Tech Companies Urges US House to Protect the Privacy of Americans' Browsing and Search History (techspot.com) 49
While reinstating the PATRIOT Act, the U.S. Senate blocked an amendment which would've shielded Americans' browsing and search histories from warrantless searches.
But that fight may not be over, reports TechSpot: [S]everal tech companies including Mozilla, Reddit, Twitter, and Patreon have co-signed a letter asking the House of Representatives to tidy up this mess. The House still needs to pass the bill for it to become law, and they can force the inclusion of the amendment. They vote this week.
"Our users demand that we serve as responsible stewards of their private information, and our industry is predicated on that trust," says the letter. "Americans deserve to have their online searches and browsing kept private, and only available to the government pursuant to a warrant."
The amendment has also received support from dozens of civil rights and liberties groups, including the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Human Rights Watch. They co-signed a separate letter last week...
"[S]upport for the underlying policy is now abundantly clear," argues the second letter, "both within Congress and among thepublic: the FBI should not be allowed to use the PATRIOT Act to surveil Americans' online activity without a warrant."
But that fight may not be over, reports TechSpot: [S]everal tech companies including Mozilla, Reddit, Twitter, and Patreon have co-signed a letter asking the House of Representatives to tidy up this mess. The House still needs to pass the bill for it to become law, and they can force the inclusion of the amendment. They vote this week.
"Our users demand that we serve as responsible stewards of their private information, and our industry is predicated on that trust," says the letter. "Americans deserve to have their online searches and browsing kept private, and only available to the government pursuant to a warrant."
The amendment has also received support from dozens of civil rights and liberties groups, including the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Human Rights Watch. They co-signed a separate letter last week...
"[S]upport for the underlying policy is now abundantly clear," argues the second letter, "both within Congress and among thepublic: the FBI should not be allowed to use the PATRIOT Act to surveil Americans' online activity without a warrant."
Exclusive access rights (Score:1)
Only Google should have access to your search and browser history.
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Google has never had access to my browser history.
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That's what you think. In reality, they have a massive amount of backend analytics that many sites use, and they use various techniques to identify visitors.
You may not have a google account, use chrome and ever visit google's site, and they still get most of your browsing history, linked to you.
Re:Exclusive access rights (Score:4, Informative)
Umatrix and noscript block a very high proportion of that stuff.
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Again, if you think that blocking "high portion of that stuff" means they don't have your detailed browsing history, you're naive.
Re:Exclusive access rights (Score:4, Interesting)
Again, if you think that blocking "high portion of that stuff" means they don't have your detailed browsing history, you're naive.
Naive person here. I use a privately set-up vpn, browse with Firefox, block with noscript. Can you please educate me as to the precise mechanisms you know about that google is using to track my browsing?
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I can't speak for how you personally use noscript, but I did look into it, and there is a known workaround for blocking google-analytics, so long as you're allowing javascript requests to the domain you're visiting. Which, let's face it, you have to in order to use the web these days.
https://www.freecodecamp.org/n... [freecodecamp.org]
I use Firefoxes anti-fingerprinting feature, but never actually tested, it silly me. Apparently it's...purely false security and worthless, at least on mine. I'll look into further mitigation.
ht [eff.org]
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Noscript isn't an ad blocker. It is a script blocker. So if you don't allow any javascript to run on any domains....
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Don't block, poison. Start using a plugin that visits thousands of sites constantly to mask which ones you really visit.
It's WAY worse for statistics to have bogus data than having only very little data. Little data that's genuine is still useful. Poisoned data where you can't tell genuine data from bogus data can only be thrown out.
Re: Exclusive access rights (Score:2)
Even if you answered no to all of those, they buy data both from internet companies and brick n mortar about everyone. They know more about you than you do.
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Only Google should have access to your search and browser history.
Yes, totally. Because we can all trust the privacy rapists [urbandictionary.com] known as Google/Alphabet. Totally, man!
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Better them, than them AND whatever spooks want a gagged, warrantless copy...
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Better them, than them AND whatever spooks want a gagged, warrantless copy...
Better yet: no-fucking-body. Period.
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Oh, I agree. Good luck with that.
Re: Exclusive access rights (Score:2)
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Re: Exclusive access rights (Score:1)
Google only sells it in bulk.
Virtue Signalling, or too expensive? (Score:1)
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Both... definitely both. Virtue Signaling is a big deal in business. In fact that is why charity is so big, there is very little else you can do that is a bigger virtue signal than publicly presenting someone a check and of course... getting a tax break for it.
They get to appeal to the ignorant while they appeal to the politicians. It's a win, win, win, win, lose...
Guess who the losers are... that's right... citizens. Government Wins, Big Business Wins, Info Brokers Wins, and Identity Theft Markets win.
You do know $10,000 is more than $2,100? (Score:3)
> that is why charity is so big, there is very little else you can do that is a bigger virtue signal than publicly presenting someone a check and of course... getting a tax break for it.
I'm sure you're not suggesting the reason to give $10,000 is to pay $2,100 less in taxes. That would be very silly.
Yes, you don't pay taxes on money you give away - as far as taxes it's as if you never got the money. Unless your tax rate is over 100%, giving away money still means you have less money.
But if you're bad
Re:You do know $10,000 is more than $2,100? (Score:5, Interesting)
"I'm sure you're not suggesting the reason to give $10,000 is to pay $2,100 less in taxes. That would be very silly."
