When I read stories like this it invokes a general sense of Orwellian dread in me, but I struggle to put exactly why into words that non-privacy-oriented people can understand. I often get...
When I read stories like this it invokes a general sense of Orwellian dread in me, but I struggle to put exactly why into words that non-privacy-oriented people can understand. I often get responses like "I'm not doing anything illegal on my computers so why should I worry about it?" I bring up things like how the erosion of privacy has wider implications on society as a whole (chilling effects), or real-life analogues like pointing out they wouldn't rent a house from a landlord who has cameras recording live feeds in every room, but these things also don't seem to connect very often. "Oh, that's different, they'd see me naked so I'd be totally against that," kind of responses.
Anyone have good, pithy arguments or examples that are more effective at explaining to people why the erosion of personal privacy is so concerning?
If a criminal is smart enough to not bring their cellphone to a crime within a block of you, and you have yours in the course of a regular day, you'll rank higher on the suspect list simply...
If a criminal is smart enough to not bring their cellphone to a crime within a block of you, and you have yours in the course of a regular day, you'll rank higher on the suspect list simply because your location data was available and theirs didn't trigger a geofence.
Terry Prachett said it best: Cheery was aware that Commander Vimes didn't like the phrase 'The innocent have nothing to fear', believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty...
Terry Prachett said it best:
Cheery was aware that Commander Vimes didn't like the phrase 'The innocent have nothing to fear', believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty but in the longer term even more from those who say things like 'The innocent have nothing to fear'.
These kind of erosions of basic rights are always in the name of safety/children, but always end up being widespread abuse.
The reason this argument is often used is because people really do care about the safety of their children. There's nothing wrong with that. It's not inherently an invalid argument, to be...
The reason this argument is often used is because people really do care about the safety of their children. There's nothing wrong with that. It's not inherently an invalid argument, to be automatically dismissed.
Of course we do want to be wary of such arguments being used cynically.
A valid "think of the children" argument is requiring children to wear seatbelts in cars in order to prevent kids from dying in car crashes. Not running a surveillance dragnet on the entire...
A valid "think of the children" argument is requiring children to wear seatbelts in cars in order to prevent kids from dying in car crashes. Not running a surveillance dragnet on the entire population, which is an authoritarian goal in and of itself, and then trying to justify it by saying it'll save kids. It might save some, but that's entirely incidental to its obvious purpose.
"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." Edward...
"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."
I could see some people responding to this with some idea along the lines of, "I might have something to say later, but I still won't have anything to hide". I don't think engaging someone on the...
I could see some people responding to this with some idea along the lines of, "I might have something to say later, but I still won't have anything to hide".
I don't think engaging someone on the idea that "hiding" is somehow a valid reason for privacy. In a legal context, hiding is generally seen with negative implications, you hide because you did something wrong. You're implying the wrong things when you engage someone on the idea of hiding when it comes to privacy.
In that way, I don't view it about hiding, but in a pessimistic sense one could view it as a distrust for others. Not everyone has good intentions, and you wouldn't give someone with bad intentions private information about you. When you give up too much privacy, you lose control over who can possibly acquire this information, and bad people can use it against you. Now some people don't think this is the case, and certainly some are more free with their lives than others for various reasons (because society currently accepts elements about them and for others society may not be as accepting). It comes across as a bit paranoid to think this way too.
I don't think that would be an approach that would satisfy the general public, certainly not how I explained it at least, but I just don't like the idea of engaging with the idea of "hiding" when it comes to privacy. I'm guarding it from malfeasance.
The whole premise is already wrong. You don't start with no privacy and then justify why you should get it back. Privacy, as a basic human right, can only be taken away from you, which is why...
The whole premise is already wrong. You don't start with no privacy and then justify why you should get it back. Privacy, as a basic human right, can only be taken away from you, which is why every infringement needs to be sufficiently justified. It's difficult to argue that entities, e.g. Google, meet this standard, when according to the article Apple manages to come by without this panopticon style of data collection. To be clear, the problem is not law enforcement accessing this data, when they have received the permission by the law, but it's the existence of this data.
In short, if I haven't done anything wrong, then they have no reason to invade my privacy.
