Is there a good alternative, maybe locally hosted, for location history?
While I’ve recently disabled it for Google, it actually was helpful for going back in time and remembering where I was on X day, on numerous occasions. Would be cool if there was a locally hosted, open source alternative.
Privacy, freedom, and corruption? Like Trump banned international travel from how many Muslim countries? The fact that that happened at all is insane. You don’t think these tools will be abused? Like the UK banned fetish porn (which has been thankfully overturned). You would be fine if say… these tools were used to monitor your sexual habits?
I guess it could sometimes be an unfortunate coincidence that you do something suspicious where a crime just occurred. But surely you’d be proven innocent after looking at other evidence.
This goes beyond coincidence. This is more like you being a suspect every time some crime is committed. I'm sure in a perfect world you would be proven innocent... but that world doesn't exist and handing over this power to corporate entities and govts only opens it up for abuse.
There are many people currently in jail for crimes they have never committed, there are people who’ve been arrested simply for looking like the suspect despite not being them, wrongful convictions are an issue and everyone should protect themselves because in a lot of crimes people don’t want justice, they just want someone to punish.
That was confounded because his mother’s ex boyfriend seemed to be the murderer and used his car. Am I the only person on Lemmy who DOESN’T obsess over privacy, demand FOSS, and refuse to use Windows? My mother doesn’t have a shady ex-boyfriend, and it seems like a pretty fair exchange otherwise to give up my data in exchange for great free services that generally work pretty well — it’s not like I could sell my data myself. Nor am I paying my own money to use them. I don’t feel like getting a worse experience for e.g. maps (saw another post about it) just for the sake of data that (for most intents and purposes) doesn’t affect me directly.
That’s fair, we as a society are probably manipulated quite a lot. though I feel like law enforcement getting cases wrong is a somewhat separate issue from the “targeted ads” one. The alternative would be to use shittier evidence, potentially racism, or just let it go unsolved. I hate ads too and I block them so I don’t have to see them. I guess I’m tired that 1/3 of Lemmy posts seem to be about privacy/FOSS, I wish there was more variety like the R-site.
It’s been my experience that for most people, Google services are not a requirement, but a luxury… especially for daily life. Now, most Google-esque services are a requirement for daily life, but as they said, there are alternatives that you can use that work.
There are alternatives for every service they offer.
I used to believe that, but what’s the alternative for a phone keyboard with swipe typing and speech recognition that actually works?
Or a phone that gets reliable push messages and also works for banking?
Cause I hate Google, but these are things I actually need in my life.
Sounds like you’re on Android but there are still options. I am no subject matter expert but there are many who are and they are just a quick duckduckgo search away. Good luck!
First, I use GrapheneOS, so I can continue using Gboard and a few other Google products that do not warrant or require an internet connection, with network access disabled.
Alternatively, the next best keyboard is grammarly (also with network access dsiabled) and you can also use voiceinput.futo.org with that one.
It’s actually because the Tensor chip is the most secure one available, and because Google promises several years of software updates, with a solid history to back it up.
You mean the Tensor chips that don't appear until 6th gen, even though the project supports 5th and 4th gen?
They also literally state:
Devices need to be meeting the standards of the project in order to be considered as potential targets. In addition to support for installing other operating systems...
And
Devices with support for alternative operating systems as an afterthought will not be considered.
This pretty much rules out 99% of smartphones. I would argue this even rules out non-Pixel favourites such as the OnePlus lineup, even though I'm writing this on a Lineage-loaded OnePlus 7T. Support for other ROMs is there but it's quite fucky. Add in what you said about firmware support and yeah, only the Pixel lineup would apply.
Understanding that you probably paraphrased for brevity, it’s hard to respond with anything helpful because only you know where the goalposts of, “actually works,” are – same thing with, “reliable push messages,” and, “works for banking.” I’ve used swipe input on the native Samsung keyboard and SwiftKey and found that they work just fine, but not as good as GBoard. If you’re going from a Google-invested product to pretty much anything else, it’s likely going to be a worse user experience, so you just have to set your expectations appropriately and keep in mind that what you’re getting in return for that is intangible but important.
What have you tried so far, and how have they failed you with respect to the metrics you’ve stated?
