Do I need to hit go live or
you can...
Welcome back to This Week in Privacy,
our weekly series where we discuss the
latest updates with what we've been
working on within the Privacy Guides
community and this week's top stories in
the data privacy and cybersecurity space,
including Discord's new age verification
push.
Both Google and Amazon doorbells are in
the mainstream headlines and a reminder
about DHS social media surveillance.
I'm Jordan and this week I'm joined by
Nate.
Hello.
Privacy Guides is a nonprofit which
researches and shares privacy related
information and facilitates a community on
our forum and matrix where people can ask
questions and get advice about staying
private online and preserving their
digital rights.
Now let's get straight into the biggest
news in privacy and security from the past
week.
Alrighty.
Thank you so much, Jordan.
Our first story this week,
we're going to talk about Discord's new
age verification push.
A lot of you guys may have already
seen this.
This has really been making waves online,
or at least in a lot of the
spaces I'm in, which includes Discord.
So maybe this is a bit of a
sampling bias,
but this has definitely been in the
headlines.
So earlier this week,
discord announced um i mean really that's
that's it they announced that moving
forward all accounts are by default going
to be treated as teen accounts which means
that you will be severely limited in
certain function functionality excuse me
um i have read so so many articles
this week so let me try and see
if i can
see if this one mentions, um,
what the restrictions are on a teenage
account.
I mean,
obviously there's things like if an,
if a server is marked as like.
Um,
which I don't know how obvious this is
to some of you guys, but like,
I'm in like a true crime server,
for example.
So that would be plus,
so it's not just porn.
It could be anything.
And there's also like certain messages
won't go through by default and they get
filtered and stuff like that.
I'm not seeing it here.
But anyways, yeah,
it basically just restricts your account
by default.
However, you can age verify.
There's kind of a lot to this story
and I'm having a hard time putting things
in the proper order here.
But
So it's,
let's just go ahead and say this.
Some people have accused Discord of
backpedaling because they started,
there was another article that came out
about midweek where Discord basically
emphasized that
You don't necessarily have to submit ID
because they're going to try and verify
your age automatically.
That was part of the initial announcement.
So personally,
I don't know if I would call that
backpedaling,
but I get where you're coming from that
like they definitely put more emphasis on
that in the middle of the week when
this got met with a lot of pushback.
They were like, no, guys, relax.
They said most people won't have to verify
their IDs.
Um, so let me,
let me talk about that part real quick.
Um, by default,
discord is going to try to guess your
age using account metadata.
So that would be things like how long
you've had the account,
what sort of games you play,
what time of day you're generally active
and stuff like that.
If they get it wrong is when you
will have to verify ID.
or if they can't determine your age.
Or I guess more accurately,
you won't have to,
you'll just get reverted to a teen
account.
And if you're fine with that,
then you're fine with that.
But depending on what kind of servers
you're in, again, that may get you booted.
So this is where things start to get
dicey, as you can imagine.
So this article we've chosen here from Ars
Technica,
I chose this one specifically not because
of the headline,
but because this one also has a really
deep dive into Discord's verification
system and how it's supposed to work.
Apparently...
There's two ways of doing it.
One of them is a biometric scan,
which they claim will be totally on
device.
It'll never leave your device.
It's like a video selfie.
And then if your phone determines that you
are eighteen,
it just sends a yes or no back
to the server.
And as you can imagine,
this is going to affect younger users most
and people who look young, because I mean,
I obviously look way above eighteen,
but I feel like I've told this story
somewhere before.
When I was in college in my English
class,
I sat behind a girl that I swear
to God,
I thought she was like twenty and
apparently she was forty.
So some people just don't look their age
and especially when you get younger and
it's like, OK,
the line between seventeen and eighteen is
literally a day.
So how's Discord supposed to guess that
accurately?
I guess I'm getting ahead of myself.
But anyways,
so you can do the face scan,
which if they are to be believed,
stays on your device.
It just sends a yes or no back
to the server.
If the face scan doesn't work,
then you have to submit ID,
which they say is deleted as soon as
possible.
But they don't really give guarantees on
what that is.
They just say like,
we promise we delete it as soon as
we're done.
That might be immediately.
That might be a couple days.
It's really hard to know.
And for those of you who missed it,
I just do really quick want to address
the headline for audio listeners.
The headline of this article we chose is
Discord faces backlash over age checks
after data breach exposed to seventy
thousand IDs.
That happened last year.
I want to say late last year,
but it may have been early last year.
Oh, no, no, no.
In October, our senior security editor,
Dan Gooden, joined others,
warning the best advice is to assume they
have had their data stolen.
So I think that was late last year.
Anyways,
I did a second look into that story
in preparation for this one,
and I think that was also the result
of â
What's the word I'm looking for?
The UK's Online Safety Act.
Discord already did this once over in the
UK.
Those seventy thousand IDs were part of
the appeals process.
That's what I'm looking for.
That's that's where these came from is
people who were submitting appeals,
submitted their ID.
And I'm assuming because they had so many
IDs to go through and there was such
a backlog that required them to, you know,
they stuck had a backlog of IDs,
a stack of IDs.
That's what I was looking for.
Yeah,
that was also with a different provider.
I don't know that that really matters.
This whole breakdown here from Ars
Technica is really interesting because
it's almost like a Matryoshka doll of
different companies.
Like they say that they're going through
KID,
but then KID passes it on to somebody
else.
Where did it go?
Privately.
KID does not receive personal data from
Discord when performing age insurance.
And then it's â yeah, it was weird.
It's like every â again,
ours has this really good write-up here
where like when you look at one company's
privacy policy,
they say that they work with this other
company who works with another company.
And it's â I don't know.
It's really weird.
But eventually it does lead back to this
company in the EU who says that they
employed a double-blind implementation
where basically they never know what your
account is.
They're just verifying your age.
Yeah.
And there's something wrong with the CSS
here that some of this text is black
on my screen for some reason,
so it blends in with the background.
But yeah, it's a whole thing.
I think that kind of sums up the
facts of the story.
This has faced immense backlash.
I've already seen one script floating
around that I don't know if it works
or not,
but it claims that it basically sends the
yes check back to KID and verifies you
now.
We don't know if Discord is going to
invalidate that by the time March rolls
around,
because I think this is supposed to take
place in March.
Some of the servers I'm in,
we've definitely been having discussions
about other platforms.
And, oh, man.
I think, unfortunately,
the best platform â and I'll say why
I say unfortunately in a second.
I think, unfortunately,
the best platform we have right now is
Matrix.
And I mean nothing against the Matrix
people,
but it's â and they even admit it.
They have their own blog post.
I'll see if I can pull it up
while I'm talking here.
But they have their own blog post where
they're kind of welcoming people who are
joining Matrix and Element for the first
time.
And they admit that they're like,
we're not really a drop-in replacement
right now because they've been so busy
prioritizing.
They have a lot of public service
contracts in â
europe and that's what's been paying the
bills to hire more developers which i
totally get but that also means that they
haven't really had the time to um to
dedicate towards man i'm really not
finding this blog right now i tried
element and matrix i'll find it later but
they haven't had the time to really
prioritize uh some of the things that you
would expect if you're coming from discord
for the first time things like custom
emojis things like uh streaming games
voice chat i think some servers support
voice chat but not all of them so
And they also admit in their blog post
that they are also, as a UK entity,
trying to figure out the best way to
implement age verification to comply with
UK law.
They do mention that in their blog post
that some servers may still have to do
that depending on where they're located.
Yeah,
I guess I think that's kind of all
I've got at the moment regarding this.
Matrix is not perfect,
but the thing it has going for it,
I guess,
is to kind of finish that thought is
it is fully open source.
There is end to end encryption available,
especially in DMs.
They're one on one are default.
They can be turned on in rooms if
you feel you need that for some reason.
It can be decentralized.
You can host your own server.
So, I mean,
it's definitely a step up from a privacy
perspective.
It's just,
I think it would be a tough sell
to get a lot of longtime Discord users
onto Matrix because of the feature set
that it's missing.
But I've, again,
I'm in some servers where we've been
looking into some other stuff and like all
of the other things that I see or
I have seen personally that are like,
that look really good,
that look like they might actually be a
good replacement from an end user
perspective,
it's just repeating the cycle.
They're all like,
they just raised nine million dollars in
VC funding, or they're closed source,
they're this, they're that, and it's like,
cool, so in five years,
we're gonna be right back here where we
started.
I think that's kind of all I've got
for now.
Jordan,
did you have any thoughts on this story?
Yeah.
So I think the first thing I want
to talk about here is, I guess,
the privacy concerns with this,
because I've seen some people saying that,
you know, it's not,
they're not requiring ID from everybody.
So that's okay.
Right.
But I think one issue with that idea,
right, is the way these like age,
basically they use some sort of age
estimation technology,
which is like
based on a data set of what people
look like at a certain age, right?
And it's kind of been like a long
studied thing where we've been able to
find out that these age estimation tools
are not very good at estimating different
types of people.
Like for example, it's people of color
who are women,
like there's been like studies that have
been done on that.
And it doesn't,
it doesn't estimate age correctly for
those people.
And, you know, the least,
the more of a minority you are,
the less chance it is to be correct.
Right.
So it's,
it's kind of problematic in that way.
And also these platforms have to
basically, you know,
you have to show your face and submit
a biometric scan, which,
These platforms say that that scan is not
saved or used to...
you know, improve their services.
But I think at a certain point we're
seeing, you know, all these people,
like I remember last year when people were
facing the discord age estimation
technology,
a lot of people were using death stranding
like photo mode to bypass it.