The "right to privacy" being interpreted to mean that sometimes businesses have a duty not to keep some kinds of records about their customers seems like a pretty recent invention of the EU? It's...
The "right to privacy" being interpreted to mean that sometimes businesses have a duty not to keep some kinds of records about their customers seems like a pretty recent invention of the EU? It's certainly sensible, since you can't disclose what you don't have, but that's different from it being a duty. (Unless you made a promise about not keeping records, and then it's a violation of trust to do so.)
It seems unlikely that traditionally, you'd expect some random shopkeeper to keep their customers' secrets, unless they made some kind of promise. Businesses that keep records about their customers are unlikely to let some stranger have access to them, but that's because those records are valuable to the business. They might be convinced to cooperate with an investigator, though.
Yes, but in the before times shopkeeps didn't also keep months of 24/7 footage inside and out of their stores, track every purchase a customer made in exact detail, or collect data about which...
Yes, but in the before times shopkeeps didn't also keep months of 24/7 footage inside and out of their stores, track every purchase a customer made in exact detail, or collect data about which other stores their customers visit.
There's an order of magnitude between a shopkeeper being able to say "yea I sae Bob come in last thursday and he bought some eggs" and having them say "let me pull up all the security footage Bob was in and hand you a full shopping list from the last decade."
It’s true that there’s much more record-keeping than there used to be. That’s new. But my point is that our attitudes towards sharing information about customers have changed too.
It’s true that there’s much more record-keeping than there used to be. That’s new. But my point is that our attitudes towards sharing information about customers have changed too.
I think that many USA citizens have learnt it recently. Abortion is legal until it's not. Advising on abortion is also legal until it's not. Complaining on government and taxes may also become...
I think that many USA citizens have learnt it recently. Abortion is legal until it's not. Advising on abortion is also legal until it's not.
Complaining on government and taxes may also become illegal some day, just as many inhumane countries nowadays. Not wearing hijab also was legal in many countries, while now it's not. Nobody's given us freedom forever, we have to fight for it every day against forces that want to take away this freedom, step by step.
You’re imagining a pretty dark scenario and that can sometimes be useful, but I’ll point out that we don’t know the future and there are many other scenarios we could imagine. The reaction to the...
You’re imagining a pretty dark scenario and that can sometimes be useful, but I’ll point out that we don’t know the future and there are many other scenarios we could imagine.
The reaction to the pandemic showed pretty clearly how limited government control over the people is in the US. Sure, there was a lot of voluntary cooperation, but that waned, and there was also a lot of resistance. Also, George Floyd protests happened during the pandemic and so did the Capitol riot.
The Capitol rioters are being prosecuted and appropriately receiving stiff sentences, but this doesn’t suggest a high state capacity for preventing unrest and disruptions?
The change in abortion laws also shows the limits of state capacity. I don’t want to minimize the hardships for poor women, but so far it appears that the number of abortions didn’t go down. Many Americans have resources or connections that allow them to ignore or work around many laws, should they need to.
Or we could point to the largely futile attempts to stop the drug trade.
It could change, but this doesn’t suggest a clear trend in the US towards becoming a police state?
Most people aren’t great at preparing for or anticipating disasters. Every year, there is a chance there could be another pandemic, but for most people consider it over. Arguments about privacy that depend on disasters happening might not be that convincing to people who don’t really believe it will happen.
Free speech zones were commonly used by President George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks and through the 2004 election. Free speech zones were set up by the Secret Service, who scouted locations where the U.S. president was scheduled to speak, or pass through. Officials targeted those who carried anti-Bush signs and escorted them to the free speech zones prior to and during the event. Reporters were often barred by local officials from displaying these protesters on camera or speaking to them within the zone. Protesters who refused to go to the free speech zone were often arrested and charged with trespassing, disorderly conduct and/or resisting arrest.
Even if you somehow manage to convince them about the importance of personal privacy, there is always the convenience argument. For an increasing number of people, it's impossible to practically...
