harmless loyal opposition, but basically a team (mutually supportive and cooperative group) of rapists and their enablers. The passives/reactionaries and the economic royalists are one indivisible team.
To successfully adapt to a position of servitude is not trivial. It’s 1000’s of adaptations all woking as a unit. You won’t argue such people off the ledge.
No, that’s the kind of thinking that prevents me from taking 13-year-old stoners on Lemmy seriously when they talk about helping them to rule “their” world like they’re going to crown themselves Pharaoh of the Earth.
Part of the problem with this stuff is that the corporations using it are very hush-hush about what exactly they use it for. The privacy policy just lists what they may collect (everything) and what they may use it for (anything).
Is Google Play Services sampling your location so that it can send it in to Google HQ as part of a secret location tracking operation that runs without user consent or knowledge
Yes they track your phone’s location and movement constantly, but it’s not a secret.
For an example of the evidence you seek… Google SensorVault location data was how they identified and convicted the January 6 terrorists. You might argue that complying with warrants isn’t misuse of the data, but I’d argue that both the data itself, and the level of precision and detail, shouldn’t be captured and logged in the first place. And I’m fairly sure that most google customers have no idea how pervasive and extensive the tracking is.
The SensorVault data is “just” the Google Maps Timeline data though, right? Which people have always been able to turn on and off, if they knew about it.
I feel like Google not really respecting a concept of user consent and pretending people agree to poorly-publicized and often-modified tracking programs is a different, and, frankly, weirder, privacy problem than there being closed source stuff running with high permissions. If you could revoke permissions from Play Services, or if it was source available or even free software, that wouldn’t solve the problem because it would still be able to do stuff Google had manufactured consent for it to do.
When you open the maps indoor you get immedieate location. This is not from GPS but from Wifi and cell tower data. This is only possible because your phone constatly transmits your location and network data. You can also call it surveilance because its 24/7 logging and processing of your location data.
does not happen to me, probably because i keep mobile data off and in the developer settings there is a keep mobile data always option that is enabled by default, for “fast network switching”, I disable it and beyond that I disable google playservices and all google related or adjacent apps that cant be uninstalled from my oem rom
Is Google Play Services sampling your location so that it can send it in to Google HQ as part of a secret location tracking operation that runs without user consent or knowledge, or so that it can detect if the device has been stolen by the cops and use its proprietary ML model to activate anti-theft mode to protect the user’s privacy?
They’re the same picture.
If we can actually show mismanagement of user data by Google Play Services, we need to shout it to the hills
The article seems to go directly from “this piece of software talks to all the sensors and isn’t well sandboxed” to “Google has directed this software to profile and surveil users” without actually providing evidence to support that leap. Is Google Play Services sampling your location so that it can send it in to Google HQ as part of a secret location tracking operation that runs without user consent or knowledge, or so that it can detect if the device has been stolen by the cops and use its proprietary ML model to activate anti-theft mode to protect the user’s privacy?
If we can actually show mismanagement of user data by Google Play Services, we need to shout it to the hills, because those sorts of scandals are important arguments for increased privacy protections. But we need to actually find that mismanagement occurring, not just assume it must be because Google wrote the code and it isn’t open source.
If you don’t collect the data in the first place, there’s nothing to mismanage.
Rather than users having to prove that Google is mismanaging OUR data, Google should prove it has a need to collect, aggregate, and sell access to that data beyond surveillance capitalism.
The default option should be that only fully anonymized data that is essential to device functions should be collected, and this should be validated through an independent audit. Everything else should be opt-in.
But they aren’t even showing collection of data in the article. For the data to be collected, it needs to leave the phone, not just be touched by Play Services.
Play Services does collect data it shouldn’t collect, by sending it back to Google. But the difference between “I am collecting your data” and “I wrote software you are running” is important and needs defending, because obscuring it is one way that independent developers are prevented from publishing and marketing actually-privacy-preserving software. If I am deemed to have “collected” your personal data every time you type it into a text editor I wrote, I can no longer distinguish my local-only encrypted text editor from Google’s one that stores all your data unencrypted on their cloud. We both have to say we “collect” your data, and nobody non-technical can tell the difference.
Right. And my argument is that this shouldn’t happen without users opting in.
I don’t disagree. Not am I arguing the content of the article. I just disagree with your notion that we have to prove negligence or malfeasance to deserve privacy.
