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Finding Fault With Google's Privacy Policy
Posted by
timothy
on Sat Jul 05, 2008 04:50 PM
from the wonder-what-bill-joy-thinks-of-it dept.
from the wonder-what-bill-joy-thinks-of-it dept.
orenh writes "Viacom has recently obtained a court order that requires Google to hand over a complete list of every video watched by YouTube users. These logs will include the login names and IP addresses of the users. Google are now asking Viacom if they can anonymize the logs before turning them over; Viacom hasn't responded yet. But this privacy nightmare could have been greatly reduced if Google had anonymized the data in advance. Google's privacy policy states that they keep personally identifiable information for 18 months. There is no real reason to do so; Google can achieve everything they need even if they anonymize their search logs after just one month, and it's time users told them to do so."
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Technology: YouTube Must Give All User Histories To Viacom 778 comments
psyopper writes "Google will have to turn over every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users' names and IP addresses, to Viacom, which is suing Google for allowing clips of its copyright videos to appear on YouTube, a judge ruled Wednesday.
Although Google argued that turning over the data would invade its users' privacy, the judge's ruling (.pdf) described that argument as 'speculative' and ordered Google to turn over the logs on a set of four terabyte hard drives." Update: 07/03 18:05 GMT by T : Brian Aker, now of MySQL but long ago Slashdot's "database thug," writes a journal entry on how companies could intelligently treat such potentially sensitive user data.
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Two months from now (Score:2, Interesting)
US Courts are going to be brought to their knees as Viacom files 100 million copyright infringement lawsuits. On a side note, they will also be able to sell the information so that the government knows who likes to watch communist or anti-government videos.
I'm willing to go along with this if.. (Score:3, Interesting)
.. they remove anything connecting the video usage log to users. That includes name, mailing address, email, and even IP address.
I work in the health insurance/medical industry, and we're generally expected to do this if we need to provide information to third parties for analysis. (They -heavily- regulate it, and the removal of personal member information is only the tip of the iceberg as far as these regulations go.)
If Viacom insists on keeping personal user information in the data set, then I honestly th
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They can't and won't. Apparently these guys fear that Viacom's outside experts will ruin their careers and get themselves in trouble with the court by publishing a list of everyone who has ever watched a Hello Kitty porno clip.
Forget one month... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Forget one month... (Score:5, Insightful)
and why not keeping them in a country where privacy still means something, so that no US judge can touch them.
Parent
Re:Forget one month...Forget Other Countires Too (Score:5, Insightful)
That didn't mean much to one European BitTorrent tracker site who was ordered by U.S. judges to turn over all access logs where the site didn't even keep logs to start with. The judge said in his infinite wisdom that because the data existed in RAM at some instant that the logs were required to be created and then turned over.
While I respect the USA law within the USA, I despise when judges attempt, often with too much success, to enforce it outside of the USA. And not just data laws. We enforce US sex laws in other countries to criminalize behavior completely legal there. This Is Wrong!
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What you said. Same deal -- the Genarlow Wilson case obviously wasn't enough of a wake-up call in the USA about how draconian its sex laws are.
Here's a clue to those not paying attention -- two highschool kids having sex are criminals in most of the USA (unless they both failed a lot of grades).
Should sex with children be illegal? Yes. Should consensual sex between 17 yr olds be illegal? How about 16? Why is there a big line drawn at 18, 19 or 21 (in some states) way above the 50th percentile of sex ac
Re:Forget one month... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Forget one month... (Score:5, Interesting)
The records could have been unobtainable by the US division of Google.
For example, the records in the "safe" country would be owned by an independent subsidiary, such that the related company (Google) wouldn't have direct executive authority to force the other company to release the records.
Because they're independent companies and Google has no legal authority to force an outside company to do anything.
Google could then request the records, but the data storage company could refuse to approve the request, and there would be no way for Google to force the other company to provide the information.
Because the use and manner which the records could be accessed would be spelled out by some binding agreement.
Limiting the volume of records that could be requested at any time, limiting the allowed uses for every record, and requiring them to be destroyed a short time after loaded.
And for google to "request all the records" from their separate company formed to hold the records would be an operation requiring special permission, extensive justification, and full disclosure, regarding reasons for the request, which the board of the other company would have to vote on (after researching to guarantee that Google is not possibly under any kind of duress in making the request, to release information).
Also, the company in the foreign country could be prevented from illicitly disclosing records, by having each log line independently encrypted.
The US-based Google would have the decryption keys but not the data.
The foreign "record storage company" would have the logs, but no means to decrypt them.
Or alternatively, the logs would have been produced in a split binary format:
The US-based Google would have half the information; the foreign "data storage" company would have the other half --- and no individual record could be obtained without bitwise XOR'ing all pieces together.