Even if you somehow manage to convince them about the importance of personal privacy, there is always the convenience argument. For an increasing number of people, it's impossible to practically lead their lives today without the help of Alexa, Siri, GAssist, etc. The problem is that we are getting addicted to technology bit by bit, the privacy erosion is happening gradually. That Orwellian nightmare may not come all of a sudden but we will be ushered towards it one micro step at a time. And by the time we will realize what kind of nightmare it is, it'd be too late to do anything as the digital addiction has done its course completely.
I see no hope in this regard unless the hope comes from the top. At least a few wise men in big tech corporate should start seeing beyond profits and capitalism and start realizing the kind of damage being done to society.
I try to stitch together privacy issues by asking them what kind of information could be reconstructed by Google searches in order. Like on this day you searched for a series of diseases or...
I try to stitch together privacy issues by asking them what kind of information could be reconstructed by Google searches in order. Like on this day you searched for a series of diseases or medication information because of a diagnosis or perhaps you got pregnant and star searching for info etc. What if you are gay and in the closit about it still but search for gay porn or just information in it leading whomever sees your data knowing that.
We search for everything and anything in our mind and that builds a picture of what we are doing everyday and it's just every aspect and element of our thoughts and personal things.
I guess with the camera say ok well if the nudity is beeped out, do you want to know some random person is analyzing every word you say in your house? What if you let slip in anger something about a co worker and now it's on perminate record?
What if a thing you do was legal but suddenly isn't anymore? That happens too, where is your privacy when they decides you can't curse out the president anymore, Oops hours of audio going on random rants available now.
I guess really it's like, if I ask you straight up how many hemeroids you have and which location they are to your face, that is really uncomfortable. But if I look at your search history I can pinpoint the exact second you searched for anal bleeding for the first time. That's why we want privacy even if we aren't breaking laws, because some things are private!
Traditionally, American law enforcement obtains a warrant to search the home or belongings of a specific person, in keeping with a constitutional ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. Warrants for Google’s location and search data are, in some ways, the inverse of that process, says Michael Price, the litigation director for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ Fourth Amendment Center. Rather than naming a suspect, law enforcement identifies basic parameters—a set of geographic coordinates or search terms—and asks Google to provide hits, essentially generating a list of leads.
...
Google says it received a record 60,472 search warrants in the US last year, more than double the number from 2019. The company provides at least some information in about 80% of cases. Although many large technology companies receive requests for information from law enforcement at least occasionally, police consider Google to be particularly well suited to jump-start an investigation with few other leads. Law enforcement experts say it’s the only company that provides a detailed inventory of whose personal devices were present at a given time and place. Apple Inc., the other major mobile operating system provider, has said it’s technically unable to supply the sort of location data police want. That’s OK, because many iPhone users depend on Google Maps and other Google apps. Google’s search engine owns 92% of the market worldwide and is currently the focus of an antitrust lawsuit from the US Department of Justice.
A Google spokesperson says the company scrutinizes all demands for user data and challenges those that it finds to be overly broad. Recent court cases have better equipped the company to push back, it says. “There are legitimate requests that we get every day. At the same time, there are sometimes requests that can be so broad that they infringe privacy rights and are really inappropriate,” says Kent Walker, the president for global affairs at Google and its parent company, Alphabet Inc. “In a significant percentage of cases, we go back and forth with the government to try and narrow warrants.”
...
Bloomberg Businessweek collected and analyzed 115 warrants for the company’s location and search data in five states, one of the largest known reviews of such documents. The analysis, based on search warrants filed from 2020 to 2023 with courthouses in Austin, Denver, Phoenix, Raleigh and San Francisco, showed that departments used them not only to solve violent crimes but also for more routine offenses. About 1 in 5 location warrants were for offenses such as theft and vandalism. A detective in Scottsdale, Arizona, got one in search of somebody accused of stealing a Louis Vuitton handbag. In that investigation and many others, the Google data offered nothing useful.
In the case of the missing radio, Lieutenant Jason Borneo of the Raleigh Police Department says Google data can be “critical to obtaining stolen property,” but Google says it didn’t deliver the search data the investigators were after. They never got the radio back and have yet to make an arrest. When asked how the department learned it could get this sort of information from Google, Borneo says, “One detective became aware of the keyword search warrant from another detective.”
...