Your original post placed the burden on users to prove that Google mismanages the data they collect. That’s not how this should work. I should own that data, just as I own the text I write with a text editor. I shouldn’t have to prove that Google is mismanaging it in order to keep that data private. I shouldn’t need any other reason than “it’s my data and I don’t want to share it beyond what is necessary for this technology to operate.”
I don’t think the burden should be on users, but I do think some of the burden should be on the press. If the press just assumes Google is up to no good and never does the investigative reporting needed to show it, we will miss out on having very politically useful evidence.
Yeah, journalistic integrity is important, and they shouldn’t slander Google, due diligence and what not.
But there wouldn’t even be a need for an article or any investigation if Google and other tech companies weren’t treating user data as something they have a god given right to.
That’s my point. It doesn’t matter what Google does or doesn’t do with the data. They shouldn’t collect it unless I tell them they can. It’s MY data. It’s MY right to keep it private or destroy it as I please. That’s the baseline all tech companies should adhere to.
Why would you ever give the benefit of the doubt to the largest ad company to ever exist whose entire existence and history depends on tracking user data. They literally just had too settle a lawsuit for tracking users when they said they wouldn’t in incognito mode.
There are plenty of little hints in Android that they want to enable tracking (eg. Bluetooth and exact location permissions being linked despite there being no real need to). Y’all need Graphene yesterday. And we all need a new total alternative since Apple is quickly chomping at the bit for ad income.
It’s not that I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, it’s that the article neglects to bring in that whole thread of the argument that you give here. This should all be in the article.
This right here.
Don’t be intentionally naive.
Because he or she works for Google’s image and status management interests.
Does not matter consiously or unconsciously. Does not matter paid or free. Dependent or independent. Good faith or bad. Bot or human. None of it matters.
What matters is the result of their action/speech, and the priorities. And it is loud and clear what those are.
“Google must be trusted and given all the information first. Then, if you can find mismanagement, try to prosecute your grievance AFTER an injury has occured and was proven.”
^^^ We need to flip the script here.
Protect your iterests first. Google’s interests mean nothing to you.
If Google can serve my interests they get paid. They don’t get freebies or deference or first dibs or ownership of the phone, or part ownership, or benefit of doubt, fucking NOTHING. They get just what they need to render a service. That’s it.
If Google does not like that they are to serve, and instead Google’s managers have aristocratic ambitions, we need to talk.
I disagree that we need to find mismanagement first.
Never mind that Google is 100% opaque from outside and is not subject to inspections by its users.
Even if Google had an open door policy inviting and empowering any and all citizen auditors, I would still disagree that Google gets the benefit of doubt by default, and only after something blows up can we begin asserting our interests.
I think we can assert our interests any time, for any reason, and for no reason at all, with arbitrary aggressiveness, limited only by our own practical considerations.
Instead of waiting for things to go wrong, we can protect our interests before there is even a chance of things going wrong.
Can.
Will we? Each person has to consider their situation pragmatically, but if they considered everything and decided to assert themselves, we would be idiots to insist Google gets the first dibs, they have the initiative, and so how dare we want to limit Google in any way without first PROVING harm. Horse. Shit.
I take the same view toward any monopolies in general. We should not bother proving harm. We should break all monopolies as a matter of principle, even if they are “harmless.”
And Google shound be given as close to zero information as possible. As a matter of principle.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
The problem is that without evidence of mishandling, what can we achieve? How can we force Google to be more transparent? The only way I see is via the courts, and they require proof.
No. We need to start thinking and talking like me first. There must be anger and a demanding atmosphere.
Courts are not the only way.
Other ways: legislation, direct action, economics.
We have to impose our will. Don’t act lke a warmed over fish.
The trick is to stop thinking like a rabbit. Rabbits expect to be attacked and think defensively. Rabbit acts late, which is why they are dinner. Even rabbits dig some escape tunnels in advance of dangerous encounters, so they are not totally late. But compared to predators they are late.
Predators don’t focus most of their energy on “how will I get attacked, and how will I avoid it?” They think, “who will I eat today? How will I attack?” Even predators can get attacked. Even lions get attacked. But they don’t put more than 30% of their mental energy into defence. Rabbits put 100% of their energy into defence. Even eating for a rabbit is defence.
Do you watch boxing? Can a boxer win on just defence? And only by reacting after the fact, without their own offensive plan?
I am tired of everyone playing helpless. Helplessness starts with victim or prey mentality. Try putting yourself in a role of a predator for 5 minutes a day.