And there could be more than two pieces: there could be more than 1 subsidiary that has to agree to any massive information release request.
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why not keeping them in a country where privacy still means something
The video privacy protection act [cornell.edu] should be immediately amended to include support for Internet video services.
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Is there no way to do that without Personally Identifiable Information?
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If they really wanted to, they could still manage this.. encrypt the logs with your youtube account password, and then then using the Ajax/Zero Knowlege App ideas that we had an article about the other day (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/30/1416238), ensure that decryption of that data in done at the user end...
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Personally, I like to be able to find a video which I watched yesterday to send link to a friend.
A month is about the maximum time when such viewing history is useful.
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You do know your web browser has a history and bookmarking system, right?
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I use several computers (at home and at work). Of course, I can use online bookmark synchronization service (I'm too lazy to setup my own bookmark server) but this kinda defeats the whole idea of privacy.
Obligatory (Score:4, Funny)
In soviet America, corporations tube you!
Google Being Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that we I.T. people are Data Hoarders. Even if the data isn't useful today, or at all useful into the foreseeable future, we still hang on to it. And we save every detail we can just to prove how clever we are to have been able to discover it in the first place. (Note: P2P program writers are the same, and that's how Media Sentry can tell you so much about filesharers they discover on the Internet right down to the full directory paths of files.) Now if storage wasn't so d@mn cheap we wouldn't have this habit, but Moore's Law applied to disc drives means we no longer have to store 2-digit years and have Y2K problems. We have these problems now instead.
This is why the RIAA is able to use IP addresses combined with timestamps to identify ISP account holders. It doesn't identify any actual copyright infringers, but they don't care as long as they have somebody to sue. If these logs were deleted after 3 days this whole RIAA mess would have been a non-starter.
We just have this compulsion to hang onto everything because we can, and perhaps with the faint hope that somewhere down the line we'll be able to show extreme cleverness to our PHB's when they ask some inane question like, "Duh, how many unique IP addresses have accessed our website since 1991?" and we'll be able to say, "Give me 10 minute and I'll let you know (wag tail)."
Chances are that Google themselves has never had to follow-up on an IP address to identify a user for anyone except the Chinese government and/or the NSA, neither of which are our friends. The first poster who asks why they keep this at all, let alone weren't anonymizing it long ago has it right. This is hardly the first time Google has had to turn over access records so they certainly know that it can and will happen.
Don't be evil at Google seems to mean don't destroy data you never needed in the first place in the event that some government we want to keep as our friend might want it. But now we find out that more than just governments can get to it with baseless suits and moronic judges.
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The problem is that we I.T. people are Data Hoarders. Even if the data isn't useful today, or at all useful into the foreseeable future, we still hang on to it. And we save every detail we can just to prove how clever we are to have been able to discover it in the first place.
I'm afraid the above is not unique to IT.
Check with your accounting department and ask them how long they, or the auditors, retain data, and how much of it they keep. You'll get similar answers (with varying reasons) from the folks in
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Check with your accounting department and ask them how long they, or the auditors, retain data, and how much of it they keep.
IIRC Tax laws require all records that involve 'your' taxation to be retained for 7 years just in case they decide to audit 'you' (and by 'you' I mean any person or entity who deals with the tax man). So, some of that retention is done by a legal requirement, even if that requirement is the case you might be audited in 6 years from now.
No, Judge being stupid! (Score:5, Interesting)
Viacom do not need this information. Any of it. At all.
Viacom, as I understand, want to show what percentage of YouTube content views are of Viacom content. In order to accomplish this all they need to do is provide Google with a list of content IDs, which they would need to have if they themselves were to perform the analysis anyway, and then to allow Google to provide a count of views for each of these pieces of content versus the total of all other content views for the same period.
Done. Mission accomplished. No private data changes hands.
I personally cannot comprehend how a judge ruled that privacy issues resulting from this are "speculative". You are essentially handing over information on millions of people on what content they watched, uploaded, commented on, rated, tagged, etc. to a media company, without need. This information is also the foundation for YouTube's business being handed over to a competitor.
The judge says it's speculative? I say remove the judge for willfully violating the privacy of millions of citizens and foreign nationals.
I would also like to know how the judge has completely ignored the Video Privacy Protection Act [privacilla.org]? If it's on the Internet suddenly all privacy concern automatically goes away, even if you're engaged as a customer of a company with a published privacy policy offering you many protections?
Parent
And judge is either clueless or in pay of MPAA (Score:5, Insightful)
> Google has just been stupid here about privacy, and now it's coming home to roost in a very public way.
This is true, but it's not the worst of it.
Much, *MUCH* worse is that the judge has imposed on Google a legal ruling that the RIAA must be wetting themselves to obtain. And of course, these records will go straight to the MPAA, despite the contraints placed on their use.