In the years since, Staab has marveled at the success his colleagues have had with Google data, which he likens to “an electronic fingerprint that you can find at the scene.” His partner identified two suspects in a murder at a local park and solved a string of catalytic converter thefts based on the proximity of the thief’s phone to a power box at the exact moment the electricity in the parking lot had been shut off. “That little hit right there in front of the power box, and it’s tied to a person’s name, their email address, their telephone number, their street address,” Staab says, “it’s like, that’s who it is.”
Staab hasn’t had much luck with the warrants in his own cases since his first hit, but he continues to obtain them anyway and to coach other detectives in his department on the process. “When it works, it’s phenomenal,” he says. “And so when it doesn’t, it stings a little bit more.”
There's an odd framing in this article that police investigations shouldn't be too easy, like it's somehow unsporting and there should be game balance? But it's not a game. Assuming we want...
There's an odd framing in this article that police investigations shouldn't be too easy, like it's somehow unsporting and there should be game balance? But it's not a game. Assuming we want justice and having better law enforcement leads to more justice (yeah, big assumption there), solving more crimes more easily is good, actually. Ideally, we want the police to solve the case every time. Why shouldn't the police use every advantage they can (that's legal) to solve a case? Why shouldn't they try Google first?
Random enforcement is inherently unjust. Some criminals get away and others get caught, and having the careful or lucky ones get away and the careless or unlucky ones get caught isn't justice, that's just how the world works sometimes.
If law enforcement had a higher capacity, and a higher percentage of crimes were solved then enforcement would be less random. In theory, this could go along with lower penalties; sometimes penalties are set high because it's unlikely that people violating the law will be caught.
Because if law enforcement was perfect, societal progress is impossible. Some state bans being gay? Bam, perfect enforcement, all gay people are rounded up and jailed. So much societal progress...
Exemplary
Because if law enforcement was perfect, societal progress is impossible. Some state bans being gay? Bam, perfect enforcement, all gay people are rounded up and jailed.
So much societal progress relies on people breaking a law and defeating that law in court. If enforcement is perfect, it becomes nigh impossible to contest rulings. More "crimes" get settled before trial to avoid having ones life destroyed.
Then there's the whole amendment about unreasonable search and seizure. Used to be you would know if a warrant was being issued against you and your stuff and data. Now, it can be gotten from an assortment of third parties.
Even if this is attained legitimately for a crime, well now that data is in police hands. They can enter it into their own database. They can leverage it for unrelated crimes, including crimes that haven't been committed yet.
Lets say I'm driving two blocks ahead of a someone who did a hit and run a block back. Guy's cellphone was dead, but I'm now prime suspect courtesy of Google location data.
Now I'm potentially facing manslaughter charges on the word of Google and unreliable witnesses. They'll put me on the stand and question my time and whereabouts. I can't deny being in that location around that time. What if my car matches the description of the perp's car? Lot of white SUVs around.
This kind of data has all sorts of potential of being wrong. There's a good reason that enforcement must "prove beyond a reasonable doubt." It's because, especially in America, getting arrested for a crime (not even convicted) can ruin your life. And if there's fuzzy data people treat as sacrosanct, that the police can catch wide nets for small fry, arrests will go up and a lot more innocents will be convicted of crimes they didn't commit but can't deny the circumstances that point to them committing the crime.
Should law enforcement have access to location data for serious crimes? Sure. But there should also be some rigidly enforced rules about how that data is attained and shared. I don't think it should be permitted without a list of suspects outside of emergency situations where a violent crime like a kidnapping or hostage situation can be stopped. Frankly, I think it should also be mandatory to notify anyone whom has had their data pulled by law enforcement anytime it happens.
People have died from police busting down the wrong door on a search warrant. Making it easier for them to bust down doors, especially for nonviolent crimes, is the way you end up with police states that make China and Russia look friendly to dissidents.
We already know the USA is hostile to protesters, especially those gaining political traction. Do we really need to make their lives even easier?
Okay, yes, that's a decent argument for not having too much police power. And yes, historically Americans have been very concerned about government tyranny, which is why the government is...
