If you’ve ever wondered if your search or viewing history was going to put you on some sort of “list”, your concern may be justified.
In recently unsealed court documents reviewed by Forbes magazine, Google was ordered to provide the names, addresses, phone numbers and activity of YouTube account users and IP addresses (helping to identify the origin of the connection) who viewed certain YouTube videos, as part of a broad criminal investigation by federal investigators.
The videos were sent by undercover police officers to an alleged cryptocurrency launderer under the pseudonym “elonmuskwhm”. Investigators sent links to public tutorials on YouTube. The videos have been viewed more than 30,000 times, presumably by thousands of users unconnected to the case. Google, YouTube’s parent company, was ordered by federal investigators to quietly turn over all such viewer data for the period January 1-8, 2023, but it is unclear whether Google had complied with the request.
The data recovery required is concerning in itself, according to privacy experts. Federal investigators argued that the request was legally justified because the data “would be relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation, including providing identifying information about the perpetrators,” citing a justification used by other law enforcement agencies. police across the country. In a New Hampshire case, police requested similar data when investigating bomb threats that were broadcast live on YouTube — the order specifically requested viewership information at certain times during live broadcasts. direct.
Privacy experts worry about the precedent the court order sets. Activists have been calling on Google to be more transparent about its data sharing policies for years, with fears fueled by continued open arrests of protesters and creeping statewide criminalization of abortion. In December, Google updated its privacy policies to allow users to save their location data directly on their devices rather than in the cloud, and shortened the retention time for such storage.