Google Hands Over Your Data 88% Of The Time

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Holy cow, Google hands over your information 88% - 90% of the time? Anyone remember back when it was the opposite?

In all, the government, including both local and federal agencies, made 8,438 requests between July and December of last year from Google for data from 14,791 users/accounts. These requests were either part of a warrant, a subpoena, or something else. Google handed over the data 88 percent of the time.
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Umm...well if the information request is attached to a warrant or a subpoena...it isn't like Google has a whole lot of choice in complying.
 
Skripka said:
Umm...well if the information request is attached to a warrant or a subpoena...it isn't like Google has a whole lot of choice in complying.
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Yeah, I'm not sure what the problem is here.
 
I think the real story here is google refused to comply with a warrant/subpoena (the law) 12% of the time.
 
MasonD said:
I think the real story here is google refused to comply with a warrant/subpoena (the law) 12% of the time.
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Or perhaps just unable to. Google's got a crazy large user base.
 
I love how no one clicks through anymore. Google did not comply (for whatever reason) 12% of the time on warrants/subpoenas, can't expect google to fight on the "customers" behalf so fine.

The troubling part is that they complied 90% of the time when a subpoena/warrant wasn't involved.
 
threeclaws said:
The troubling part is that they complied 90% of the time when a subpoena/warrant wasn't involved.
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Why is that troubling? We have no idea what data they were asking for. Many time agencies show up and ask nicely before they go get a subpoena just to save the headache/paperwork. If Google was handing out people's data willy nilly, it would be cause for alarm, no doubt. But this seems like 1,200 accounts were accessed due to some legal request/investigation. Maybe I'm just not fired up today, I don't know.
 
threeclaws said:
I love how no one clicks through anymore. Google did not comply (for whatever reason) 12% of the time on warrants/subpoenas, can't expect google to fight on the "customers" behalf so fine.

The troubling part is that they complied 90% of the time when a subpoena/warrant wasn't involved.
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Oh I clicked through. The problem being that the non-subpoena non-warrant "other" category is a non-descriptively-titled catch-all and we have no idea what kind of legal documents those were. And of the requests for information less than 10% by volume were that ambiguous "other" category.
 
Question is which government departments are requesting the information? IRS, FBI, Homeland security? and for what purpose?

It is like government went to private mails in early 50s to fight communists. Is there a movement that is so powerful, it may threat existence of U.S government? Government has to ignore rights of private citizen?

Or just bunch of bureaucrats want to abuse their power to satisfy their personal curiosity.
 
Flyboat said:
Question is which government departments are requesting the information? IRS, FBI, Homeland security? and for what purpose?

It is like government went to private mails in early 50s to fight communists. Is there a movement that is so powerful, it may threat existence of U.S government? Government has to ignore rights of private citizen?

Or just bunch of bureaucrats want to abuse their power to satisfy their personal curiosity.
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Put it this way...worldwide, with the billions of people that Google served, in 6 months they only got served with 23,000 requests for user data or account info. Your odds of dying in a car crash are probably higher than having your user info being demanded by someone.
 
Flyboat said:
Question is which government departments are requesting the information? IRS, FBI, Homeland security? and for what purpose?

It is like government went to private mails in early 50s to fight communists. Is there a movement that is so powerful, it may threat existence of U.S government? Government has to ignore rights of private citizen?

Or just bunch of bureaucrats want to abuse their power to satisfy their personal curiosity.
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There is no indication that these requests are part of an abuse of power ... the majority were Subpoena requests (which means they were probably related to active court cases) ... most of the rest were warrants (meaning they were part of active police investigations) ... only a small percentage were other requests (which might have been security or background checking related maybe) ... no need to assume any nefarious actions from these requests ;)
 
threeclaws said:
I love how no one clicks through anymore. Google did not comply (for whatever reason) 12% of the time on warrants/subpoenas, can't expect google to fight on the "customers" behalf so fine.

The troubling part is that they complied 90% of the time when a subpoena/warrant wasn't involved.
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It might have something to do with the link not actually going to the article, but exactly the same thing you just read.

It gets old fast.
 
Mr. K6 said:
Why is that troubling? We have no idea what data they were asking for. Many time agencies show up and ask nicely before they go get a subpoena just to save the headache/paperwork. If Google was handing out people's data willy nilly, it would be cause for alarm, no doubt. But this seems like 1,200 accounts were accessed due to some legal request/investigation. Maybe I'm just not fired up today, I don't know.
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Google shouldn't be giving out information to anybody who just happens to ask nicely, if they can get a subpoena let them. Also 1200 accounts were accessed, this year, now that the info is out lets see how many people try and "game" the system by just asking nicely.
 
DeFex said:
It might have something to do with the link not actually going to the article, but exactly the same thing you just read.

It gets old fast.
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I didn't know what you were talking about at first but yeah that IS annoying.

