Judge Orders YouTube to Reveal Everyone Who Viewed A Video (mashable.com) 169
"If you've ever jokingly wondered if your search or viewing history is going to 'put you on some kind of list,' your concern may be more than warranted," writes Mashable :
In now unsealed court documents reviewed by Forbes, Google was ordered to hand over the names, addresses, telephone numbers, and user activity of Youtube accounts and IP addresses that watched select YouTube videos, part of a larger criminal investigation by federal investigators.
The videos were sent by undercover police to a suspected cryptocurrency launderer... In conversations with the bitcoin trader, investigators sent links to public YouTube tutorials on mapping via drones and augmented reality software, Forbes details. The videos were watched more than 30,000 times, presumably by thousands of users unrelated to the case. YouTube's parent company Google was ordered by federal investigators to quietly hand over all such viewer data for the period of Jan. 1 to Jan. 8, 2023...
"According to documents viewed by Forbes, a court granted the government's request for the information," writes PC Magazine, adding that Google was asked "to not publicize the request." The requests are raising alarms for privacy experts who say the requests are unconstitutional and are "transforming search warrants into digital dragnets" by potentially targeting individuals who are not associated with a crime based simply on what they may have watched online.
That quote came from Albert Fox-Cahn, executive director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, who elaborates in Forbes' article. "No one should fear a knock at the door from police simply because of what the YouTube algorithm serves up. I'm horrified that the courts are allowing this."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.
The videos were sent by undercover police to a suspected cryptocurrency launderer... In conversations with the bitcoin trader, investigators sent links to public YouTube tutorials on mapping via drones and augmented reality software, Forbes details. The videos were watched more than 30,000 times, presumably by thousands of users unrelated to the case. YouTube's parent company Google was ordered by federal investigators to quietly hand over all such viewer data for the period of Jan. 1 to Jan. 8, 2023...
"According to documents viewed by Forbes, a court granted the government's request for the information," writes PC Magazine, adding that Google was asked "to not publicize the request." The requests are raising alarms for privacy experts who say the requests are unconstitutional and are "transforming search warrants into digital dragnets" by potentially targeting individuals who are not associated with a crime based simply on what they may have watched online.
That quote came from Albert Fox-Cahn, executive director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, who elaborates in Forbes' article. "No one should fear a knock at the door from police simply because of what the YouTube algorithm serves up. I'm horrified that the courts are allowing this."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.
how does this help the investigation? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Watching videos or reading books about taboo topics isn't illegal though. It's like trying to find me guilty of something because I watch a bomb making video or read the Anarchist Cookbook.
It's honestly a waste of time for investigators and it's akin to a fishing expedition. They've no clue who to blame and are now trying to find guilty by association. Sad sad sad state of affairs.
Re:how does this help the investigation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently the feds believe opening a link is a criminal activity that allows them to circumvent the 1st and 5th amendments of unrelated third parties. This is beyond overreach.
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SCOTUS has affirmed multiple times that the 4th amendment is garbage and the police can do all the fishing they want. (for example, 2016 rulling of Utah v. Strieff. a 2008 refusal to hear an appeal of ACLU v. NSA, and many more)
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Being curious isn't illegal. If this even makes it in front of a judge, there isn't a hope in hell that this isn't deemed an unconstitutional search
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Being curious isn't illegal. If this even makes it in front of a judge, there isn't a hope in hell that this isn't deemed an unconstitutional search
It's been in front of a judge. They had a search warrant demanding the information, who do you think authorizes search warrants? Funnily, the authorities are almost always authoritarians and don't see any problem with invasive dragnets since "it's for your own good".
Re:how does this help the investigation? (Score:4, Insightful)
Watching videos or reading books about taboo topics isn't illegal though.
Possessing CSAM is illegal, because since harmed children were involved at some point, lawmakers completely lost their minds over it. It's really difficult to defend something pedophiles are into without being accused of being a sympathizer or a pedophile yourself. There's a lot of nuance involved in trying to clearly explain that while you believe CSAM is a filth that should be wiped from the Earth, criminalizing its possession is problematic in the same way that if you do Uber and one of your riders leaves their illegal drugs in your car, that could be a big problem for you.
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CSAM is specifically illegal ON TOP of being taboo, though.
And these weren't CSAM videos. They were videos about using drones to make maps. Would you open a video promising some cool panoramic drone shots of beautiful areas?