Swiftkey isn’t a real option for me, it just sends my data to another one of the big 3 tech megacorporations.
What I’ve tried:
Degoogled my phone with UAD and used apps that can run in the background instead of relying on Google Play Services for push. But I kept missing important messages cause push didn’t work reliably. It lead to a wild goose chase of which system apps can be disabled and which permissions revoked without losing core functions, none of which is documented properly anywhere. Location only worked outside sometimes and took 3 minutes for a fix. And it still may not even do anything for privacy because the underlying system is made by Google and could just ignore all of my settings.
Installed LineageOS. This solved the problems above. But my banking app refused to even launch on it.
Gave up, again used a debloated Android but kept Google Play Services and its dependencies intact and just used no Google account or Google apps. Now banking works, push works, location works. But Google still has unlimited root access to my device, contacts, calls, SMS, location, so really what’s the point?
How feasible is it to interact with your bank or other necessary services in a browser vs using the play store app? I can see LineageOS being viable if you can make such a transition.
Impossible. I either need a phone or buy a TAN generator for 2FA.
I’m currently thinking about that, or just leaving a spare phone at home with no data on it and location disabled. But the banking app is also used to verify bigger credit card payments. And without having it on me, I would have been unable to pay for plane or train tickets while traveling more than once.
honestly, having a spare phone that sits at home is a great solution. Your main phone can be a native pixel/grapheneos (not lineage, graphene has no issues with feature comparability). And the spare phone at run all the apps for, idk, your robot vaccum, smart home, etc. At home you have more control of data and connectivity.
we all have old phones that can be used as spares. My 8 yr old phone is the “remote control” for my house. Using accounts that don’t tie to me, on it’s own vlan, pi-holed, etc
for speech recognition there is “futo voice” which not only works better than Google’s speech talk-to-type by allowing the user to fluently speak, but it also works offline and doesn’t upload voice recordings anywhere. You won’t be able to use it with gboard because google will not allow the use of another talk-to-speech engine with gboard, you’ll have to download another keyboard first.
mobile banking is an unnecessary luxary. Moving money around/paying CC biils often takes days to go through anyway so the urgency of “doing it now” mobily can wait until you’re at your desktop.
Push notifications, I’ll give you. Without any services some apps cannot recieve push notifications. As the other user suggested, using a pixel with grapheneos, you can install sandboxes google services or microG and then have full functionality.
On grapheneOS you can choose which apps have access to internet/data much more fine-grained that what google allows you.
search warrant that required Google to provide the IP addresses of anyone who had searched for the address of a home within the previous 15 days of it being set on fire
I’m fine with this. It’s specific to an actual crime that happened, and not targeting a known individual or preventing something that hasn’t happened yet, “for the children” or some nonsense like that.
Yeah, it’s a specific enough request that I don’t see any problem here.
Although, why the IP address? I would imagine most people using Google products would be logged into Google accounts. They’d probably know the exact account who made the search, rather than a vague IP that could belong to multiple people in.
Fair enough. I don’t think it’s common for someone to be doing Google searches without having an account linked to other services, though.
Anyone using YouTube, Gmail, etc. would be logged in.
And everyone with an android phone who uses google search would very likely be linked to an account, for example.
I just thought it would cut to the chase for Google to provide account holder info and not just IP addresses.
Then again, the arsonists could have very well used any of the other search engines to look up the address. So… maybe police aren’t aware that other search options exist.
It wasn’t specific to an individual criminal, though. Police aren’t allowed to get warrants for fishing expeditions, they’re supposed to find leads themselves and then get a concise warrant to evidence to confirm that. They searched people they had no right to search, and violated their constitutional rights.
Yes exactly. This story has echos of the guy who was hounded by police (and maybe even charged and convicted?) because he took a different route while cycling and rode past a house where a crime was committed. That, too, was Google.
You’re fine with not targeting an individual and using blanket warrants instead? Even a judge said it was unconstitutional due to it not being individualized, and the EFF says it can implicate innocents. Even Google, who tracks and collects most everything, was reluctant to hand it over.
Sure, this reinvigorated the case, but it has an “ends justify the means” feel to it, which is a slippery slope. But you’re actively endorsing a less privacy friendly stance than Google, of all things. That blows my mind.