I usually come from the front page and I open the link + comments at the same time so I didn't realize the link in thread just links back to the front page :confused:
 
threeclaws said:
Google shouldn't be giving out information to anybody who just happens to ask nicely, if they can get a subpoena let them. Also 1200 accounts were accessed, this year, now that the info is out lets see how many people try and "game" the system by just asking nicely.
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We don't know that "other" means that it was just asking nicely ... it could have been part of a background check for a security clearance (which wouldn't usually involve either a subpeona or a warrant) ;)
 
Skripka said:
Umm...well if the information request is attached to a warrant or a subpoena...it isn't like Google has a whole lot of choice in complying.
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Except in some cases there is no warrant or subpoena, but the turn over rate is still 90%.
 
jpm100 said:
Except in some cases there is no warrant or subpoena, but the turn over rate is still 90%.
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Well since this just tracks where it is a government request it could be done with the user's permission (background check) ... or there might be other mechanisms under our treaties with foreign governments since this tracking would include any requests made by our government on behalf of a foreign governments treaty based request (from the description in the title of the data table) ... maybe the 10% they turned down were the asking nicely and invalid requests :cool:
 
Google operates under the laws of the United States. If they weren't complying, the headline would read "Anti-American Corporation, Google, Hates Freedom: A Rogue Company Operating Outside the Law."

It's click-bait, and it's portrayed with little to no context, the whole article is all of 100 words.
 
damicatz said:
They have a choice. They can refuse.
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Sure ... if they like fines and jail time themselves ... they did refuse (or were unable to comply) 12% of the time ... that is actually fairly high ... no company is going to risk contempt of court or being charged with obstruction of justice unless they have a really really good reason ;)
 
Google hands over my search results 100% of the time...and does my spell checking too. Hand over what ever you want.
 
The important point to ask is why are people storing stuff on Google that government cares about? Can you say Mittys tax returns?
 
I remember when these guys got started. Now, there just big fat money grubbers getting off on the power. Fuk them.
 
roaf85 said:
The important point to ask is why are people storing stuff on Google that government cares about? Can you say Mittys tax returns?
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Well...they are recording the whole internet in a sense. So you'd have to say "the important point to ask is why are people doing anything on the internet, at all". Google just has to understand the GOV knows what's going on throughout the whole (US) internet and they damn sure want to know what these same people are saying in their emails.

At the end of the day, the GOV is getting too big and corruption is totally ensuing. When EVERYONE looks like the bad guy to you, it's time to look in the mirror.
 
I can't believe all the people trying to defend, excuse google.

I think its because the next logical question is 'why the change?'. And it comes down to whether the goverment has worn them down in general? Or is Google cherry picking which administrations they will cooperate with regardless of the purpose?
 
With absolutely no google software installed and a good host file....things like this aren't such a concern. I'm not going to stop google from seeing my IP though (due to the way the internet works), that can't be helped and ya just deal with it.

I will only use google for searches and for maps. Nothing else google has is of value to me.
 
jpm100 said:
I can't believe all the people trying to defend, excuse google.

I think its because the next logical question is 'why the change?'. And it comes down to whether the goverment has worn them down in general? Or is Google cherry picking which administrations they will cooperate with regardless of the purpose?
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I can't believe some people are suggesting that Google would be a better company if they were in blatant violation of US laws and treaties ;)

These are general statistics so it is hard to glean too much information from them ... it is possible a large number of these requests were related to government investigations of Google themselves ... most of these requests are done using the approved legal methods (Subpoena and Warrant) ... we don't know what they other category was (it could be with user permission for all we know)

irregardless of what a small population seems to think, the USA is NOT China or Iran :p ... I actually prefer when companies follow the law defined by the government unless they have a really good reason not to :cool:
 
kbrickley said:
... I actually prefer when companies follow the law defined by the government unless they have a really good reason not to :cool:
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Agreed.
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However I do ponder who actually breaks more laws, too big to fail (international) corporations or the US GOV? I guess I'm just curious for an answer to this.
 
MasonD said:
Agreed.
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However I do ponder who actually breaks more laws, too big to fail (international) corporations or the US GOV? I guess I'm just curious for an answer to this.
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Well, since the government is crafty enough to exempt themselves from many of the laws they pass for corporations (conflict of interest, insider trading, etc) I would guess that corporations "break" more laws ... now if you were asking which of those two groups was the most corrupt ... that is a tougher choice to make :D
 
prndll said:
With absolutely no google software installed and a good host file....things like this aren't such a concern. I'm not going to stop google from seeing my IP though (due to the way the internet works), that can't be helped and ya just deal with it.

I will only use google for searches and for maps. Nothing else google has is of value to me.
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Who cares if google sees your IP.

Want me to type in my IP address? An IP address is meaningless without the address/personal information attached to it.

You are always going find some information out there whether you have a DNS name or an IP address if you open your servers up to the world wide web or without VPN blah blah access.

Christ I don't think many of you have even worked in a environment that is regularly cyber attacked.

As long as you aren't typing your credit card information into IMs or clicking on .exes or basically not a moron you should be fine.

No one is out there saying "hacker guyz we all need to go after this John Smith guy".

And by the way I would say .000001 percent of consumers maybe have fort knox information.

Half of you people act like you can't upload your information to google because you have government documents or some shit.
 
kbrickley said:
Well, since the government is crafty enough to exempt themselves from many of the laws they pass for corporations (conflict of interest, insider trading, etc) I would guess that corporations "break" more laws ... now if you were asking which of those two groups was the most corrupt ... that is a tougher choice to make :D
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Here we go again.

Are governments shady? Sure

Are corporations shady? Sure

But think about where you could be living right now. I would say the US government is far better than half of the middle eastern, mexico, Chinese governments right now.

I don't any of you guys truly know the corruption that exists in other countries. Be thankful that you live in a country where you have minimal fear of the government actually killing you tomorrow.
 
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