But I think that when,
when they have a lot of these,
you know,
people using video games and stuff like
that,
we're going to find that a lot of
these people,
companies are going to have to start you
know actually saving some of that because
there'll be people bypassing it with that
technology so they need to be able to
control that right um so I think the
problem is still there even if you say
you know not everyone will have to um
I think
It's also important to mention that this
was only to access, like,
not safe for work channels and servers.
So I don't think your access to the
entirety of Discord would be restricted.
You just wouldn't be able to access not
safe for work channels,
which I think that's another debate.
Like,
what exactly is classified as not safe for
work?
Because, you know,
I think that could be...
deemed different for a lot of people.
And, you know,
Discord could decide to set a server to
not say for work,
which could allow which could kind of
force people to verify their ID.
So Discord is in sort of like a
very centralized position, right?
Where
like Nate talked about,
matrix is a decentralized alternative
where if the default matrix.org home
server decided to implement age
verification,
then you would actually have the choice to
switch to a different home server which
wasn't applying the same restrictions,
right?
So
I think Matrix is definitely a step in
the right direction,
but I think it's very much missing a
lot of the key features that Discord has.
And, you know,
a lot of people who use Discord rely
on all the time.
Like, you know, people do...
like they watch movies together on Discord
or they want to screen share to their
friends or be in a massive group call.
And as far as I know,
a lot of those features in Matrix are
not as mature or very patchy or not
really applied in the same way that
Discord does it.
So
I think a lot of people are going
to be kind of unhappy with matrix as
a replacement to discord, um,
which I think is just highlighting another
issue where I think we need more diversity
between platforms.
Like I think it would be better if
we had, uh,
you know,
more alternatives to Discord that actually
took privacy concerns seriously,
because Discord is like always not really
been a platform that has cared about data
privacy.
And we can kind of tell now that
that's never really been a priority
because they're fine with pushing forward
with all these age checks, right?
So I don't know, it's kind of,
an unfortunate situation to be in for a
lot of people because, you know,
some people rely on these channels and
servers and it's going to basically mean
either give up your ID or
miss out on that entire community,
which for some people is just not
possible.
So I do think this is sort of
very coercive.
It's sort of forcing people into giving up
biometric scans of their faces.
And even then,
your biometric scan of your face may not
actually approve you.
So you might actually have to upload ID
as well.
So overall,
I think this is a very bad move
from a lot of companies that are trying
to push this now.
It's only going to be a matter of
time.
Like last year,
we saw the breach with seventy thousand
IDs from Discord.
And I think it's only a matter of
time before these KID companies get
compromised in some way.
It's a treasure trove of data for hackers
to go after because they are dealing with
such sensitive information.
Um, so I think it's, I dunno,
I'm really annoyed by this.
I think more people should be talking
about it.
Um,
I did put together some posts on social
media,
kind of pushing people towards
alternatives for their communities.
Um,
so I don't know if anyone saw that,
but, um, I think it's,
it's also a problem, uh,
with a lot of these, you know,
community setups where you need to
basically
advocate for these platforms in the
entirety of the community,
because if not everyone moves,
then you basically,
you're not going to be able to use
the platform.
So, you know,
it's kind of a frustrating space to be
in right now.
But yeah, what do you think, Nate?
Yeah, for sure.
In regards to your post, actually,
that was included in the newsletter this
week,
So if you all are subscribed to the
newsletter,
you definitely got a direct link to that
on Mastodon.
And I also included a link to our
social media tab on the website for other
platforms that people could share it at.
But I just had a couple of quick
thoughts.
So you're right about in terms of what
servers are defined as and up.
In some cases, users can pick that.
When you make the server,
you can check if it's eighteen and up
or not.
But Discord does also have a mechanism to
automatically determine that the server is
eighteen and up.
So on the one hand, it's like, well,
it's only eighteen up if people choose to
make it that.
But on the other hand,
Discord does have like an automated way.
So you're definitely...
You make a really good point there where
that could turn into a problem later.
This is the same issue we've cited with
things like on-device scanning of photos,
right?
Sure,
right now it could be used for totally
legitimate things like detecting CSAM and
abuse,
but what happens when an authoritarian
government gets their hands on it and
says, oh,
now we want to identify people who were
at a protest and stuff like that.
So it could potentially be a slippery
slope for sure.
Um, real quick,
I did actually go and find the
restrictions for teen accounts.
Where did that go?
Um, so there's content filters.
We talked about that with the servers, um,
or no, no, no, uh,
sensitive content will be blurred by
default and you will need to be eight
quote unquote age assured in order to
unblur sensitive content or turn off the
setting.
Age gate spaces,
we already talked about that.
Channel servers and app commands.
Direct messages from people a user may not
know are routed to a separate inbox by
default,
and access to modify this setting is
limited to age-assured users.
People will receive warning prompts for
friend requests from users they may not
know,
and only age-assured adults may speak
onstage in servers.
I don't even know what onstage is,
but yeah.
And then, yeah, real quick,
I also found you sent me that Matrix
blog post, thank you.
And some of the things they say that
they're missing is they're missing things
like game streaming, push to talk,
voice channels, custom emojis,
extensible presence,
richer hierarchical moderation, et cetera.
And not to make this like a Matrix
hate session,
but I think to me personally,
I ran my own community a couple of
years ago and that was by a wide
margin.
The biggest thing that I struggled with
was that
The moderation tools in matrix are
honestly to call them bare bones as being
generous because it's the things you would
expect on any given platform.
Like you can ban a user from the
room,
you can create moderators and you can set
moderator permissions.
And that's about it.
And then, and I mean, to be fair,
I would argue discord's built in
moderation tools are also absolute trash,
but discord also has a lot of third
party bots that are really good.
At least some of them are really good.
And again,
I'm not trying to crap on the matrix
people, but like the matrix bots,
and I'm told,
I don't know if this has changed because
I haven't really been active on matrix in
a long time,
but at the time that I was struggling
with matrix,
I was told that the bot makers were
really hindered by the APIs they could get
from matrix.
So for example,
On Discord,
there are bots that will automatically
kick somebody out if their account is
under a certain age.
Like if the account was made less than
a week ago or two weeks ago,
automatically boot it,
which is a great way to get rid
of spammers because most of them just make
a new account and join.
At the time that I was active on
Matrix,
the bot makers couldn't access that
information.
So they're like,
we don't know how old an account is.
We can't tell the bot to boot anybody
who's under a certain age, which is...
I don't know.
And that's another concern of mine
because...
that was the big complaint with mastodon
at least as i remember it when elon
bought twitter and everybody was leaving
twitter and i remember a lot of people
saying like oh there's not any good
moderation tools on mastodon a lot of
minority people don't feel safe there
I don't know how Twitter was not worse
than that.
No, it was blue sky.
Everybody was going to blue sky because
apparently blue sky had moderation tools.
I don't know.
But anyways, it's like,
I feel like it's the same thing with
matrix.
Like if there are not these tools to
keep your users and your community safe,
nobody's going to stick around there.
Like I,
I got my brother on matrix for a
while and he left after a while because
he's like, yeah,
I got tired of seeing people spam rooms
with CSAM.
like the yeah all right um anyways it's
just not a good landscape unfortunately i
think um oh and then there was sorry
real quick there's one last thing i do
want to mention jonah raised our raised a
point in the chat earlier this week that
some people think this is about discord
getting ready for ipo because discord is
getting ready to go public and
I mean, this totally tracks in my book.
Some people think that this is Discord
trying to verify how many actual humans
they have on their platform.
Because if they can show like, hey,
ninety percent of our users are real
people and we verified them and we know
that that makes their company that much
more valuable.
So I just want to make sure we
we presented that argument.
Or that point.
Yeah, I don't know.
I think a lot of people that have
been using like I was one of the
original people who was like using Discord
back in, I think, twenty fifteen.
And I feel like back then it was
a much better platform than it is now,
even though it had a lot less features,
which is kind of unfortunate because I
think since about, you know,
twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen,
they've started adding all these like
obviously they have to try and make money.
This isn't like they've been dumping money
into keeping this chat service alive,
keeping it freemium.
I think it's kind of inevitable,
inevitable that they're going to
make it like really crap and add a
bunch of annoying uh paid stuff um so
i mean it definitely makes sense that
they're trying to verify everyone's a real
person um but i think one one thing
we should definitely uh check in here is
we we did get quite a few comments
just while we were discussing stuff here
so um i think i want to cover
this one here from blind goose on twitter
um
I think Apple and Google need to work
on a digital ID where they verify your
ID card, store it on your phone.
They can with permission share just your
age or more identifiable information if
needed.
When applying for a credit card,
the storage can be a hundred percent on
device,
meaning not even Apple or Google servers
have that data.
I mean, I think that would be.
I mean,
that would be the ideal situation for a
digital ID,
but I think there's other issues with
digital ID systems.
Like, for instance,
we've already seen this a little bit,
but a lot of websites that are being
restricted aren't actually technically not
safe for work or not safe for children.
So it's
it's,
it's gotta be done in a way that
I mean,
I would prefer if it didn't exist because
you know,
there's also that fact that there'll be
Apple and Google is kind of becoming the,
uh, what do you call it?
Um,
the people who decide gatekeepers yeah the
people who decide if you're actually able
to access something um and i think that's
probably not the greatest outcome um we
should be trying to push for things to
be freely available um same thing with the
discord communities you know um so
I think it would be good if it
was the only option,
but it isn't the only option.
There's also the option of not having age
verification.
So maybe we should do that instead.
But that's my thought on it.
And did you see any other questions here
that we should probably quickly cover?
Yeah,
there's one other I want to â or
two, but one of them is really quick.
And real quick,
I just want to say I agree with
you.