Okay, yes, that's a decent argument for not having too much police power. And yes, historically Americans have been very concerned about government tyranny, which is why the government is structured the way it is. It's why we require search warrants. This is an essential safeguard.
But the process in the article is one where the government gets search warrants, and Google is checking them (or so they say). Maybe there should be other, better safeguards, and maybe they will reduce the efficiency of policing in some ways.
I don't think that's an argument for making police work harder in arbitrary ways, though, or reducing police efficiency because you don't like them? We should want better efficiency, but bound by rules.
And I do think it shows little faith in democracy. The majority will vote for things that are bad, so the only way to safeguard our rights is to sabotage the government enough so it hardly works at all. When it comes to safeguards, saying "more is better" seems like a great way to get expensive and wasteful government?
Based on the downward trajectory I've seen in my lifetime of American Democracy (really kicking into high gear during Clinton's presidency), I think it's currently reasonable to be skeptical of...
Based on the downward trajectory I've seen in my lifetime of American Democracy (really kicking into high gear during Clinton's presidency), I think it's currently reasonable to be skeptical of granting even more power to the state.
When I read stories like this it invokes a general sense of Orwellian dread in me, but I struggle to put exactly why into words that non-privacy-oriented people can understand. I often get responses like "I'm not doing anything illegal on my computers so why should I worry about it?" I bring up things like how the erosion of privacy has wider implications on society as a whole (chilling effects), or real-life analogues like pointing out they wouldn't rent a house from a landlord who has cameras recording live feeds in every room, but these things also don't seem to connect very often. "Oh, that's different, they'd see me naked so I'd be totally against that," kind of responses.
Anyone have good, pithy arguments or examples that are more effective at explaining to people why the erosion of personal privacy is so concerning?
If a criminal is smart enough to not bring their cellphone to a crime within a block of you, and you have yours in the course of a regular day, you'll rank higher on the suspect list simply because your location data was available and theirs didn't trigger a geofence.
Terry Prachett said it best:
Cheery was aware that Commander Vimes didn't like the phrase 'The innocent have nothing to fear', believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty but in the longer term even more from those who say things like 'The innocent have nothing to fear'.
These kind of erosions of basic rights are always in the name of safety/children, but always end up being widespread abuse.
The reason this argument is often used is because people really do care about the safety of their children. There's nothing wrong with that. It's not inherently an invalid argument, to be automatically dismissed.
Of course we do want to be wary of such arguments being used cynically.
A valid "think of the children" argument is requiring children to wear seatbelts in cars in order to prevent kids from dying in car crashes. Not running a surveillance dragnet on the entire population, which is an authoritarian goal in and of itself, and then trying to justify it by saying it'll save kids. It might save some, but that's entirely incidental to its obvious purpose.
"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."
I could see some people responding to this with some idea along the lines of, "I might have something to say later, but I still won't have anything to hide".
I don't think engaging someone on the idea that "hiding" is somehow a valid reason for privacy. In a legal context, hiding is generally seen with negative implications, you hide because you did something wrong. You're implying the wrong things when you engage someone on the idea of hiding when it comes to privacy.
In that way, I don't view it about hiding, but in a pessimistic sense one could view it as a distrust for others. Not everyone has good intentions, and you wouldn't give someone with bad intentions private information about you. When you give up too much privacy, you lose control over who can possibly acquire this information, and bad people can use it against you. Now some people don't think this is the case, and certainly some are more free with their lives than others for various reasons (because society currently accepts elements about them and for others society may not be as accepting). It comes across as a bit paranoid to think this way too.
I don't think that would be an approach that would satisfy the general public, certainly not how I explained it at least, but I just don't like the idea of engaging with the idea of "hiding" when it comes to privacy. I'm guarding it from malfeasance.
The whole premise is already wrong. You don't start with no privacy and then justify why you should get it back. Privacy, as a basic human right, can only be taken away from you, which is why every infringement needs to be sufficiently justified. It's difficult to argue that entities, e.g. Google, meet this standard, when according to the article Apple manages to come by without this panopticon style of data collection. To be clear, the problem is not law enforcement accessing this data, when they have received the permission by the law, but it's the existence of this data.
In short, if I haven't done anything wrong, then they have no reason to invade my privacy.