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YouTube actually hosts some material that could qualify as CSAM in some countries. Stuff like videos of African girls dancing topless, or "try on" bikini "reviews" involving under-age children. They are allowed because they aren't exactly pornographic, and in the former case they are a cultural normal for the community they come from. The people uploading them usually turn off the comments because they would otherwise fill up with paedos salivating over the kids.
The global nature of the internet makes these
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You are right. Once you said it I remembered reading something about it.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/... [theverge.com]
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I imagine it's something simple - they probably have a specific individual (or small number of individuals) already in mind, and they want to see if he (or one of them) shows up on the list of viewers reported by Google.
Another possibility is they added something innocuous and specific to the URL's query string they sent him; e.g. something like
https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ?s... [youtu.be]
Of course this would only work on very stupid criminals. But, given the guy is a Bitcoiner, there's admittedly a good chance that's
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This is like getting to search everyone's home because they live near a suspect.
No it is like the police requesting the list of owners of a "White Tacoma truck second generation" because the suspect was seen in one. Thousands of people own such a truck, or have seen the video that a witness reported was playing moments before crime happened. Sometimes the police are lucky with the list, there are very few people in the target age group, or one of them is repeat offender of the crime in question and it's worth requesting a statement from them.
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Then they should divulge their methodology and have only the data associated with their official suspect covered by a warrant.
How do you know they didn't restrict the data? Did you read the warrant request? The summary says over 30,000 people watched the video but the request was only for the people that watched the video during the first 8 days.
In order to get a warrant they had to convince the judge that the information was needed for the investigation and was sufficiently narrow enough to not constitute a fishing expedition. If the videos were intended as a honeypot link because the cryptocurrency launderers were using untra
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If that be the case, then I feel at best Google could be compelled to answer a simple binary enquiry whether a certain i.p. address or person has watched that video, yes or not.
Regardless, I wonder how this works with countries whose data protection laws are stronger. Youtube is allowed to operate in the E.U. because they guarantee to apply E.U. data protection laws to E.U. citizens, but when a U.S.A. court can simply compell them to surrender it this does not mean much though I believe they legally can't e
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(If the answer is in the Forbes article, it is pay-walled.)
No, it's not paywalled. It's perfectly readable. The problem must be on your end.
Hans Kristian Graebener = StoneToss
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Not paywalled? What's the big "Buy access" banner over the top for? Or did you access some site other than forbes.com?
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Not paywalled? What's the big "Buy access" banner over the top for? Or did you access some site other than forbes.com?
As I said, not paywalled. I clicked the link in the blurb. There is no banner over the top. The problem must be on your end.
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Perhaps you didn't actually read the article, but instead, only skimmed it?
I clicked the Forbes link. Initially, it was readable, but after 30 seconds, the text was covered by a dark overlay and it would not scroll. Strangely, even the "Subscribe" button no longer worked.
Re: how does this help the investigation? (Score:2)
Paywall for me also. Anomaly is reproducible.
Re: how does this help the investigation? (Score:2)
Slashdot makes you wait 120 seconds on desktop or some much shorter time on mobile, when it is working correctly.
Comments also post either after 60 seconds or immediately after hitting submit on both depending on whether the site is working correctly, which it usually isn't.
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Perhaps you already reached some Forbes article limits?
Try to delete the cookies and retry.
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Tell us you don't know how paywalls work without telling us you don't know how paywalls work. Mission accomplished.
Re: how does this help the investigation? (Score:3)
It said there were multiple videos, and didn't suggest they were related to anything dodgy themselves. But when you get the viewing logs of these handful of videos, and find the same user account viewed them all, and at about the times you sent the links, you've got your man.
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Unless someone else happened to be looking at videos on that topic, and clicked through a few recommended links. The police probably found the videos the same way, just following what the YouTube algo recommended.
If YouTube is to be believed then the guy may not be in their logs anyway, if they don't record views in incognito mode.
Re: how does this help the investigation? (Score:2)
Send the criminal a YouTube link with a tracker. Subpoena everyone who watched the video at that time. Voila.
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Perhaps they sent a link to a contact that they cannot identify, perhaps through an anonymous messaging service. Then, they see who viewed that link.
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It makes sense to track people viewing something like child porn, or perhaps videos advocating terrorism
Congrats, you've just made running a Tor exit node illegal.
How do they really know it was watched (Score:5, Interesting)
A few times, I've fallen asleep watching some YouTube video on the couch, and woken up an hour or two later... with several videos having been played through while I was basically AFK.