Like this is one of the things that
frustrates me so much about age
verification is we could have â we
absolutely have the technical ability to
have solutions.
that are much more privacy respecting,
like what discord is proposing here,
where like everything stays on device and
all they get is a yes or no
token.
And I'm not saying face scan.
And like you said,
there's definitely other problems with age
verification, but it's like,
this is just one more piece of the
puzzle.
It's like,
why do we always have to go for
the worst possible solution?
But, um,
Real quick,
I wanted to point out Anonymous Thirty
Five pointed out, he said,
so they have a mechanism for when an
adult is put in an underage category.
But what happens when Discord accidentally
makes a child overage, which is.
I think a really good point that I
haven't heard before,
and I don't know if it's necessarily like
a big part of this argument,
but I certainly think it's a really good
point.
Like what happens when they mess up in
a.
Sixteen year old gets access to porn
servers now.
And yeah, that's, that's not great.
And then the last thing I wanted to
highlight is one of our YouTube users
says,
are there any alternatives to discord?
I mean,
unfortunately I do still think that matrix
is the best alternative we have.
And I know I feel a little bad
because we've sat here and talked about
all the things that matrix is missing,
but you know,
you mentioned that you used to use discord
back when it was still a lot more
bare bones.
And yeah,
I think I saw a similar statement from
somebody else.
I can't find it now.
But I think the issue is that there's
this concept in psychology called the
hedonic treadmill where basically if you
make any amount of money,
like say you make decent money and then
you get a raise and now you can
afford a nicer car or a nicer home
or whatever.
it's really hard to take that pay cut
and downsize.
Like you could do it,
obviously it's possible,
but it's very difficult.
And especially for people to do it
willingly.
And I think that's what's so hard is
it's really hard for people to,
now that they've had all these really nice
features like these custom emojis these
you know fancy profiles that they can deck
out with nitro and stuff like that i
think it's just gonna make it that much
harder for people to scale back to
something a little bit more bare bones
purely in the name of like and especially
in some servers where it's like well i
still have to turn over my id anyways
and you know when they're dealing with
potential encryption key issues which
I am still having to this day.
I opened a matrix today for the first
time in a long time and half the
messages are encrypted because of key
issues and, you know, things like that.
It's just, it's,
I'm not saying that there aren't people
who wouldn't be willing to do it.
I'm just saying,
I think it's a really tough sell and
I think that's unfortunate.
Yeah, I mean, personally,
I think no one's really talked about this
so far,
but I find Signal works perfectly fine as
like a replacement for Discord.
You can do group voice chats,
group video calls.
I guess it is a benefit of a
centralized service because, you know,
There's only one server.
There's not like a bunch of
interoperability issues.
So it could be worth trying SignalOut,
especially now because you don't have to
share your phone number with people.
So you can kind of do it anonymously.
So I think that would be also a
good alternative to try.
But I think...
Yeah,
there's not a lot of good alternatives
that do everything because Discord is sort
of one of those applications where
everything is just...
it just has all the features,
but I would also, uh,
issue a plea to people,
please stop putting everything behind a
discord server.
Please use a website, use something.
I don't want to have to sign up
for discord.
Like there's so many communities where
they decide for whatever reason,
that's their only community is going to be
on discord.
They're going to store all the information
in a discord server.
Um,
I think that's ridiculous.
It's not accessible for everybody because
you need a Discord account.
And it's also just a bad way of
displaying information.
Like who thought that putting things in
chat channels and then just like,
you know,
having to scroll around and search for
messages is a good idea.
Like we have forums for that.
We have websites for that, like wikis.
So it's really frustrating that there's a
whole bunch of information that
is kind of inaccessible to people that
don't have discord.
And I really hope that after this whole
saga,
a lot of people are going to start,
you know,
moving things to platforms where there's
no central authority that just decides,
Oh no, your server's now,
so no children allowed.
Um,
and it could be for something completely
benign.
So, um,
I don't know.
I just,
I'm just really frustrated with how many
communities rely so heavily on Discord and
they don't seem to want to move to
any other platform.
And yeah,
I've kind of just been trying to avoid
getting Discord,
but there's so many communities that I
want to access because there's information
in there that I need that I can't
access otherwise.
So anyway,
that's just me ranting a little bit.
I just need to say that regarding your
first point,
I totally agree with you because I'm...
I'll cut it short.
But anyways,
I've been in big servers where...
they just move too fast and I can't
keep up with them.
And like,
I'm literally in one server just for the
little name tag.
I'm not,
I never even go in there because there's
tens of thousands of users.
And every time I check,
there's a conversation going on and I
don't know what's going on and I don't
know anybody in there.
I know that makes it a feedback loop,
but my point being like, yeah, if you're,
it drives me insane when they're like, Oh,
our support channel, our,
our primary support channel is discord.
And it's like,
Why?
Like,
what if I join and I can't get
help because there's ten thousand other
people chatting and nobody sees my
question?
And I know some of them have like
a little ticket system that you can open
things, but it's just yeah,
I'm not I'm not a fan of that
either.
To me, it feels like a very sloppy.
It's almost like Reddit,
like no offense to Reddit,
some offense to Reddit.
But when when somebody like a company is
like, oh, our, you know,
Reddit is where you follow us or open
support ticket.
It's just like that's not a support
channel, man.
That's just lazy.
So I'm with you.
I don't like that either.
Yeah,
there's been so many times and I've been
like, oh, I'll join this.
I guess I have to make a Discord
account.
I know,
I'll just use like a burner phone number
and a burner email and then I sign
into the server and then I get booted
instantly because there's an age policy.
You can't have an account that was just
created.
It's just really annoying to deal with
anyone that has their only community on
Discord.
And I think now is the best time
to diversify.
Just have another community.
You don't have to get rid of the
old one.
You can open another one somewhere else.
You can start a wiki
as well as a Discord.
You can start a discourse forum as well
as a Discord.
Just have another option because if
Discord does go to crap,
then at least you have another option for
communicating.
So, anyway.
Totally.
It is what it is.
All right.
I believe you've got the next story here
about Google.
Yes.
So this next story comes from Ars
Technica.
Upgraded Google safety tools can now find
and remove more of your personal info.
The results about new tool is getting an
upgrade.
So this is actually a tool that we
suggest to use at Privacy Guides because
it does enable you to basically enter your
personal information and have Google
periodically check Google search results
for information that appears about you.
And this is kind of useful because if
there's things like your address,
your phone number,
your email address showing up in Google
searches, that could be a safety issue.
So
That is why we do recommend, you know,
if you don't have any other option,
if you don't want to do it like
manually all the time,
it is something that we do recommend to
do because, you know,
it's going to be able to find that
information and alert you if it's actually
found.
So this is basically an upgrade to that.
So Google's had that feature for a while,
but now it's actually getting an extra
layer of functionality
So with today's upgrade,
Results About You gains the ability to
find and remove pages that include ID
numbers, like your passport,
driver's license, and social security.
And you can access the option to add
these to Google's ongoing scans from the
settings in Results About You.
Just click the ID numbers section to
enable detection.
Naturally,
Google has to know what it's looking for
to remove it.
So you need to provide at least part
of those numbers.
Google asks for the full driver's license
number,
which is fine as it's not as sensitive.
And for your passport and SSN,
you only need the last four digits,
which is good enough for Google to find
the full numbers on web pages.
So this is kind of good to see
that there's more safety tools being built
into Google search because a lot of times,
you know,
things can get indexed that we don't want
to.
It's good to have control over having
those listings removed because like I said
before,
it can be a safety issue for some
people.
But I do think in this case,
you are trusting Google with that
information.
And I don't think there's,
I think Google is not exactly the most
trustworthy company and it will definitely
depend on the level of safety that you
care about, right?
So if you're being targeted constantly and
this is like quite a big threat to
you,
then maybe you would be more likely to
enroll in this program.
So for instance,
you're like a public figure or something
and you probably do want to get notified
every time something pops up because you
don't want that listed.
That could definitely make sense.
If you're just an everyday person,
I think just periodically searching your
name, your address, your phone number,
that sort of thing is probably enough for
most people.
But I think this is definitely an
interesting thing here.
I guess having a look at the rest
of this here,
it looks like there's a tool that
identifies explicit images as well as
deepfakes.
um so that is also another thing that
you know a lot of people uh you
know deal with um i think this is
also kind of uh aimed towards people who
work in the sex work industry you know
they probably don't want information uh
associated with their work associated with
their real name that's definitely
something that some people would prefer
not to have um so that is
something that can remove some of that
content or, you know,
at least blur the content.
So that's another thing that they added as
well.
So it's definitely an interesting update.
And I think in general, this is,
a good thing,
even if it's coming from like the worst
company ever.
I think this is going to protect a
lot of people from a lot of issues
that, you know, certain public figures,
you know,
people work in the sex work industry.
I think that's definitely going to be
beneficial as well as just public figures
as well.
So yeah,
that's kind of my initial thoughts on this
story.
Yeah,
I will say I don't know if it's
just aimed at sex workers.
I don't know how actually prevalent it is.
I haven't seen any specific numbers,
but I know for a for media has
covered several stories about just normal
women who have been targeted by deep fakes
and they've covered.
I've lost track of how many,
and I say just normal women in the
sense of like, they're not famous,
they're not sex workers.
They just have the quote unquote crime of
being attractive.
And, you know,
they've been covering stories about tons
of,
they call them nudify apps where you can
feed it a picture and the AI will
generate what she might look like naked.
Um, they've covered tons of like, uh,
Oh man, I just,
it just slipped out of my head.
But, um,
Yeah,
they've covered tons of stories like that.