This is either a case of extreme naivete on the part of the judge in ignoring the privacy ramifications in his incredible ruling, or quite possibly a simple case of corruption. Such naivete would be so incredible in a judge that isn't senile, that corruption has to be far more likely.
As for Google, their lawyers should have IMMEDIATELY said to the judge "Our client cannot do that, on privacy grounds. Google's duty to protect the privacy of millions cannot be dismissed by a legal ruling." Judges are not omnipotent, even when some of them think they are.
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The problem isn't Google, it's us. (Score:5, Insightful)
Google clearly should have anticipated this. Governments have requested/required info on individual users before, as has been posted many times to /. For some countries, Google even moved user data off-shore, to protect it. Privacy advocates warned of this problem happening.
Google's rule is 'don't be evil', as long as it doesn't interfere with business.
But the problem isn't Google, it's us. We keep using Google, though we knew about the risks and problems. The day a company risks significant revenue over privacy, is the day they will pay attention to it.
We have met the enemy and he is us.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo_(comics)#.22We_have_met_the_enemy.....22 [wikipedia.org]
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what kind of perverse reasoning is that.
It reminds me of battered wife syndrome.
"he's beaten my face to hamburger for the 15th time officer, but I don't want to charge him. After all, i was the one who pissed him off, I just need to stop pissing off my husband so he won't take the food processor to my left hand anymore"
Re:The problem isn't Google, it's us. (Score:5, Insightful)
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They are out to kill us all.
Seriously, do people thrive on having enemys? Do they find no happyness simply in a group being what they are? Protip; "The Man" isn't out to get you, and all the companys aren't working for him.
And shall we stop using every service out there, because somewhere, deep down in their closet, is something we disagree with?
If so, I'm going to assume you're posting to
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Noooo, don't you understand?! Big corporations aren't just out there to offer products and services for the sake of profit and growth! Of course you think Google's services are great, that's what they *want* you to think! In fact all these nifty services are a honey pot so that you go there and give them your IP address and let them store which video you've watched to hand it all over to the evil government! Capitalism is evil, and corporations and this government are capitalistic!! OMG Karl Marx to the res
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Agreed, end users shouldn't know every privacy policy. It's impractical.
But they could press their legislators to pass laws that protect privacy. I don't think it's important enough, yet, for most people.
bullies and IP problems? (Score:2, Insightful)
Not much of a problem... (Score:5, Informative)
...if you don't have a Google login name. Google search works just fine without one. It even works fine without any Google cookies.
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> But they still have your IP address. Which yes, is not as personally identifiable as a
> username, but it is identifying enough to get sued by the **AA.
Why would the **AA sue me? I've never uploaded, downloaded, or sideloaded any of their stuff. They have nothing I want. If they sue me it will be because they fucked up and confounded me with someone else.
> Also this is not talking about google searches, but youtube searches.
So you have to be logged in to do a YouTube search?
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Why would the **AA sue me? I've never uploaded, downloaded, or sideloaded any of their stuff. They have nothing I want. If they sue me it will be because they fucked up and confounded me with someone else.
I guess you missed the many, many slashdot articles about them doing exactly that.
lose the files (Score:5, Funny)
just say they were 'lost' and that the backups were destroyed or lost due to shady backup practices. works for the White House.
clusty (Score:2)
I use clusty.com [clusty.com] for searches. The results seem to be of the same quality as google's, and their privacy policy is much better.
Now I just need a good way to access usenet. My ISP dropped usenet access last month. I tried buying access from octanews.com, and they ripped me off (currently going through the chargeback process with the credit card company). So now I'm the proud owner of the email address ineverreadmailsenttothis@yahoo.com, which I used to register a google account so I can post on usenet via g
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I don't know what you mean by "block access" but I get excellent service from Newsguy [newsguy.com] for $40/year. They offer a number of different plans at various rates.
So let me get this straight (Score:2)
Viacom wants the logs of the people that watched every Youtube video, but not the logs of the people that uploaded videos that violate Viacom IP? Which means that even people who didn't watch videos that didn't violate Viacom IP like stuff people create via webcameras or video cameras and then upload to Youtube will become part of some Anti-Piracy lawsuit by Viacom?
This all sounds like more MAFIAA scams like suing grandmothers and 13 year old girls because they happened to get a dynamic IP assigned to them
You can't anonymize the data (Score:3, Interesting)
It is a mistake to think you can anonymize this data. Sure, you could strip everything out of the data, but then you would just have public information, since youtube will tell you how many views each video has already. So I presume the people who want to "anonymize" think they will, like the AOL logs, give pseudonyms to people.
I can think of many problems. For example, there are tons of videos on youtube that are never accessed except by the uploader and a few friends. Pretty easy to identify who the likely uploader is from the records, and thus identify a user. Or even if you never upload, a lot can be learned. For example, somebody looking for my records could first see what youtube videos have me in them. Most people have probably searched for their own name, and as such this is a clue as to which user is probably me.