The "right to privacy" being interpreted to mean that sometimes businesses have a duty not to keep some kinds of records about their customers seems like a pretty recent invention of the EU? It's certainly sensible, since you can't disclose what you don't have, but that's different from it being a duty. (Unless you made a promise about not keeping records, and then it's a violation of trust to do so.)
It seems unlikely that traditionally, you'd expect some random shopkeeper to keep their customers' secrets, unless they made some kind of promise. Businesses that keep records about their customers are unlikely to let some stranger have access to them, but that's because those records are valuable to the business. They might be convinced to cooperate with an investigator, though.
Yes, but in the before times shopkeeps didn't also keep months of 24/7 footage inside and out of their stores, track every purchase a customer made in exact detail, or collect data about which other stores their customers visit.
There's an order of magnitude between a shopkeeper being able to say "yea I sae Bob come in last thursday and he bought some eggs" and having them say "let me pull up all the security footage Bob was in and hand you a full shopping list from the last decade."
It’s true that there’s much more record-keeping than there used to be. That’s new. But my point is that our attitudes towards sharing information about customers have changed too.
I think that many USA citizens have learnt it recently. Abortion is legal until it's not. Advising on abortion is also legal until it's not.
Complaining on government and taxes may also become illegal some day, just as many inhumane countries nowadays. Not wearing hijab also was legal in many countries, while now it's not. Nobody's given us freedom forever, we have to fight for it every day against forces that want to take away this freedom, step by step.
You’re imagining a pretty dark scenario and that can sometimes be useful, but I’ll point out that we don’t know the future and there are many other scenarios we could imagine.
The reaction to the pandemic showed pretty clearly how limited government control over the people is in the US. Sure, there was a lot of voluntary cooperation, but that waned, and there was also a lot of resistance. Also, George Floyd protests happened during the pandemic and so did the Capitol riot.
The Capitol rioters are being prosecuted and appropriately receiving stiff sentences, but this doesn’t suggest a high state capacity for preventing unrest and disruptions?
The change in abortion laws also shows the limits of state capacity. I don’t want to minimize the hardships for poor women, but so far it appears that the number of abortions didn’t go down. Many Americans have resources or connections that allow them to ignore or work around many laws, should they need to.
Or we could point to the largely futile attempts to stop the drug trade.
It could change, but this doesn’t suggest a clear trend in the US towards becoming a police state?
Most people aren’t great at preparing for or anticipating disasters. Every year, there is a chance there could be another pandemic, but for most people consider it over. Arguments about privacy that depend on disasters happening might not be that convincing to people who don’t really believe it will happen.
Am I the only one who remembers that "Free Speech Zones" exist?
Sounds like suppression of dissent to me.
Even if you somehow manage to convince them about the importance of personal privacy, there is always the convenience argument. For an increasing number of people, it's impossible to practically lead their lives today without the help of Alexa, Siri, GAssist, etc. The problem is that we are getting addicted to technology bit by bit, the privacy erosion is happening gradually. That Orwellian nightmare may not come all of a sudden but we will be ushered towards it one micro step at a time. And by the time we will realize what kind of nightmare it is, it'd be too late to do anything as the digital addiction has done its course completely.
I see no hope in this regard unless the hope comes from the top. At least a few wise men in big tech corporate should start seeing beyond profits and capitalism and start realizing the kind of damage being done to society.
I try to stitch together privacy issues by asking them what kind of information could be reconstructed by Google searches in order. Like on this day you searched for a series of diseases or medication information because of a diagnosis or perhaps you got pregnant and star searching for info etc. What if you are gay and in the closit about it still but search for gay porn or just information in it leading whomever sees your data knowing that.
We search for everything and anything in our mind and that builds a picture of what we are doing everyday and it's just every aspect and element of our thoughts and personal things.
I guess with the camera say ok well if the nudity is beeped out, do you want to know some random person is analyzing every word you say in your house? What if you let slip in anger something about a co worker and now it's on perminate record?
What if a thing you do was legal but suddenly isn't anymore? That happens too, where is your privacy when they decides you can't curse out the president anymore, Oops hours of audio going on random rants available now.