And so unfortunately â and again,
I haven't seen any statistics,
and I'm not trying to sound like I'm
downplaying it.
I'm just trying to give an honest level
read.
I don't know if this is like a
huge epidemic or if those are just a
handful of stories that are really
unfortunate.
But either way,
I think this is an actual problem that
doesn't just affect sex workers.
It could affect anybody, but â
I think you still do make a really
good point of, you know,
that's trusting Google with a lot of data.
And I do want to point out that
Google has really good security.
Google has never, to my knowledge,
had a major data breach.
But you're still trusting them not to use
that data for advertising, for tracking,
for all the other things that Google's
multi-billion dollar empire is built on.
So yeah, it's definitely a...
It's definitely one of those cost benefit
analysis things where you have to ask
yourself,
do I think this is enough of a
problem that I should go ahead and sign
up for this?
Or like you said,
would it be better if I handled this
myself, if I did an occasional search,
set myself reminders in my calendar or
whatever?
Because yeah,
that is a lot of sensitive information to
be handing over to Google for sure.
No,
that's a good point you brought up about
some of those apps like the nudify apps.
I think that's very much a problem,
especially with minors.
A lot of this stuff is, you know,
happening in high schools.
It's, you know,
using these apps on people who are under
the age of eighteen,
publishing this information online to kind
of embarrass people.
It's...
It's pretty bad.
And I think that is another good use
case here.
I guess I kind of missed that when
I was looking over it the first time.
So I think that's also kind of another
benefit of this as well.
But I think, you know, it's...
At the end of the day,
this is not a tool for everybody.
It's a tool for a very specific group
of people.
And I think if you...
are in that group of people,
then this would make sense.
Um, but if it's, you know,
I think a lot of people in our
community are just not going to trust any
big tech company, but, uh,
and especially now, because, you know,
we've seen a lot of this, uh,
for instance,
might talk about this next week,
but Google handing over, you know,
data to law enforcement without, you know,
proper oversight,
just handing it over and giving them all
this information doesn't seem like a
particularly good idea in that case.
So it's kind of hard to, you know,
justify
pushing this unless you're in a very
specific situation.
Um, I think like Nate said,
just doing a Google search of your
information every now and then is
definitely gonna be a better way to,
you know, protect your information.
But I think this is also a tool
that is applicable for some people.
Um,
so I think it's important that we covered
it.
Um,
but I guess moving on to our next
story here also from Google,
Nate, what are we talking about next?
All right.
Our next story is about how Google
recovered deleted footage from a doorbell
camera, which raises a lot of questions.
So for anyone who doesn't really follow
the news super closely,
there is a woman named Nancy Guthrie.
I don't know if I'm pronouncing that name
right.
I've only read it in articles.
I haven't seen any videos.
And she is a mother of three,
one of whom is a journalist for â
I believe it's NBC.
And she was reported missing,
she being Nancy, not the journalist.
She was reported missing on February
first,
and her family called in a welfare check.
She's from Arizona if I remember
correctly.
And the police showed up and said that
they had reason to believe that she was
taken.
She didn't just wander off or anything.
And â
Initially, the police said â okay,
so a real quick piece of context here.
Google Nest cameras,
which are kind of like Google's competitor
to Ring,
which we will also talk about here in
a little bit.
Google's Nest cameras, by default,
if you just buy the camera itself and
you don't buy the service,
according to this article,
they save three hours of quote-unquote
event history, which for the record,
this is coming from Ars Technica,
not like Google's actual documentation,
so I apologize if â
This is wrong,
but this is what Ars Technica says.
Events are anything that, like,
triggers the doorbell.
So it wouldn't be three continuous hours
of history.
It would be any time in the last
three hours that, say, you know,
somebody dropped something off at your
door, delivery was made,
somebody knocked on your door, whatever.
If you pay ten dollars a month,
you get thirty days of events.
Twenty dollars gets sixty days of events
plus ten days of full video.
Which, I gotta be honest,
is a pretty good deal.
But, anyways.
So they, uh...
The reason this matters is because Nancy
Guthrie had a ring doorbell, or excuse me,
a Nest doorbell.
And initially investigators, to be fair,
not Google,
but investigators said there's no footage
because she wasn't paying for the service.
And then suddenly, what is this,
the thirteenth?
Three days ago on February tenth,
Suddenly,
the police came forward and said,
actually, here's some footage.
Does anybody know this man?
And again, I've only seen screenshots,
even though it's here in the footage.
I was very busy all day.
I couldn't watch videos.
But excuse me.
They say the first video shows the person
approaching the door and noticing the
doorbell camera.
They place their hand over the lens and
appear to pull on the mounting bracket.
but the cameras have a small security
screw that makes it difficult to remove
them without causing damage.
I don't know why he cared about causing
damage if he's kidnapping somebody,
but whatever.
In the second video,
the individual seems to try to drape a
plant over the camera to block its view.
Both videos are short,
which is what you would expect from an
event as identified by the Google Home
system.
So they say the video was apparently,
quote unquote,
recovered from residual data located in
backend systems.
And Ars Technica says it's unclear how
long such data is retained or how easy
it is for Google to access it.
Some reports claim that it took several
days for Google to recover the data.
So this story raises a lot of questions.
I think there's a lot of ways you
could look at it.
And I'm not necessarily saying one is
right or wrong, because honestly,
I don't really know how I feel about
this.
I think on the one hand, there is,
I think most of our more technical viewers
know this, but in case you guys didn't,
when you click delete on something on a
computer, it typically doesn't delete it.
It basically tells the computer,
You can write over this if you want.
It's kind of like if you guys have
ever worked at a job where...
It's like a dumpster.
Let's put it that way.
It's like if you're driving through a
neighborhood and somebody has put a couch
or a table on the corner...
It's not necessarily gone yet,
but they don't want it.
You can take it if you want.
It's kind of like that.
And so just because something is deleted
in a system doesn't necessarily mean it's
fully gone.
Now, the longer it's been,
the more likely that it has been written
over by something else and it is actually
gone.
But usually,
especially if it's right away,
usually you can pull back most or all
of the data.
So it's really hard to tell exactly what's
going on here.
And I do want to acknowledge we could
do the conspiracies...
I don't mean to be rude,
but we could do the conspiracy theory
thing where they say, no,
they had it the whole time.
They're just pretending this is a story.
You might be right.
I'm going to acknowledge that.
You might be right.
We don't know.
It's also equally possible that they just
have literal warehouses around the world
full of servers,
and they got lucky and dug through and
found some stuff.
I don't know.
I really don't know.
I mean,
I don't know how many nests there are.
I don't know how much server storage there
is.
It seems like a bit of a stretch
to me that within a week it wouldn't
all be overwritten if she wasn't paying
It is weird.
I will admit that.
But I guess I'm just saying this isn't
necessarily a smoking gun,
but it certainly is weird.
And I think one of the reasons we're
talking about this is because this is a
big story that everybody's been talking
about.
But also,
I think this is a good reminder that
everything I just said,
when you hit delete,
something isn't necessarily gone right
away.
And that's why it's really important to
think about things like these days,
everybody's mostly switched over to solid
states.
And solid states, it used to be that
When you would delete something,
the common advice was to use a file
shredder, which would basically,
like I talked about,
it would mark it for deletion,
and then it would overwrite it a couple
times to make sure it was really gone.
But with solid states,
I guess you could do that,
but you shouldn't because it really
reduces the lifespan of the device.
And instead,
we rely on things like full disk
encryption.
If somebody stormed in right now and took
my computer and it died,
they wouldn't be able to get back into
it without decrypting it.
And that functionally serves the same
purpose.
But I guess to kind of bring it
back around, when you upload anything,
anything that's cloud connected like this,
even if they say like,
we're not gonna keep this stuff,
let's just go ahead and assume Google was
being honest here.
It was still there.
You know, they can't,
them saying we're not going to keep it
is not the same as them saying we're
going to delete it.
It's them saying like,
if it gets overwritten,
it gets overwritten.
We don't care that you're not paying for
that service and it could still be there.
And in this case,
hopefully it will help find this woman
safe and sound, you know,
but there's a lot of other cases where
it could be a bad thing and it
could recover something that you wanted to
stay gone.
So yeah,
it's just really important to keep that
kind of stuff in mind, I think.
I think those were my thoughts.
Did you have any other takeaways from the
story, Jordan?
Yeah,
so I think this is sort of a
confirmation of something that we've been
assuming but not knowing for quite a while
google doesn't really delete things they
have data for a long time they don't
actually abide by a lot of the policies
they have i mean i just think that
when it's a company as large as google
just think about the absolute amount of
data that they have
I think it's almost impossible to,
you know,
they probably got data centers in
basically every city in a lot of these
major countries.
And it's this whole interconnected network
where all this information is just like
zooming around the internet.
I think it's really hard for them to
delete a lot of things.
And I think the same thing goes for
this, right?
You know,
maybe that footage was saved and it was
saved and backed up across, you know,
six continents or something,
because obviously Google doesn't want to
lose that data because people rely on the
security camera footage.
So I think in this case,
it could have been that the storage of
this video clip could have been in a
backup or, you know,
across a lot of
data centers.
And I think all it took really was
for a high profile case.
They're obviously not going to do this
for, you know, your average person.
But I think because this was such a
high profile case,
I'm not entirely sure who this person is.
So maybe they're not that high profile,
but they seem to be.
And
I think it just shows that Google does
have the ability to bring back data that
is allegedly deleted.
So it brings up more questions about data
retention,
like how long is Google really keeping
things for?
When they say that your information is
deleted, how true are they being?
And I would argue probably not very true.
It's probably stuck in backups.