Humans are apex predators. We aren’t helpless, just waiting to accept the crumbs that the corporations and the aristocrat-wannabes give us. That is not what we are.
You’re defending a very defensible position with the weirdest arguments.
Your thinking sucks.
I want a comrade who will help me govern my world.
I don’t want a dead weight that requires a lot of persuation before they can even let out a fart.
I am thinking ahead. I can persuade you now, and tomorrow I will have to persuade you again. Anytime I want cooperation I will need to persuade you. And you are just one person. I am going nowhere fast with that approach. The default for you becomes one of passivity. And then I have to start persuading you after things have gotten already very bad. That’s late action.
That will not do.
That sounds suspiciously like democracy, the thing we would quite like to achieve.
In a democracy there will be persusion in the form of arguments.
But in a democracy the demos is not actively or low-key campaigning to give away their power, to put the interests of economic royalists ahead of their own.
In other words, the quality of energy is not defensive when someone tells you to be more proactive, faster, more zealous in defending your own interests.
The first functioning democratic governance was practiced by the pirates. Why? Each pirate could kill half the crew at night. And they all knew this fact about each other. So they did the rational thing: nobody’s voice can be ignored, or there are dire consequences.
The only way democracy works is if most people will want to govern, make policy, make and change the rules of the game, own the game, and are not content merely passively playing the ruleset they inherited from their ancestors.
Once you encounter someone who lacks that hunger to be an administrator, and not merely a passive and reactionary player, more arguments is the wrong way to go. These passive people cooperatively bind to economic royalists and their entire view of life is not 1, 5, or 10000 arguments away. The enablers together with the economic royalists are an obstacle, not some harmless loyal opposition, but basically a team (mutually supportive and cooperative group) of rapists and their enablers. The passives/reactionaries and the economic royalists are one indivisible team.
To successfully adapt to a position of servitude is not trivial. It’s 1000’s of adaptations all woking as a unit. You won’t argue such people off the ledge.
Get the getables. Leave the rest behind.
Yeah, I don’t really want to live in “your” world and I definitely want no part in governing it. But I wish you the best in your endeavour.
That’s fair. Then to me you are neutral at best, assuming you are largely apolitical.
Assume whatever you want.
That’s the kind of thinking that lead to the world we live in now, where anyone is free to collect and sell any data they can scrape.
No, that’s the kind of thinking that prevents me from taking 13-year-old stoners on Lemmy seriously when they talk about helping them to rule “their” world like they’re going to crown themselves Pharaoh of the Earth.
Part of the problem with this stuff is that the corporations using it are very hush-hush about what exactly they use it for. The privacy policy just lists what they may collect (everything) and what they may use it for (anything).
And the very few valid reasons for data collection are drowned in this. You consent to either all or nothing. Some consent that is.
I was more wanting to point out that it is reasonable that the article wouldn’t go into extreme depth
Yes they track your phone’s location and movement constantly, but it’s not a secret.
For an example of the evidence you seek… Google SensorVault location data was how they identified and convicted the January 6 terrorists. You might argue that complying with warrants isn’t misuse of the data, but I’d argue that both the data itself, and the level of precision and detail, shouldn’t be captured and logged in the first place. And I’m fairly sure that most google customers have no idea how pervasive and extensive the tracking is.
The SensorVault data is “just” the Google Maps Timeline data though, right? Which people have always been able to turn on and off, if they knew about it.
I feel like Google not really respecting a concept of user consent and pretending people agree to poorly-publicized and often-modified tracking programs is a different, and, frankly, weirder, privacy problem than there being closed source stuff running with high permissions. If you could revoke permissions from Play Services, or if it was source available or even free software, that wouldn’t solve the problem because it would still be able to do stuff Google had manufactured consent for it to do.
When you open the maps indoor you get immedieate location. This is not from GPS but from Wifi and cell tower data. This is only possible because your phone constatly transmits your location and network data. You can also call it surveilance because its 24/7 logging and processing of your location data.
Do you mean “transmits” as in “from the location service on the phone to the mapping app on the phone”?
Or do you mean the phones are all updating the wifi SSID geolocation database, which they then all can use for doing wifi-based geolocation?
yes the SSID database
does not happen to me, probably because i keep mobile data off and in the developer settings there is a keep mobile data always option that is enabled by default, for “fast network switching”, I disable it and beyond that I disable google playservices and all google related or adjacent apps that cant be uninstalled from my oem rom
They’re the same picture.
We can, and many have been for many years.