Everything must blow your mind. This is like going to a hotel and asking to see a list of people who stayed in the hotel last week because the suspect is probably staying nearby. Sounds like a pretty good way to get leads without asking for too much info.
Figuring out who searched for the address where the crime happened actually just sounds like good police work
Just people in a privacy community advocating for even less privacy than Google, who is decidedly anti-privacy, wants. The company who detests privacy and wants to collect data on everyone said, “this might be private and we shouldn’t go with it,” and you go “nope, it’s not, give it over?” I feel like Google is a very low bar to pass for privacy, and you still tripped on it.
So yes, no matter how much I experience in the world, people advocating for being taken advantage of or having their rights violated (which is what’s happening here) blows my mind, despite running into it semi-constantly.
This is like going to a hotel and asking to see a list of people who stayed in the hotel last week because the suspect is probably staying nearby.
And the hotel can deny to provide this information if it is an informal request. Only with a warrant will they forced to give up that list and a judge issuing the order will want some proof as why the police believe the suspect stayed in the hotel.
I am not a lawyer so I could be wrong about the criteria for the issue of warrants.
The police had a warrant for this information from Google. The problem isn’t what Google did, it’s that a judge signed off on a bad warrant and that the evidence obtained from it was still allowed to be used.
Yes I think that’s weak grounds. And so does the judge who presided over the case as well as several other judges who deemed the warrant as unconstitutional. The only reason the evidence was allowed was because the judge declared that the justice system broke the rules in good faith. I haven’t read the warrant request either just forming my opinion from articles on the issue.
I think that the warrant was issued on weak grounds because what the cops had was a hunch (a calculated one but still a hunch). They had no proof that the perpetrators/murderers searched for the apartment. It is not like they identified that searches for that addressed spiked at some point and served a warrant for those ip addresses during that spike. They just asked for all ip addresses in the last 15 days and that was because they did not have evidence pointing towards a search just a calculated hunch.
Edit : This precedent will have a lot of avenues for misuse. In States were abortion is banned, police can request warrants for abortion searches without the warrant specifying who specifically they are searching for and then investigate women whose ip addresses show up on the list. These will be woman whom the cops had zero evidence against, women who were not even suspects before an unconstitutional warrant like this makes them one.
This is like going to a hotel and asking to see a list of people who stayed in the hotel last week because the suspect is probably staying nearby.
Going to the hotel and asking is fine. It’s up to the hotel to protect their guests’ privacy in such a case. It’d probably be more productive if they asked the hotel staff about particular suspicious behavior that they’d personally seen, especially if they could narrow down the time frame, though. “Did anyone smelling like smoke come through after 11 PM last night?”
But the issue wasn’t what the police did - it was what the judge did. This situation would be more like if a judge issued a warrant for such a request without any evidence linking the hotel itself to the crime.
Getting a warrant for the entire guest list would not be appropriate, though - at least, not without specific evidence linking a suspect to that specific hotel. “The crime was committed nearby” isn’t sufficient. They need evidence the suspect entered the hotel, at minimum.
Sounds like a pretty good way to get leads without asking for too much info.
Sounds like a pretty good way to trample over the privacy rights of the hotel guests who’ve done nothing wrong.
Sure. On your side, you have your opinion. On my side I have legal precedent. You’re welcome to continue having your opinion, even though it’s unfounded and you’ve been told as much.
So you don’t have a problem with the judge saying well this is illegal but since it was done with good intentions it’s fine? I mean that is such a stupid legal precedent right there the cops are now allowed to do anything as long as their intentions are good.
“Ahhh gosh oh golly I guess i better comply with this police warrant” says the company that actively engages in one of the largest tax fraud operations in human history.
Assuming they’re talking about what most businesses, especially large ones with huge legal resources, do: exploit loopholes to not pay, or pay reduced, taxes.
From my personal lemmy experience, a lot of people would consider it actual (legal) fraud that’s just not being prosecuted because the perpetrator/s are wealthy.
I am conflicted on how I feel about that. Obviously information dragonets are bad because they're specifically designed to produce false positives. In this case, however, they produced a definite positive that wouldn't have been achieved otherwise.