It's probably stuck in
you know,
whole systems like training LLMs,
all sorts of things that, you know,
we don't have control over.
So I'm not really surprised that they were
able to recover this footage.
I think this is kind of pretty standard
stuff.
Um, I'm not sure why people were, uh,
I guess so outraged.
I think this is pretty standard for a
company to have, you know,
backups lasting quite a long time.
Um, and you know,
they're not going to immediately delete
the footage.
Um,
So I think it is possible for them
to dig up footage in very extreme
circumstances like this.
So I don't know.
I am not particularly surprised by this
story in particular.
Yeah, that's fair.
I don't know.
I'm...
Yeah.
I don't,
I don't know if I'm surprised or not.
I think,
I think when I first heard this story,
I was kind of like, Oh, that's crazy.
But I wasn't just like, what?
Oh my God, that's crazy.
I was just like, Whoa.
So yeah, it's yeah.
I don't think I have much to add.
I just, I,
I really agree with your point about once
they have that data, you,
you lose control over it functionally one
way or another, you know,
like
for better or worse again even if like
let's assume just for the sake of argument
let's assume total good faith on google's
end what if they do have a data
breach someday they finally get got and
you know who knows what'll get leaked
that's yeah they could use it for ai
they could use it for anything so it's
just really important to keep that in mind
with anything you do online i think yeah
and i think this brings forward actually
another thing that we should probably talk
about is
The reason why Google had this footage in
the first place was because the camera was
not end to end encrypted.
So I think this is kind of an
important note.
Google is kind of known for being really
not very like not applying a lot of
these uh practices where you know
companies like ring i mean ring has other
problems we're gonna we're gonna talk
about that later um but uh companies like
ring uh apple you know they allow you
to at least enable that encryption so you
know if it was incriminating information
or just private you know you don't really
want recordings of yourself
doing who knows what outside your house or
inside your house, you know,
available to a massive corporation,
which could get breached.
So I think it's important to,
if you do have, you know,
a camera system,
maybe think about something local,
maybe think about something that employs
end-to-end encryption.
I know a pretty easy option for a
lot of people who have Apple devices is
Apple's HomeKit Secure Video, which is,
has end-to-end encryption.
And there's other local alternatives as
well, setting up like an NPR.
A lot of people in the comments of
this article were talking about,
this is why I only use local surveillance
systems.
But I think there's also issues with that
as well,
because
you know a lot of people don't own
the house or apartment that they live in
they can't just go around drilling holes
and things and like putting cables
everywhere that's just unrealistic um so
you know i think it's not always going
to be a perfect solution there's no
perfect solution to everybody so that's
why i think you should think about this
but i think you know you're putting google
you're trusting Google with like the
privacy of your home.
I think we need to question why you're
doing that.
You should probably consider moving to
something that offers a high level of
security,
such as Apple HomeKit secure video or some
other local alternative.
I know maybe Jonah would have something to
add on this.
I feel like he's kind of into that
whole like
home assistant, self-hosted stuff,
but unfortunately he's not here this week,
but that's okay.
I guess I would throw it over to
you, Nate.
Do you have any experience with these sort
of like security systems?
I don't because I am in that boat
you talked about where I'm one of those
people who rents.
And so I can't really,
and thankfully some places I've lived
actually do have policies against outdoor
cameras like Ring,
which I think is super awesome.
But
Not all of them do.
And yeah, it's actually my last apartment.
I remember they had like a ring or
a nest up in the corner and it
was facing the only in and out for
the building and it pissed me off so
much.
But yeah, it's really...
I wish I had more... Hold on,
let me check.
I swear I saw somebody post talking about
one the other day.
I'm checking a group chat I'm in, but...
All right.
While you're doing that,
I think it's also important to note that
when you're installing all these security
systems, like Nate was saying,
you can invade other people's privacy too.
It's important that I think some people
get caught up on
I'm just protecting my privacy.
You know, I don't care about other people.
It's like,
no other people recording other people
without their consent is wrong.
It's, it's not right.
It's invading their privacy.
So, you know,
especially with these camera systems,
I think it's important to remember that if
you install a doorbell like this,
that's pointing out towards the street and
recording everybody as they enter their
houses and walk past,
it's kind of creepy and
And it's definitely something we're going
to talk about later.
So definitely stay tuned for that.
But Nate,
did you end up finding that post you're
looking for?
I did.
I'm not going to say who it came
from because I did not ask permission.
This is off the cuff,
but it is somebody who is very
knowledgeable and knows what they're
talking about.
They said that if you need,
what was it?
Wise, W-Y-Z-E.
They say they recommend it.
He did specify for mainstream people.
um so this is not like the most
private solution but he said that it does
accept sd cards and you do need to
download their app to like set it up
initially but once you set it up you
can tell it like not to send anything
to the cloud and only record an sd
card um so make sure you mount it
somewhere where they can't just like tear
it off the wall and take it and
then he said that in the past he's
recommended zosi for um
Oh,
he said that's a bigger setup with
multiple cameras that sends wirelessly to
a local DVR or hard drive,
like you see in convenience stores or gas
stations.
So that might not be realistic for some
people, but yeah.
One more thing that I remembered while you
were talking,
you mentioned that ring does have an end
to end encryption.
I think you have to enable it.
I don't think it's enabled by default,
but they do offer it.
You mentioned Apple usually does better.
I actually learned recently that Google,
um,
Google's in browser password manager is
like the only one that's not encrypted by
default, Google Chrome.
So like Safari is, Firefox is,
I should hope Brave is,
but like Google Chrome is the only browser
where like you can save passwords in the
browser,
but you still have to take that extra
step to go in and encrypt the password
manager
which is completely insane and just backs
up what you were saying about the fact
that like Google is a little bit sketchy,
which is so weird because just a minute
ago I was like,
they have some of the best security except
when they don't.
It's just so insane.
So yeah, be mindful of that.
Google is not always as trustworthy as
they should be for a company of their
size.
Yeah,
I think it's definitely an unfortunate
thing, but I think they do have,
just like I was saying before,
their infrastructure is quite modern.
It's quite a large space.
operation so obviously they they do have
some security policies to protect things
um so it's kind of stupid that they
don't have internet encryption on
passwords by default that's like a thing
you have to enable like they can access
all your browsing data like your your
bookmarks and all that you have to enable
encryption on that um
But with that being said,
let's dive into the site updates this
week.
And before we dive into a story about
how Reddit is being monitored by the DHS,
let's give some quick updates about what
we've been working on at Privacy Guides
this week.
So throwing it over to you, Nate,
what have you been working on this week?
Yeah,
it's been a lot of behind the scenes
stuff.
I'm working on a script for,
oh my gosh, I should know this,
private email.
And yeah,
so that's what's next in the pipeline for
me.
That's been my main focus.
And then we have private browsing and the
intermediate smartphone security are both
ready for members.
We're just coordinating with
infrastructure.
I know we keep saying this every week,
but
We're really having some serious issues
with PeerTube.
And I think Jonah is doing his best
to take care of that.
But yeah,
as soon as we get that worked out,
we're going to push those out to members
and then shortly thereafter to the public.
So that is what I have been up
to.
And I believe you have been up to
some stuff as well.
Yes,
so this week I've been working on a
video that Nate put together.
It was a video about private...
messaging so that's another one to look
out for we're kind of covering off these
base topics just to have you know
resources for everyone to access and i was
also working on doing some social posts
this week because i feel like we've been
kind of uh slouching a bit on that
and we haven't been doing it as much
as we should and there's a whole bunch
of important issues going on that we need
to talk about so um i decided to
put together something uh about discord
And, you know,
alternatives to Discord and such.
So if you want to check that out,
that's available on most of our social
feeds that are text-based as well as
photo-based.
Some of them might need to wait a
little bit to go out.
But, yeah,
Nate's showing it here on Mastodon.
So that's kind of what I've been working
on.
I also put together another post for
Valentine's Day and...
It was kind of a funny one.
Look out for it tomorrow.
Hopefully that does well and people think
it's a good idea.
But I just want to remind people that
All of this is made possible by our
supporters and you can sign up for a
membership or donate at privacyguides.org
or you can also pick up some cool
swag at shop.privacyguides.org and you can
see in the background,
Nate's got a poster there and a bottle
and we've got all these products you can
get if you wanna support us and also
get something in return.
And now finally,
let's talk about Ring's new search party
tool.
dystopian ring search party feature sparks
public backlash so this is an article here
from nine to five mac and i should
uh preface this by saying there was a
an ad at the super bowl which i
think is like an american football event
for anyone not from america um
And basically it's the ad focused around,
you know,
utilizing everybody's ring doorbells and
ring cameras to basically find and help
lost dogs.
And it was basically a thirty second ad
promoting this new feature.
And of course,
this is kind of a massive concern from
a privacy perspective, obviously, because,
you know,
a company that's basically has all these
cameras everywhere and they're using it
to, you know,
identify something and track that thing.
That could be used for some really
dystopian stuff, obviously.
So that is kind of concerning.
So,
here's just kind of explaining how this
works.
The search party feature for dogs works by
allowing owners of lost dogs to send a
photo and description to other nearby ring
doorbell users when the camera thinks it
has spotted a dog matching the
description.
It alerts the homeowner.
If they confirm that it looks like the
right dog,
it puts them in touch with the owner
of the pet.
The company has now rolled out the feature
to non-Ring camera owners via the Ring
app, going all in on promoting it.
including with a whole Super Bowl ad,
which as far as I understand,
Super Bowl is kind of like a really
high profile event that would have
probably costed like tens of millions of
dollars.
So they're definitely kind of going all in
on this.