Seems pretty bad to capture data on people watching anything, on a platform that auto-plays random strings of videos based on what it thinks you might want to see. Or, at the very least a pretty useful dataset.
Re:How do they really know it was watched (Score:4, Interesting)
Hell, even just holding the mouse cursor over a video with an interesting title or thumbnail may count as 'viewing'.
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That would make some sense, but how did it end up with over 30K views if it was private? I suspect they didn't think of that and uploaded a regular video. Also, they could see that the video had thousands of views but were still hoping to find the one person they were looking for among all that data. Not to mention the likelyhood that the criminal guy may well browse with Tor, or at least in incognito mode. Or that he never watched it because he doesn't click on links in spam email. They must have been seri
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My experience has been the longer you leave YouTube on autoplay, the weirder the recommended videos become. I watch some of the YouTube scientists/tinkerers/makers and it doesn't take long before the algorithmic rabbit hole goes into the realm of pseudoscience, conspiracy theory, and overunity videos.
Innocent until proven guilty (Score:5, Informative)
It's apparently a rather outdated concept.
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Re:Innocent until proven guilty (Score:5, Insightful)
The real world problem that comes up is that those lists end up as part of police databases of "people of interest" in serious cases. No matter how innocent and harmless you are, once you name is on one of those lists, it's on every list, now and forever. And after a while, the detectives tend to conclude that "well, if he's been on that many suspect lists, he must be guilty of something."
There are ways to dealing with that BS, but it is a real world issue.
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Just try getting to 60 without being on multiples of lists. "One time, a video autoplayed, multiple times, my phone was in an area where a crime was occurring, another time, I was driving next to a car that had an abducted child in it but the RFID readers in the overpass were not calibrated so I was pulled in for questioning, I was in DC and my phone pinged near a meeting of mafia members. etc etc" and by the time you are 60, you are suspected of everything and can be found on every type of list.
But this is
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There is no need to access the information on tens of thousands of people who viewed particular YouTube videos. In fact, it's such an overload of data, it very likely interferes with the investigation.
And they know that. They can't possibly not know that.
So what's their real goal?
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They need more than watched a particular video. There is literally a less than 1 in 30,000 chance of any particular person on that list is even the person that they believe might have committed a crime.
I say LESS than since they can't even be sure that the one person they are interested in actually watched the video while logged in as themselves on YouTube.
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I say LESS than since they can't even be sure that the one person they are interested in actually watched the video while logged in as themselves on YouTube.
Well, that would be why they want the IP address, too. Because they believe that identifies the individual.
These cops have failed on so many levels.
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how so? they aren't charging 30k people, they arre investigating..
It's all fun and games, until you get refused entry on a plane due to belonging to some list. Or failing a background check for your new dream job.
Re:Innocent until proven guilty (Score:4, Insightful)
The real problem is the collection of user tracking data in the first place.
It's the same problem that all social media has. They desire the most advertising pull possible. User behaviour is a biggie for them in that race to the bottom. So much so that it pushes other businesses right out of business.
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The old saw they will parrot is "If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to hide."
I'd bet they'd sing a different tune if they were on that list, though.
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The old saw they will parrot is "If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to hide."
Didn't the feds demand that google keep their request secret? ...
Guess they knew they were doing something wrong
In Soviet Russia, (Score:2)
everyone is guilty.
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Unfortunately, these days being investigated is itself somewhat punitive and can even be expensive. There will be no compensation. For that reason, we really need for them to have a bit more to go on than watched a particular video on YouTube.
Authoritarian defined (Score:2)
Authoritarian : You have rights, until you don't.
Long-live the War on Rights ^H^H^H^H^H Terror. </sarcasm>
Meanwhile, in the comments section on Slashdot (Score:2)
Judge has way too much power (Score:5, Interesting)
And too little accountability. This should cost the judge their job.
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Don't worry, now the judge will be on "some sort of list".
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No, the collecting of user tracking data by the social media companies is just way too tempting a honey pot to not pillage.
Youtube doesn't actually need our personal info to function. It's just an ad money grab that ends up pushing other businesses out of business.
what's illegal ? (Score:3)
Re:what's illegal ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Right, but the tracking of all BMWs is (weirdly, in my opinion) not protected by the US Constitution. The tracking of everyone's media habits is explicitly protected under the First Amendment. Stopping this kind of overreach is why so many librarians across the USA over the last decade stopped saving information about who had previously checked out books and why some went so far as to stop tracking who currently had books checked out, relying on most people to be on their honor to return materials. This is
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They won't jail everyone with a red BMW, it is just the first step in an investigation.
