The unsealed court order wasn’t just fishing for a list of vague identifiers that could be winnowed down to a list of suspects and a follow-up warrant demanding actual identifying information on these ~30,000 YouTube users. No, it appears the feds led with the big ask, demanding names, addresses, phone numbers, and user activity for every viewer of these videos between January 1-8, 2023. AND(!!) it asked Google to provide IP addresses for all viewers who were not logged into (or did not possess) Google accounts.

That’s fucked

Here’s a genius tip to the Google developers: you don’t have to turn over the data you don’t have.

What’s worse is that a person could become a suspect just by turning on autoplay

I’m less worried about this scenario: “We are investigating one specific person whom we have probable cause to believe committed a specific crime. Oh look, he has a Gmail account. Let’s subpoena his video searches with a valid warrant.”

I’m extremely troubled by this scenario: “We don’t like people who search for videos on guns/surfing/cats/whatever. Let’s subpoena a list of those people and start investigating them on no other basis.”

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The public needs to create “where do cops live ?” and “what is each cop’s collective record on abuse and arrests ?” type databases.

They need to be held to a higher standard that has us surveil them, too.

Watch them; follow them; write it all down.

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