And this is also another concern because
in the US there's been a lot of
nationwide protests against ICE
operations,
which is
quite concerning and there's also people
who are kind of concerned that this could
be used to coordinate ICE operations to
deport and arrest people so
Just quoting from, uh,
four or four media here at Sunday's
Superbowl ring advertised search party,
acute horrifyingly dystopian feature
nominally designed to turn all of the ring
cameras into a neighborhood dragnet that
uses AI to look for a lost dog.
It does not take an imagination of any
sort to envision this being tweet to work
against suspected criminals,
undocumented migrants, or other, uh,
or others deemed suspicious by people in
the neighborhood.
Many of these use cases are how ring
has been used by people on its dystopian
neighbors app for years.
The neighbors app itself.
I haven't heard of this before.
So just quoting what the article says,
the neighbors app quickly got a reputation
for racist sharing reports of supposedly
suspicious looking people whose skin color
was the only thing they had in common.
so yeah this is kind of concerning uh
it goes through you know a lot of
the other uh social media backlash and
such um in this article and i think
this is kind of highlighting uh an issue
that i talked about before where you know
your privacy is important but also the
privacy of other people you know creating
a dragnet surveillance network is
Just to find dogs seems like a pretty
unequal exchange,
especially because this technology can be
used for kind of nefarious purposes,
like by ICE to, you know,
round up people, follow protesters,
all sorts of stuff like that.
I think it kind of goes against a
lot of things that...
you would expect in public.
You would expect in public that your
location isn't going to be tracked.
And in this case,
it's basically using cameras to use facial
recognition to identify dogs.
But you can see how that could be
used against people, right?
I think this is sort of a thing
that we've talked about a little bit in
other countries.
They have a lot of these facial
recognition
networks that are run by governments,
that identify people and track their
movements across the country.
And I think this is basically just doing
the same thing, but with a, oh,
it's cute.
Oh, it's a dog searching tool.
It's the same thing.
It's going to be a slope where they
do this feature now,
and then in a year's time,
they're using it to track protesters.
They're using it to track
immigrants.
They're using it to track, I don't know,
the next choice of who they're wanting to
follow.
So yeah,
I think this is extremely dystopian.
And I think most people need to kind
of look past the advertising and marketing
and look at what the real issue with
this technology is,
because it is quite concerning.
Yeah,
just to touch on a few things you
said.
Yes, the Super Bowl is,
you would think a religion here in the
US.
People lose their minds for it.
I say that as somebody who,
if sports vanished tomorrow,
the only reason I would notice is because
everybody else around me would be having a
meltdown.
But putting aside my hipsterism, yeah,
it's a huge deal.
And so for them to run this ad
was probably, I don't know,
about tens of millions.
I mean, maybe tens of millions,
but definitely millions for sure.
To run that thirty second ad is pretty
wild.
Um, I think I'm really happy.
What I,
what I picked up on in this story
is this has been like a nationwide outcry.
Like the, the article says like,
in addition to the four Oh four article
that you wrote or you, you read about,
um,
A Senator Ed Markey tweeted and said,
what this ad doesn't show,
Ring also rolled out facial recognition
for humans.
I wrote to them months ago about this.
Their answer,
they won't ask for your consent.
This definitely isn't about dogs.
It's about mass surveillance.
And then they said a quick search on
X shows this to be the prevailing view.
So I know that's like a very specific
slice of the internet,
but I'm very happy to see because so
many of the times I'm a little bit,
I'm a little bit annoyed and I'm going
to try not to be like,
I don't know.
It's not old man yells at clouds,
but something hipster, I guess.
I don't know.
I'm a little bit annoyed that I feel
like we as privacy advocates are
constantly trying to raise an alarm about
like, hey, guys, this is bad.
And people are like,
you need to calm down.
You're overreacting.
This isn't a big deal.
And then like three years later,
something happens and everybody is like,
oh, this is bad.
And it's like, yeah,
I've been saying that for years and you
told me I was overreacting.
And, you know, um, we didn't include it,
but I've,
I've been sharing around tonight, uh,
a story from meta where they're
reintroducing their, um,
their Ray-Ban glasses,
but they're including facial recognition.
And there's a quote here.
I can dig it up real quick.
Not to go too far off topic,
but this is from Meta's Reality Labs.
This is from the actual company that made
the glasses.
They said,
we will launch during a dynamic political
environment where many civil society
groups that we would expect to attack us
would have their resources focused on
other concerns.
And that is like the most cartoon villain
thing I've ever heard.
It's like I almost think it sounds like
it should be in the onion for them
to just say the quiet part out loud
where it's like, oh,
this is the perfect time to do something
downright evil because all of our enemies
are busy with other things.
And it's just it's you know,
and I bring that up because like I've
been sharing it around and everybody I'm
showing it to is just like,
that's ridiculous.
That's crazy.
I can't believe that.
And it's like, yeah, they're.
Like,
I've been trying to tell you guys that.
And I'm not trying to do the, like,
I told you so thing.
It's just like, I wish people had cared,
you know,
five years ago or ten years ago with
Cambridge Analytica when all this stuff
started coming out.
And, like, you know, I don't know.
Maybe we couldn't have stopped it because,
like, I don't want to sound defeatist,
but, you know,
Shoshana Zuboff in Age of Surveillance
Capitalism, she talks about how, like,
this is their playbook is they'll do
something.
And when people get mad,
they pull back a little bit.
But then they kind of just, like â
take a different direction to get around
the obstacle.
And they still end up doing it anyways,
which is why we can't really trust a
lot of big tech companies.
But I don't know.
It's just, it's,
it's frustrating to see things that you're
trying to raise the alarm about.
And sometimes it feels like people don't
take it seriously.
And I'm glad.
where I'm going with this is I'm really
glad to see that people are taking this
seriously,
that everybody is sitting up and it's not
just us for a change.
That's like, you know, this could be bad.
It's like, everybody is just kind of like,
okay, nope, this is too far.
You crossed a line.
This is creepy.
I don't want it.
And I guess I'm just going to say,
I hope that,
I hope that we're finally entering an age
where things will be different.
Because again,
I mentioned that typically tech will pull
back just enough until people calm down
and then they'll go do it anyways.
And I really hope that we're entering a
world where the internet has been around
long enough and the tech companies have
been around long enough that we're kind of
wising up to it and we're not going
to let them do that.
I hope.
I don't know.
We'll see.
But I really hope that's where we're
headed.
So.
Yeah,
those were my thoughts on that story.
Yeah,
I think I largely agree with what you're
saying.
I think it's also I'm seeing some comments
here in the chat.
So just kind of going over some of
these.
Someone said it's fail X on tour.
This is a bit of a political question,
but it's exploitative nature.
Do you think that other camera systems
could adopt rings infrastructure in the
future?
and i think it definitely could be uh
i think if it's successful and you know
i i unfortunately a lot of times these
awful things end up being pushed through
like saying it's like a boil you're
boiling the frog people just like you're
just slowly boiling them people just give
up with uh with trying to push back
against things because they're just
constantly trying to push things through
So I think if it's if it's a
success for Ring, I think, you know,
this feature could be rolled out to other
security cameras.
But I still think, you know,
it would be
I mean,
I'm not really sure what the percentage
is,
but I bet that there is a very
large percent of people,
at least in America,
I haven't seen too many ring doorbells and
things in Australia.
I think they're less popular,
like Amazon in general is less popular.
So I think in the US that there's
just a...
a lot of those cameras everywhere.
So I think it is pretty powerful being
able to have so many cameras everywhere
and to always have the ability to, like,
hook into them.
So, you know, I think...
If you have a Ring camera, I mean,
the best time to get rid of it
was yesterday.
And the second best time is today.
So try and work something out because I
think it's not great for the privacy of
other people.
And it seems like this is just going
to get pushed through.
They've already dumped so much money into
it.
They're not going to just start changing
direction on it.
doing this facial recognition or dog
recognition.
But well, that's how they're marketing it.
But we all know it's going to eventually
get rolled out to humans.
Do you see any other questions here you
think we should touch on?
I actually do want to touch on,
because you said that,
this next question from, or not question,
but a statement from Anonymous.
You said, basically,
if the market dislikes this,
no one will follow suit, which is true.
I don't want to get into free market
and all that,
but I just want to point out,
kind of related to what you said,
I think so much, and it's,
no single snowflake believes it is
responsible for the avalanche.
I don't know who said that, but like,
It's so easy to look at these things.
Like you were saying,
like ring doorbells are so ubiquitous here
in the US and so many people have
them and they bring a benefit.
I'm not going to lie.
Like, yes,
obviously they bring a benefit or else
people wouldn't be buying them.
And I get it.
But it's so easy for people to sit
here and think like, well,
what can I do?
You know,
like I get something out of it.
If I throw away my doorbell,
like you said,
they're just going to do it anyways.
It doesn't matter.
And it's like, yes, I hear you.
And I know it sounds hard, but
But if enough people do it,
it makes a difference.
Something like, what is it?
Like,
sixty percent of the people in the U.S.
are vote that are eligible to vote.
So almost half of the U.S.
doesn't vote.
And that's high turnout, by the way.
Really bad.
And so just think about if those other
forty percent of people voted.
What would â like maybe the political
situation wouldn't change.
Maybe it would.
Who knows?
But that's forty percent of the people
that could potentially change the vote
because every single one of them is like,
oh, my vote doesn't matter.
I'm sorry.
I know I'm being a little political,
kind of, sort of, not really.
But my point being is like we're at
a point â and I hate to say
this because it sounds defeatist.
We're at a point where the privacy
situation in the world is so bad.
that doing almost anything moves the
needle.