It is clear that you have never owned a red BMW when a red BMW is part of a crime. The way it works if you have a red BMW in this instance is that the prosecutor checks your alibi and if it is not defensible enough, you get charged. Crime solved, you go to prison. Nothing more is needed.
I absolutely do love your faith in the righteousness of our 'justice system'. It is adorable. You should fix that outlook because when Reality smacks you in the face, it is too late and the results are even more unbearable b
This one should (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yeah, I don't know if I want the currently sitting Supreme Court dealing with this. The results are likely to be less privacy protections for me, not more.
Imagine a green-light for some corporation to demand the list of everyone who viewed a copyright-infringing video, so they can shake them down with a "pay or be sued" letters.
Re: This one should (Score:2)
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Yeah no. The supreme court (no capitalization here anymore) is a disgusting joke of partisan politics. It is an utterly and completely failed institution that earns no respect. They could rule on water being wet and I wouldn't agree or care. Roe v Wade was the final straw. There is no honor there.
And the various States behavior regarding this issue makes me think the USA has failed entirely. It will take a while for the results to be felt, but the USA is done as a democratic republic. I have no idea what it
'Google was asked "to not publicize the request."' (Score:5, Interesting)
Ignoring any argument about the legality of the court order: I do understand a desire by FBI to keep this secret while they are doing their investigation. However: once this is done then Google should be mandated to disclose the request. I want this as it keeps the government/FBI/... honest, it stops them doing fishing expeditions that are morally/legally dubious. This disclosure (eg putting on a web page somewhere) should be required for all such information requests after a suitable period.
The government will fight to not do this but unless we know what they do how do we trust them ?
Modern Blu Ray players can snitch too (Score:2)
Phone Numbers? (Score:2)
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You don't have to give it voluntarily, they can mine it out of all the data the are constantly vacuuming up from more sources than you can likely imagine.
If you have an Android phone and it connects to your home WiFi, they can even figure out which of your family members you are spending the most time with. And where each of you works or goes to school, and what your schedules are.
If you use Google, they probably know more about you than you do... If they care to look at the data.
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If you are a YouTube creator, and want your video to have a non-default thumbnail, you have to give YouTube a phone number.
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Full article (Score:5, Informative)
Copied from a reddit post,
https://www.reddit.com/r/techn... [reddit.com]
Feds Ordered Google To Unmask Certain YouTube Users. Critics Say It’s ‘Terrifying.’
In two court orders, the federal government told Google to turn over information on anyone who viewed multiple YouTube videos and livestreams. Privacy experts say the orders are unconstitutional.
Thomas Brewster, Mar 22, 2024
The government orders show an "unconstitutional" overreach by the government, multiple privacy experts said.
Federal investigators have ordered Google to provide information on all viewers of select YouTube videos, according to multiple court orders obtained by Forbes. Privacy experts from multiple civil rights groups told Forbes they think the orders are unconstitutional because they threaten to turn innocent YouTube viewers into criminal suspects.
In a just-unsealed case from Kentucky reviewed by Forbes, undercover cops sought to identify the individual behind the online moniker “elonmuskwhm,” who they suspect of selling bitcoin for cash, potentially running afoul of money laundering laws and rules around unlicensed money transmitting.
In conversations with the user in early January, undercover agents sent links of YouTube tutorials for mapping via drones and augmented reality software, then asked Google for information on who had viewed the videos, which collectively have been watched over 30,000 times.
The court orders show the government telling Google to provide the names, addresses, telephone numbers and user activity for all Google account users who accessed the YouTube videos between January 1 and January 8, 2023. The government also wanted the IP addresses of non-Google account owners who viewed the videos. The cops argued, “There is reason to believe that these records would be relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation, including by providing identification information about the perpetrators.”
“No one should fear a knock at the door from police simply because of what the YouTube algorithm serves up.”
Albert Fox-Cahn, executive director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project The court granted the order and Google was told to keep the request secret until it was unsealed earlier this week, when it was obtained by Forbes. The court records do not show whether or not Google provided data in the case.
In another example, involving an investigation in New Hampshire, the Portsmouth Police received a threat from an unknown male that an explosive had been placed in a trashcan in a public area. The order says that after the police searched the area, they learned they were being watched over a YouTube live stream camera associated with a local business. Federal investigators believe similar events have happened across the U.S., where bomb threats were made and cops watched via YouTube.