If you are poor or do not have a lot of money... you are right... but consider the following.
https://www.vox.com/future-per... [vox.com]
It amazes me that people just keep thinking that the system is not rigged... it has been rigged many times over. And it has been rigged over so well that many poor people completely support it while thinking they are standing against the man.
My personal favorite is when they all cheered for the taxes on big oil.... never realizing that people buying oil products are going to be paying the taxes... not those businesses. And that is your average ignorant poor person. They cheer for rich people getting taxes left and right and bitch when the rich restructure earnings for themselves and increase the wealth gap. Maybe you have not figured out who is in control yet.
... and $100 million is more than $37 million (Score:3)
Yes people who have more money can give more money.
If Bill Gates gives away $100 million today, he doesn't have to pay the $37 million tax on that income.
I know some people don't like math, but I promise this math won't be too hard.
Scenario #1:
Gates keeps his $100 million and pays $37 million tax. How much of the $100 million does he have left after paying $37 million tax?
Scenario #2:
Gates gives away the $100 million. He doesn't pay tax on the $100 million he no longer has. How much of the $100 million d
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Btw the answer is:
Giving $100 million to somebody in order to avoid giving $37 million to the IRS would be really, really stupid. Moronic. Bill Gates may be a lot of things, but he's not a moron.
You don't give all the money to avoid giving a little bit of it.
You give because that's what we're here for - to love one another. That's why you do it.
2,000 years ago, the Jews had hundreds, perhaps thousands of laws, which were considered "religious laws". (Today we still have many of them, categorized as the h
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"Scenario #2:
Gates gives away the $100 million. He doesn't pay tax on the $100 million he no longer has. How much of the $100 million does he have left after he gives away the whole amount?"
All of it. He gives it to the foundation whose disbursements he controls. Then he directs the foundation to make investments which profit him personally. Those profits are capital gains which are taxed at a lower rate than other earnings.
You were saying?
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You were saying?
~drinkypoo
So I says, to Mable, I says... https://www.goodreads.com/work... [goodreads.com]
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Haha. That made me chuckle.
Of course I don't think one could even theoretically, in a conspiracy theorist sort of way, point to any instance where giving billions of dollars to libraries, to Planned Parenthood, etc is "investments that benefit Bill Gates personally". Maybe you're thinking of the Obama foundation, which spends a lot of money on Barak and Michelle Obama. One might find it distasteful for the Gates Foundation to fund an organization that promotes cutting a baby's head off during birth, but I
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In other words... (Score:3)
Re:In other words... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, because showing you an ad for the thing you just searched for is obviously the same thing as imprisoning you in a rape cell for 5-30 years for sharing the same hobby as a murderer, and coincidentally ordered the same lego set on the same day as them.
I'll give you your break once you find some perspective.
did that even happen ? (Score:2)
If that did not happen it is a strawman pure and simple. The fact is, the biggest invader of privacy ARE the tech companies. Furthermore that we want to be protected from illegal search DOES NOT mean that those tech giant are Not hypocrite when they pretend to like privacy: both actually are true at the same time.
Re:Not at all (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, I was just starting to warm up to the Firefox online account concept - share your history, bookmarks, etc between all your devices... when they went and removed the option for secret-key encryption.
Yes, I get it, some people lost their keys and were annoyed that it meant losing access to their account, and you want to be able to unlock it for them Fine - give us the *option* of backing up our key with you as well. Make it the default if you must. But no - instead they remove the secure option entirely so that you MUST trust them with full access to all your account information. That decision cost them a whole lot of respect in my eyes, and cost me cross-platform browsing integration. I still use them, since the (compatible) alternative is basically my choice of third-party wrappers around Google ("Don't. Be evil.") Chrome. But I mourn the days when they were actually meaningful champions of privacy.
Some might say that I'm trusting them with my browsing history, etc. anyway so long as I use them as my browser - but to my mind there's a big difference between trusting them not to collect information when I've told them not to, and trusting them to be able to keep collected information safe against hackers, phishers, and government "requests".
And I don't even have anything to hide - I just believe we all need to do our part to defend our privacy if we want any hope of defending our freedom. Ubiquitous surveillance is far too easily abused for liberty to tolerate it.
FBI (Score:2)
Re:FBI (Score:4, Informative)
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The FBI has jurisdiction to investigate domestic crimes, including foreigners colluding in terrorist acts within the USA. The CIA is different.
~paralumina01
Jurisdiction isn't the only consideration. The FBI has CSI technique the CIA does not and this is why the FBI can be invited to investigate abroad, like some bombings in Saudi Arabia for instance.
The CIA has employees, agents, and most importantly, assets. Assets aren't necessarily aware they are assets. Nobody knows what proportion are and are not aware of their use to goverment policy for very good reasons, but mostly because government policy shifts over time-- not its primary objective, to secure US in
who is IMHO and why does he matter? (Score:2)
Translation (Score:3)
Damn freeloaders, if you want that data, cough up the dough! We ain't that expensive, ya know?
The height of hypocrisy (Score:2)
Tech companies protest loudly about government searches as an intrusion upon personal privacy. Yet, they greedily seek every opportunity to go way beyond government searches for their own business interests. These tech companies intrude on privacy in much grander ways, with no warrants or other restraints, sell out our privacy to other companies for yet more profit, fight laws and regulations to reign in their privacy invasions, issue propaganda to whitewash their abuses, and finally have the gall to argu