And I try to tell people that when
I talk to like mainstream users and they
just feel like, oh, well,
my data's already out there.
What does it matter?
They already know everything about me.
And it's like, yeah, that's the point.
The bar is so freaking low that doing
literally anything,
switching to Brave or Firefox, shoot,
putting uBlock Origin in Chrome,
as bad as Chrome is,
just putting uBlock Origin in there,
tweaking a few settings,
taking some apps off your phone.
Like most people are literally doing
nothing
Doing literally anything will move the
needle.
And so where I'm going with that is
like,
if you're one of those people or you
know one of those people who's like, well,
I genuinely get value out of my Ring
doorbell and I feel like throwing it away
won't make a difference.
Turn on the end-to-end encryption because
at least then Ring can't access your
footage without your permission.
And at least then you're like cutting off
this whole search party feature.
And it sends, like Anonymous was saying,
if enough people do it,
it sends that message of like,
I want control over my data.
And if enough people start sending that
message,
the market will start to pivot that way.
I mean, look at Apple.
Apple ran a whole campaign advertising
privacy.
And you could argue that they're not
private enough.
That's fine.
I accept that.
But the point is like they knew that
that's something that matters to people
and they want to start pivoting in that
direction.
And so like, yeah,
it's every little bit helps.
That's what I'm getting at is like every
little thing,
whether it's throwing the camera away
entirely,
whether it's canceling the subscription,
whether it's turning on the encryption,
like anything to send the message of,
I don't like this.
And, and I want privacy respected.
I think on a mass scale,
if enough people do that,
it will add up.
It will create an avalanche.
So yeah, that's,
that's my opinion on that one.
Yeah, that's definitely a good, uh,
A good thing to promote here.
I think, yeah,
more people will need to make changes.
Like, yeah,
it's not only going to be one person
that changes things,
but I guess we can also move on
here to kind of a spooky story here
about Reddit.
So here we have the Homeland Security
spying on Reddit users.
So do you want to take this one,
Nate?
uh yeah it is my turn isn't it
all right so um i think this will
be potentially a quick story because um i
think we've seen stories like this in the
past or maybe it's just me in my
past work i know we've definitely i've
definitely covered stories like this but
um this story is a really interesting
write-up and it focuses on you know common
journalistic technique is like you tell
one person's story and you use that to
kind of extrapolate to a larger trend
larger trend.
And so, uh,
that's what this person did here.
They talk about Homeland security is
spying on Reddit users.
And this one is really interesting.
So specifically there's a Reddit user
called budget chicken, two, four, two,
five.
I love randomly generated names.
They're so fun.
Um,
at least I hope that's a randomly
generated name.
Uh, if not,
I really want to hear the story behind
it, but anyways, uh,
so this actually happened in January.
This is very recent.
And this is an internal report that was
leaked to this reporter.
And it talks about how Homeland Security
officials in Texas were monitoring this
user,
who as far as we know is not
a narco-trafficker, a gang member,
or a terrorist.
The report centers on Budget Chicken's
call for a protest near a Border Patrol
facility in Edinburgh, Texas,
which I lived in Texas for ten years
and I don't even know where that is.
I just want to point that out.
Maybe I'm the idiot,
but it's not like it's Dallas.
It sounds to me like at best it's
a suburb of a major city.
So...
The report acknowledges that anti-ice
protests throughout Texas have been quote
unquote generally lawful,
and there's no evidence of any threat
posed by this user's call.
Any protest whatsoever near the border
facility is said to warrant continuous or
continued monitoring.
And then there's a screenshot of the
actual report here.
Uh,
to quote directly from the bulletin at
this time,
there's no specific reporting of planned
violence,
targeting DHS personnel or facilities
linked to this protest call.
However,
any demonstration in proximity to a U S
border patrol Rio Grande Valley facility
may present operational safety and
reputational risks that weren't continued
monitoring the, um,
I'll actually just read it cause it's real
short.
So there's a screenshot here for audio
listeners of a,
a Reddit post from this budget chicken guy
in our slash Rio Grande Valley,
Rio Grande.
I,
Again, lived in Texas for ten years.
They pronounce everything wrong,
so sorry if I pronounce it wrong.
He says, join me in protest against ICE.
He says, in light of today's events,
I'm rallying people to support our rights
and freedoms, not just for ourselves,
but for our neighbors, family,
and community.
We need volunteers to be witnesses and to
spread awareness.
The more we are silent,
the faster it will come to us.
I will be at the intersection of the
border patrol station around six.
Please come support.
That's the whole post.
So...
Where exactly is it?
Well, okay,
here's where he starts tying it into a
bigger thing.
He said,
there's a section that gives a sense of
the sheer volume of data Homeland Security
collects to generate a big picture view of
what's going on in the country.
One specific priority asks what group or
individuals are responsible for or are
associated with border violence and what
are the intended impact to Customs and
Border Patrol personnel and operations.
They say that they are tracking three
particular social media trends,
which is social media-driven mobilization,
symbolic targeting of government
facilities,
and a statewide baseline of mobilization
potential.
At the risk of being a little biased,
I want to point out none of those
said anything about violence.
Mobilization is literally just like
getting people out.
So like social media-driven mobilization,
so like posting online like that guy just
did, like, hey, I'm going to go protest.
Everybody come with me.
Like didn't say anything about violence,
just people coming to protest.
In other words,
the government is building a sociological
profile of political discontent.
The bulletin notes that these protests are
perception-driven,
meaning they are motivated by general
concerns about rights rather than specific
incidents.
Excuse me.
I haven't had enough water today.
Soâ¦
It's to determine the threat posed by
budget chicken two, four, two,
five analysts.
Didn't just look at the protest call.
They scored the user's entire digital
footprint.
The bulletin notes that chicken quote
frequently participates in various
community discussions.
For example, in our slash Texans,
they compared the team to the Cleveland
Browns in our slash movies.
They discussed the film, almost famous,
never seen it personally.
Our slash Stephen King shares his book
collection.
And I don't know if I can curse
and not get us demonetized.
I've cursed before.
So r slash fuck I'm old reminiscing about
the nineteen seventies television
production logos.
And here's.
Okay,
I'll go ahead and say right here that
up until this point, I was like,
this is really invasive and I'm not
condoning it.
But I completely understand they need to
like know what's going on.
They need to keep an eye on threats.
And just because this dude hasn't said
anything doesn't mean he's not going to do
anything.
So I understand the like, hey,
let's just keep an eye out on this.
This is the part where they lost me.
It is recommended that all agents wear
their ballistic armor, utilize long arms,
and if possible, work in groups.
Personal opinion,
based on military history and trading,
that sounds a little excessive in response
to a dude who said, hey,
let's go stand on the corner and chant
some slogans.
Again,
is it possible he might do something?
Absolutely.
Should you keep an eye on it?
Absolutely.
Should you escalate straight to rifles and
body armor?
Absolutely.
I don't know about that.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe I'm a little bit too much of
a hippie these days.
But yeah, to me, that was pretty wild.
But anyways, personal opinions aside,
the point here is the social media
monitoring.
I mentioned that...
This story is not really unique.
It's just recent.
In the past,
I have talked about stories of government
monitoring,
all kinds of social media networks,
and not just the big ones,
not just Facebook and TikTok and Reddit.
I mean,
there's small niche ones that are built
for very specific communities.
Discord servers, the government...
I can go dig up this source if
I have to,
but I swear I've read stories about how
on some of the bigger Discord servers,
they will literally just throw sock puppet
accounts in there to scrape up the
messages so that they can search them
later.
And it's just...
That's actually â I found this out
recently.
That's actually what Palantir does.
That's their whole claim to fame is
Palantir doesn't actually collect any
data.
They build the databases that link all the
data together and that they can sell it
to governments and law enforcement,
and then they can search that database.
So this is all powering the surveillance
state,
and â
Yeah,
it's just â it's a reminder to be
careful what you post online.
It's a reminder that anything you put in
a digital format gets swept up.
It's a reminder that, unfortunately,
there is â yeah, this is happening.
It's just a reminder to remember that on
any platform.
Again,
it's not just the big stuff like Reddit
and Discord.
It's the small niche stuff.
Anywhere they think something might be
happening,
they're trying to get a foothold in there.
I guarantee it.
So that is what I took away from
that.
I don't know if you had anything to
add.
Yeah, I guess some basic thoughts here.
Generally,
I was under the impression that law
enforcement,
I assume Homeland Security is law
enforcement, I guess.
I'm not really too privy about that.
Homeland Security is...
It's hard to explain what Homeland
Security is.
It's a federal â it's technically a type
of law enforcement.
It's the federal arm of the government.
They generally handle border security and
that kind of stuff.
I'll let you go ahead and talk.
I'm going to look it up exactly what
it is.
But yeah,
they're kind of like a federal law
enforcement for the border.
Right.
So I think let's just go ahead and
assume that they are sort of law
enforcement-esque, I guess.
I'm not really familiar.
I'm not American.
So I'm just assuming.
But I think that generally I was under
the impression that, you know,
in most places that were, you know,
a free country, a country where, you know,
People's privacy is respected that,
you know,
police officers or law enforcement in
general wouldn't go poking around and
start building a case against someone
unless there was a suspicion of a crime.
And I don't see how there's any how
organizing a protest is possible.
any sort of suspicion for a crime,
everyone is perfectly within their rights
to do so.
So I think that's the number one
concerning thing.
This is the sort of thing we talk
about when we're talking about Russia.
They have Russian agents on social media
just trawling social media,
looking for posts about people organizing
protests and stuff to crack down on this
sort of thing, right?
Like, I don't think this is really,
this is not normal.