They asked Google to provide a list of accounts that “viewed and/or interacted with” eight YouTube live streams and the associated identifying information during specific timeframes. That included a video posted by Boston and Maine Live, which has 130,000 subscribers. Mike McCormack, who set up the company behind the account, IP Time Lapse, said he knew about the order, adding that they related "to swatting incidents directed at the camera views at that time."
Again, it’s unclear whether Google provided the data.
"With all law enforcement demands, we have a rigorous process designed to protect the privacy and constitutional rights of our users while supporting the important work of law enforcement,” said Google spokesperson Matt Bryant. “We examine each demand for legal validity, consistent with developing case law, and we routinely push back against overbroad or otherwise inappropriate demands for user data, including objecting to some demands entirely."
The Jus
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So it seems they like watching others just fine, but they don't like when others watch them...
Another case of "you gave them your name?" (Score:2)
Shouldn't have done that, shouldn't do that.
I use Invidious so go pound sand copper (Score:2)
I am Spartacus (Score:2)
If it's not illegal content, post link. Then everyone watches it.
I'll be the one who watches it anonymously by hopping on the judges mistresses WiFi.
Remember when us libby libs warned (Score:2)
I hate to say I told ya so, but I told ya so.
Opsec Test (Score:2)
This is a pretty clever tactic, actually. This is the virtual of sending your suspect a free movie ticket and watching the theater to see if they show up.
Admittedly, the technology makes this pretty lazy on the part of the cops, and easily defeated if you have good opsec, but still clever.
If you're laundering money or doing crimes online, better make sure you're not stupid enough to give Google your real name or address. There should be zero crossover between your "doing crimes" profile and your real-life o
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That's fine if you send ONE ticket to one person, and then question the ONE person who presents it at the theater.
Just say no. (Score:2)
This will only (Score:2)
This will only drive more "bad guys" to using fake IDs and VPNs or proxies. Many of these people are not dumb, I am sure quite a few roll their own VPN and after a period of time shut it down and move it to another place.
All this does is allow the authorities drag in innocence people for questioning and force many to use a VPN too.
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Great, now everybody with a sock puppet fetish is going to end up on a list
Re:Oh no (Score:5, Insightful)
By taking this amendment at its face value, dragnet searches should be illegal. No dragnets can be warranted because they do not name the person(s). Even if you do not agree with that in our modern age, where is the probable cause that these 30,000 individuals committed a crime? This is just more bullshit, along with FISA courts and the rest of it. I wholly support separating government from our courts completely. We shouldn't allow congress to approve judges or presidents to appoint them. No politicians should be appointing anyone at all. Judges at every level should be elected, and have to be re-elected every so often, so we can get lunatics like this judge off the bench. This better get struck down on appeal if anyone is harmed by it. Also, fuck Google for complying with an ask. Why are users not demanding Google defend our rights with our data they hold jealously? This should inspire a massive boycott of watching YouTube until Google addresses this.
Re:Oh no (Score:5, Interesting)
The US was formed by very very good moral ethical people. They thought they had set up a form of government that would be self-correcting. Over the many years, slowly but surely the very wrong people have gotten into government, policing, etc. People who love power and control. The entire system is so effed and corrupted that good people don't even run for office any more. We choose between bad and worse.
In fact we do elect many judges. Sorry that the effing "news" media loves to harp on the ones that are appointed.
I wish I could agree with you about electing the upper ones that are appointed, but I have no faith in the election system either. It's far far far far too easy to influence the public mind. Internet "social media" spreads lies of all kinds, and the masses latch onto very incorrect things on both sides. It's like the bulk of the US population are actors in a very screwed up sitcom. Something I'm noticing more and more, including on this site, is that young people don't understand sarcasm, so they take some things very literally- things that should be seen as sarcasm / opposite of what they appear to be.
There's a phrase about "the spirit of the law vs. the letter of the law". The people in power, especially the police / prosecutorial types, have no moral compass, and it shows by their complete disregard for the US Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the many civil rights laws, regardless of the spirit or the letter. It's only getting worse, and I see no fix.
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The US was formed by very very good moral ethical people
Who owned slaves. Yes, I know that this is an offtopic. Yes, these people probably thought of themselves as very very good moral ethical people. As probably does the judge who issued this in the name of fighting crime, about himself. I just wanted to remind you and everyone that ethics is relative. Nobody is a saint, and nobody is a devil, either.