Edit:
The good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule provides that “evidence
obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment should not be suppressed in
circumstances where the evidence was obtained by officers acting in objectively
reasonable reliance on a warrant issued by a detached and neutral magistrate, even
if that warrant was later determined to be invalid.” Gutierrez, 222 P.3d at 941; see
also Leftwich, 869 P.2d at 1272 (holding that Colorado’s good-faith exception,
35
codified in section 16-3-308, C.R.S. (2023), is “substantially similar” to the Supreme
Court’s rule). The exception exists because there is little chance suppression will
deter police misconduct in cases where the police didn’t know their conduct was
illegal in the first place. Leon, 468 U.S. at 918–19. In such cases, “the social costs of
suppression would outweigh any possible deterrent effect.
But the good-faith analysis in Gutierrez is distinguishable. True, we held
there that the good-faith exception did not apply, but we had already recognized
that individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their financial records
when Gutierrez was decided. Id. at 933 (citing numerous cases and statutes
establishing that an individual’s financial records are protected under Colorado
law). So, the police were on notice that a nexus was required between a crime and
Gutierrez’s individual tax records. See id.
38
¶70 By contrast, until today, no court had established that individuals have a
constitutionally protected privacy interest in their Google search history. Cf.
Commonwealth v. Kurtz, 294 A.3d 509, 522 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2023) (holding that, under
the third-party doctrine, the defendant did not have a reasonable expectation of
privacy in his search history). In the absence of precedent explicitly establishing
that an individual’s Google search history is constitutionally protected, DPD had
no reason to know that it might have needed to demonstrate a connection between
the alleged crime and Seymour’s individual Google account.
In essence, the court is saying that this is the one and only time this will be allowed in Colorado.
The obvious potential harm in general outweighs the positive outcome in a specific case. Justifying broad surveillance because it works occasionally is the road to a police state.
The entire exeption, and the broader exclusionary rule, is based around the self-evidently incorrect assumption that what happens in court will effect behaviour of investigators.
I always use Google anonymously as I always find alternative search engines to be lacking. Even without personalized search results, Google always works better for me.
I’ve been using duck duck go for a while, and I’ve got a fresh Linux install on another machine I’m using as a server and I went to look something up. I was 2 pages in, thinking “ddg isn’t great, but this is ridiculous”, and I remembered i was on Google
That headline misses the big problem. It’s not that Google was forced to give up search history data. If Google gets a warrant, they will comply. The real problem is that the justices acknowledged that the warrant was unconstitutional and permitted the evidence anyway. They claim the police “acted in good faith” while violating the constitution, which is a horrifying precedent.
If you’re thinking “alls well that ends well,” because they caught the arsonists who murdered a family of five, I can sympathize with that feeling, but consider that the murderer may have his conviction overturned on subsequent appeals.
The police obtained a warrant for everyone who searched for a thing from Google, and the search information was used against the accused in court. 14 states currently outlaw abortion, and there’s some cousin-fucking conservative prosecutor in Dipshit, Alabama, just salivating over the prospect of obtaining the IP addresses of every person looking up directions to clinics.
I wonder how many companies like Cambridge analytica or TPUSA just have access to these. It wouldn’t surprise me if there’s some social engineering dark arts underground of pretending to be police and getting this data to study
Not long after Dobbs, someone posted a guide on r/WitchesVsPatriarchy on how to securely find* this information without opening yourself up to potential harm. Terrifying that that’s even a thing that needs to exist.
the police acted in good faith, meaning the evidence will be allowed in court despite the warrant being legally flawed
I have no knowledge (or particular interest) in USA laws, but I guess that judges making this decision is a statement of future intent. I guess if you don’t want to be tracked then don’t use services which track you!
In Colorado, until a new law overides the ruling, google must reveal your search history when subpoenaed. This doesn’t affect surrounding states or federal law until their own judges make a ruling or politicians make a law.
The issue here is not that they are required to reveal search history of suspects, the issue is that the police is browsing the search history of everyone in order to find a suspect. That’s not what warrants are for and violates the constitutional rights of nearly everyone they searched.
Opposite actually. The court decision says that all future reverse keyword search warrants in Colorado will have their evidence thrown out. This one, however, didn't have precedent so the police acted in good faith.
i mean shit i guess they can here anyway, but it’s stunning to see that written down. oh they thought they were doing the right thing? oh that’s fine then
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