And this is what I can think of in 2 minutes. With more time a lot of other things can leak.
Oh the shame (Score:5, Funny)
Counter to privacy is publicity (Score:2)
If everyone's search records and IPs are made public this thwarts the value of Viacom becoming privy, via rather underhanded means.
Google is usually good, internally at least (Score:2)
What's really ironic is that Google is (from what I've heard) anal about anonymizing everything internally. Not only that, but it can take a good while before employees with a good reason to access such data get said access.
I mean, Google even anonymizes ping logs that employees are going to look at - and I really don't think my ping time is anything that private.
It's a little sad that this has happened.
I never noticed a "login" for YouTube (Score:3)
I guess my IP address does ID "me", however. My DSL address changes a lot, but I assume the telco keeps those records... too.
My cable IP address doesn't change often, I had one IP address for almost 10 years without changing... just when I did a router upgrade it switched.
And by "me", I mean anyone in my household at the time...
Not that I have ever seen anything on YouTube that Viacom would want to come after me for. Probably looking for Posters, not Viewers.
Possession is 9 points of the law (Score:3, Insightful)
Just a sec while I sharpen up my rusty old axe...
If privacy is to have any meaning, then we need a right to protect our personal information. Well, actually we already have the right, though it's a bit scattered around the Bill of Rights. (Speaking for Americans, and only in theoretical terms as regards the current administration.)
So what's the strongest form of protection for our personal information? The famous "possession is 9 points of the law". We should possess our personal information and we should have to right to say who can see it, and when.
Concretely in Google's case, they should offer privacy options whereby all of your personal information would be stored only on your machine. They could still access it, but they'd have to respect your privacy preferences--and you could always change your mind. (Of course the data should be signed to prevent you from tampering with it, but that's a relatively trivial aspect.) I feel like this approach is the only thing that would really give meaning to privacy in the computer age.
(However, some people would no doubt trade away their privacy for coupon discounts or whatever--but right now we have no choice. Lots of companies (and of course including Google) collect lots of our personal information and treat it like *THEIR* property when it should belong to *US*.)
No reason to do so? (Score:3, Interesting)
We may THINK there's no reason for Google to have to keep logs for 18 months, but these days I wouldn't be surprised to find there's some hidden provision of the Patriot Act, or possibly some law we've never heard of, which it's illegal for us to hear of or read in the first place. So maybe there IS a law requiring them to keep it for 18 months, it's just not one the public is allowed to know of until it's used to prosecute them.
In Google's Defense (Score:3, Interesting)
In Google's defense, they may have legitimate use for these records. Viewing history is clearly important if they want to offer better viewing suggestions to YouTube users. I also wonder if they include this data in their formula for presenting personalised Google search results.
I'm sure it would be possible for them to get by with only a month or two of records, but consider why it is that Google is so successful as a search engine. They go out of their way to use every source of data they can to optimize their search results. They're not going to just toss out a valuable source of information like this if they can help it.
Re:Better idea (Score:4, Interesting)
There is an interesting tie in here to something I've promoted all along: If the last mile was owned by cooperative groups (meaning NOT ISPs) then they could pool the IP addresses assigned in a random, and meaningless way. That is to say that if 237 people in a housing association were sharing DHCP IP addresses through a server system with enough bandwidth that many ISPs could hook up and serve out email and other services by user, it would be possible to hide the end user IP. Then any stats by Google or others would apply to the group, not an individual. Share that cooperative environment out amongst all the people of your neighborhood or town where the number is now thousands or tens of thousands and the problem of privacy becomes less of a concern.
Only when there is centralized control of Internet usage is there a privacy issue. Imagine being part of a cooperative with 34 connections to various ISPs, and all of the 12000 users in the cooperative using something like TOR. Standard Internet browser usage would be anonymized completely. The idea that you should be identifiable comes from the fact that there is a way currently to identify you. If your packets arrived to the greater Internet backbone from more than one source and more than one IP, it would be anonymous, and the 'grid' would be truly that. If you and 14999 of your friends decide to make a mesh network using wireless and landline connections at each node, it would be impossible for anyone to identify your network habits. It would also be nearly impossible to cause a network-only outage. Power loss could still be catastrophic. My point is this, if you truly want anonymity, you have to work hard for it. Most people don't want to. Consequences of that are inevitable, unavoidable, costly.
I believe that this *IS* the answer to the problems of network neutrality. Force the powers that be to accept that they cannot regulate private networks by building our own outside of their useless understanding of how things work. When they finally discover that they cannot regulate, things will change a bit. I'm all for calling it a patriot network... might be over the top a bit, but we all need to start creating them.
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We'll miss you. Terribly. Just terribly.