Re: Oh no (Score:2)
Re:Oh no (Score:4, Insightful)
This would be ripe for killing your political opponents among other things. You are either trolling or braindead
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Re:Oh no (Score:5, Insightful)
publish the name, hometown, and birthday of every single voter, along with how they voted on every measure on the ballot, for everyone to access like a giant excel file.
This is so, so, so stupid. When I see a post like this I despair for the future of the world. People don't seem to have any understanding of elementary politics anymore. Attacking secret voting doesn't "fix" elections. On the contrary, what it does is break democracy.
Let's say for example that an anti-mafia measure is put on the ballot. What do you think would happen if votes were published for "everyone to access like a giant excel file"? Let me tell you what: the mafia will put word on the street that they'll check the list and break the kneecaps of anybody who voted in favor - and they'll also have all the information needed to find them too, helpfully provided through your big excel file. What will happen then? Nobody who wants to keep his kneecaps will dare to vote for it, and the measure will fail "democratically".
The opposite is true as well: with non-secret ballots people will be able to auction their votes, ensuring the most meritorious (that is, richest) candidate always wins. Is this how you understand democracy? You never heard about voter intimidation, never thought about vote selling? Don't you even realize that one of the reasons why people like Putin or Kim Jong Un "win" their elections with comfortable majorities is that nobody in their countries trusts ballots to be truly secret, and fear retribution if they dare to vote wrong?
The trouble is that many people actually think like this; they'll want to know which of their neighbors is a "trumpist" or a "librul", and they're ready to sacrifice democracy for the sake of tribalism. It's sad and pathetic.
Re:Oh no (Score:5, Insightful)
"Vote like I say or you'll be the first to go at layoff time", "everyone vote like I say or I'll stop offering employee health insurance", "vote like I tell you or I'll cancel your lease and you'll be out on the street", "vote like I tell you to or I'll withhold *whatever*"
Voting cannot be fair unless your vote is private, without "receipts" that can be verified by 3rd parties.
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From the outside, the fact that the political process has been allowed to contaminate your legal process seems to be the cause of a significant number of issues in the US. Judges should be legal experts who rule without political bias.
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I think for the most part that is indeed the case. No matter what you do, there will always be a few bad apples sneak into the bunch, but that's pretty rare.
Not in the USA.
If that were true, the GOP would never had held hundreds of seats vacant until they could appoint "legal experts who rule without political bias"
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For those not in the know, this is the communist voting model. It ensures that government has a list of wrong thinkers.
Secrecy of ballot is THE primary differentiator between liberal and illiberal democracies. Without it, nothing else matters, it's automatically an illiberal system because people can be easily intimidated into "voting correctly".
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No idea what "my Russia" looks like, but in actual Russia it's very much a secret ballot vote. How do we know? US sent actual old school liberal democracy voting experts to set it up after USSR fell. It's still a legacy system from that time. Interference in elections is not at the ballot box, but in society.
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Elections are easy to fix, get rid of the secret ballot, and ad political preference to anti-discrimination laws. Then, publish the name, hometown, and birthday of every single voter, along with how they voted on every measure on the ballot, for everyone to access like a giant excel file. You can see your own name among the multitude of voters and know your own vote was counted accurately, or raise your hand should there be an issue. So too can others. Lastly, you can also know that no "extra" votes / voters were counted.
Sure, thats a good idea. Ends up with you getting targetted ads cos of your political believes. Not to mention hidden discrimination due to your politics. And if someone is an extremist of one party, it becomes easy for them to know your views and target you if they suddenly decide that "something must be done".
As for electing judges, half the population elects leaders cos of sound bites and without even thinking thru the implications of what they are doing. You want your supreme court to be filled with peo
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You realize this would turn every election into a national money match and nothing more. The only outcome is any office of consequence will be sold to the organization that can raise the most money to pay people to vote a certain way. It might not even be national nothing could stop international influences from outright purchasing elections either.
There is no way at all it could ever be control at least not without the complete elimination of all private and anonymous communications; kinda the opposite of
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your "easy fix" not only tries to solve the wrong problem (the mechanical process of voting instead of the systemic disinformation and candidates being rigged in the first place, which was gp's point) but also creates a huge denial of service opportunity. imagine millions of trump voters (or biden voters for that matter, but in light of recent events trump is a more graphic example) challenging an election the next day just because they don't seem to find their name on the list, or they suspect names from n
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This seems like an unreasonable search violation. A plain test reading of the Fourth Amendment actually is telling: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Courts have already ruled that things like web site visitor history are the "papers and effects" of the web site owner, not of the visitors.