I guess really it's like, if I ask you straight up how many hemeroids you have and which location they are to your face, that is really uncomfortable. But if I look at your search history I can pinpoint the exact second you searched for anal bleeding for the first time. That's why we want privacy even if we aren't breaking laws, because some things are private!
From the article (archive link):
...
...
...
There's an odd framing in this article that police investigations shouldn't be too easy, like it's somehow unsporting and there should be game balance? But it's not a game. Assuming we want justice and having better law enforcement leads to more justice (yeah, big assumption there), solving more crimes more easily is good, actually. Ideally, we want the police to solve the case every time. Why shouldn't the police use every advantage they can (that's legal) to solve a case? Why shouldn't they try Google first?
Random enforcement is inherently unjust. Some criminals get away and others get caught, and having the careful or lucky ones get away and the careless or unlucky ones get caught isn't justice, that's just how the world works sometimes.
If law enforcement had a higher capacity, and a higher percentage of crimes were solved then enforcement would be less random. In theory, this could go along with lower penalties; sometimes penalties are set high because it's unlikely that people violating the law will be caught.
Because if law enforcement was perfect, societal progress is impossible. Some state bans being gay? Bam, perfect enforcement, all gay people are rounded up and jailed.
So much societal progress relies on people breaking a law and defeating that law in court. If enforcement is perfect, it becomes nigh impossible to contest rulings. More "crimes" get settled before trial to avoid having ones life destroyed.
Then there's the whole amendment about unreasonable search and seizure. Used to be you would know if a warrant was being issued against you and your stuff and data. Now, it can be gotten from an assortment of third parties.
Even if this is attained legitimately for a crime, well now that data is in police hands. They can enter it into their own database. They can leverage it for unrelated crimes, including crimes that haven't been committed yet.
Lets say I'm driving two blocks ahead of a someone who did a hit and run a block back. Guy's cellphone was dead, but I'm now prime suspect courtesy of Google location data.
Now I'm potentially facing manslaughter charges on the word of Google and unreliable witnesses. They'll put me on the stand and question my time and whereabouts. I can't deny being in that location around that time. What if my car matches the description of the perp's car? Lot of white SUVs around.
This kind of data has all sorts of potential of being wrong. There's a good reason that enforcement must "prove beyond a reasonable doubt." It's because, especially in America, getting arrested for a crime (not even convicted) can ruin your life. And if there's fuzzy data people treat as sacrosanct, that the police can catch wide nets for small fry, arrests will go up and a lot more innocents will be convicted of crimes they didn't commit but can't deny the circumstances that point to them committing the crime.
Should law enforcement have access to location data for serious crimes? Sure. But there should also be some rigidly enforced rules about how that data is attained and shared. I don't think it should be permitted without a list of suspects outside of emergency situations where a violent crime like a kidnapping or hostage situation can be stopped. Frankly, I think it should also be mandatory to notify anyone whom has had their data pulled by law enforcement anytime it happens.
People have died from police busting down the wrong door on a search warrant. Making it easier for them to bust down doors, especially for nonviolent crimes, is the way you end up with police states that make China and Russia look friendly to dissidents.
We already know the USA is hostile to protesters, especially those gaining political traction. Do we really need to make their lives even easier?
Okay, yes, that's a decent argument for not having too much police power. And yes, historically Americans have been very concerned about government tyranny, which is why the government is structured the way it is. It's why we require search warrants. This is an essential safeguard.
But the process in the article is one where the government gets search warrants, and Google is checking them (or so they say). Maybe there should be other, better safeguards, and maybe they will reduce the efficiency of policing in some ways.
I don't think that's an argument for making police work harder in arbitrary ways, though, or reducing police efficiency because you don't like them? We should want better efficiency, but bound by rules.
And I do think it shows little faith in democracy. The majority will vote for things that are bad, so the only way to safeguard our rights is to sabotage the government enough so it hardly works at all. When it comes to safeguards, saying "more is better" seems like a great way to get expensive and wasteful government?
Based on the downward trajectory I've seen in my lifetime of American Democracy (really kicking into high gear during Clinton's presidency), I think it's currently reasonable to be skeptical of granting even more power to the state.