This is law enforcement and, like,
you know,
federal government agents intermingling in
people's right to organize.
Like, this is, like,
kind of concerning stuff.
And I think the other thing that I
thought about this story was it was kind
of surprising that they even have
you know,
people who are actually trolling Reddit
looking at things like this,
especially because, you know,
it's within people's right to protest what
is going on.
It's not against the law.
It's completely legal.
So it's kind of surprising that there's a
whole like they didn't just like save the
post in like a document they like
literally went through this entire this
person's entire posting history and they
didn't even have a suspicion that a crime
was going to be committed so i think
that's kind of concerning um this sort of
thing shouldn't be happening in a country
where you know things should be
you should be free to organize a protest
is what I'm trying to say.
This is not like controversial.
I don't think, um,
without having federal agents,
just like monitoring your social media
presence.
Um,
so that's kind of the main concern that
I got from this.
And, you know, people were saying,
you know, Oh,
what were they going to do?
Like,
they don't even know what they're doing.
Like, you know,
I think this is just concerning from the
fact that it was happening in the first
place.
Um,
But yeah,
it's kind of raising alarm bells in my
head that this is sort of not something
that is generally something that is good
that you would be happy about happening in
your country.
But I guess throwing it back to you,
Nate,
do you have anything more to add on
that?
no um i totally agree with you uh
real quick according to wikipedia the
department of homeland security is a
federal executive department rep
responsible for public security uh its
mission involves anti-terrorism civil
defense immigration and customs and border
border control cyber security
transportation security maritime security
and sea rescue and the mitigation of
weapons of mass destruction wow that last
one's new to me okay coast guard's gonna
go stop nukes um
No, I one hundred percent agree with you.
And it sucks because, again,
with with my military background,
I understand the idea of like like you
said,
we don't know what this guy is going
to do.
But at the same time,
like it just feels so heavy handed.
Like it's one thing to say like, OK,
somebody made a post.
They're going to be protesting tonight at
six.
noted.
It's another thing to like go through this
dude's history and compile a whole
dossier.
And especially to like, put it on record.
It's, I don't know.
I'm not trying to excuse it for the
record.
I'm not trying to do that at all,
but I understand.
I understand the need to make sure he's
not a threat.
Like maybe you go through his history and
you find all this like violent
anti-government stuff.
And it's like, Oh,
this dude might do something,
but like you,
you scroll through it for five seconds and
you're like, he talks about sports.
He watches movies.
He talks about logos from TV shows.
Like,
this dude is probably not going to do
anything violent.
And again, just the over-response of...
I don't know it's just it's it's
everything about it I don't like I don't
like the overreaction I don't like the
fact that they went looking in the first
place and it like you're saying it has
such a chilling effect on protesting
especially when again in the context of
the article said that even the government
admits that generally speaking the
protests have been peaceful they have been
non-violent and to just have this
overreaction of like treating everyone as
a threat um
Oh,
I'm not going to dig into it too
much because this is a really political
take, but I think America has long had,
and actually this is probably not even a
hot take, even though it's political.
I think America has long had a problem
of the over-militarization of police.
I think everyone across the board can
generally agree with that.
And this is just kind of part of
that trend of like, oh,
somebody said anything,
we instantly have to assume the worst
intent and gear up for the worst.
And it's like,
Again,
was body armor and rifles really
necessary?
Was it necessary to go digging through all
his history?
Yeah, it's really crazy.
I don't know if you had anything more
to add to that,
but there were a couple of comments in
the chat here that I thought were pretty
on point.
If I could show those.
Yeah, sure.
Let's see what people are saying.
Yeah, so anonymous-thirty-five said,
this is why people should
compartmentalize.
I agree.
Like, unfortunately,
Reddit's making that really hard.
I actually logged into Reddit today and
for the first time in, like, two years.
And I was going to leave a post
in r slash privacy,
and it got instantly deleted.
Or I was going to leave a comment
because while I was there,
I saw something that I was like, yeah,
I can weigh in on this.
Instantly deleted because I haven't been
on Reddit in so long that now my,
like, user quality score, whatever crap,
is, like, zero.
And so I can't post anywhere.
And it's like, okay,
so what am I just supposed to randomly
comment on posts I don't care about so
that Reddit thinks I'm not a bot?
It's a hard system to game,
at least for me,
because I don't care enough to figure it
out.
I guess what I'm getting at is some
sites make it really hard to
compartmentalize like that.
But yeah, it is really,
especially nowadays,
if you're planning to be more politically
active where that's clearly going to put
you under a microscope,
it's probably not a bad idea to have
your normal Reddit account where you only
talk about sports and TV shows and have
your other Reddit account where you talk
more about politics and stuff.
Yeah.
It's sad that we're moving into a world
where just normal,
peaceful protesters need to
compartmentalize.
That's not a good trend.
Yeah.
And then this is just real quick.
This is something that Jonah touched on
recently.
You said Facebook and Google are
collecting your data so they can
personalize ads.
Government collects your data so they can
ruin your life if they decide to.
A couple weeks ago when Jonah and I
talked about the UK trying to ban VPNs,
it sounds so â
I hate that I'm saying this because I
know that I sound crazy,
but unfortunately,
this is the direction we're headed in.
He pointed out that a lot of the
time,
authoritarian countries will outlaw very,
very tiny things for the sole purpose that
they can come after you anytime they want.
And it's almost like in the military,
they had what was called a â because
this article has got me thinking about the
military now.
They had what was called a â I
think it was â I want to say
it was Article thirty-four,
but I think I might be confusing that
with Rule thirty-four.
Um, but anyways,
they have this article that's literally a
catch all.
Um, and it's like,
that's literally what it is.
It has no purpose other than to be
like,
we want to nail you against the wall.
So we're going to throw this charge on
there too.
That is the whole point of it.
It's just like a general,
like you've done something generally not
okay.
And we disapprove of it,
but it's not covered by anything else.
And sometimes it's a standalone thing to
like get you in trouble when you finally
screw up too much and somebody doesn't
like you.
Sometimes they tack it onto like six other
charges just to like pour salt in the
wound.
But yeah, it's like the same thing.
When all this data is collected,
nobody ever goes through any significant
period of their life without doing
something illegal, without jaywalking,
without accidentally littering.
And yeah,
this stuff can be weaponized against you,
unfortunately.
Again, I know I sound crazy,
but that's kind of the direction we're
heading in,
where every single thing is now making
people suspect.
And going back to what I was saying
earlier about saying this for years...
I hate being right.
Yeah,
I think it's justified to feel frustrated,
especially when a lot of times I think
a lot of people in a lot of
countries,
they don't feel like they have any say
over the authority that's imposed on them.
Like by the government,
they can kind of just say,
do what they can, protest,
vote every once in a while,
and the government still passes ridiculous
laws that allow data brokers to collect
all your information,
even though most people would be against
it.
It's kind of the problem with, you know,
centralization like that.
But I think it's, yeah,
you're right to feel frustrated with that.
And I think it's also a problem
pretty pretty tied to to privacy as well
because a lot of times these companies get
away with doing all this stuff with your
information because you know there's
people in the government who benefit from
allowing this to continue so they don't
have any reason to change the things that
affect a lot of people um
So that's my take on it.
I guess on your comment, Cannabida,
I think it's a good post.
But yeah, I mean,
I don't really have anything more to add
here.
I guess we can kind of move into
the forum updates now.
So in a minute, though,
we'll start by taking some viewer
questions.
There was quite a lot of activity on
the forum thread this time.
So you can leave them there or you
can leave them in the chat and we'll
just pop them up on screen as well.
But if you've been holding out
Any questions on the stories that we've
been talking about so far?
Definitely go ahead and start leaving them
in the chat or in the forum thread.
But for now,
let's check in on our community forums.
So there's always a lot of activity going
on there.
And especially in the last week or two,
there's been quite a lot of controversial
stories being shared and a lot of
discussion around different topics.
If you're not already a member,
definitely consider joining at
discuss.privacyguides.net.
So the first post that we want to
touch on is...
Basically, it was a post,
it was a news post on the forum,
and there was a discussion around Google
fulfilling an ICE subpoena demanding
student journalists' bank and credit
details.
So this is kind of the issue that
we talked about with,
like we were talking about at the start,
when you give all this information to
Google,
then when there is a law enforcement
request,
they can actually hand it over depending
on, you know, what...
law enforcement requests they receive.
So it is kind of unfortunate that this
student had their details handed over
against their will.
and against their consent, I guess,
because Google had it in plain text.
So if that is a problem with these
tools, if it's not encrypted,
then Google is free to share that
information.
So there was some discussion there in that
thread.
But yeah,
do you have any thoughts on this one,
Nate?
Um,
thoughts on the story itself or thoughts
on the thread?
Cause I'm looking through the thread and
the thread kind of turned into a
discussion about de-Googling,
which I think is a really cool topic
that I'm always down to talk about, but.
Yeah, the story,
it looks like this person went to a
protest.
We were just talking about that.
Attended a protest targeting companies
that supplied weapons to Israel at a
Cornell University job fair in twenty
twenty four.
According to this article,
they were there for about five minutes,
but that was enough to get them banned
from campus.
And then.
Yeah, DHS requested,
I'm assuming this was a large request and
not just this person specifically,
but probably as part of a request.
Google or DHS requested data from this
person and or from Google and Meta.
This included usernames, addresses,
itemized list of services,
including any IP masking services.
So like VPNs,
telephone or instrument numbers,
subscriber numbers or identities,
credit card, bank account.
um excuse me and yeah apparently this
person just found this out so whoo that's
crazy um the letter asks the companies to
provide users with as much notice as
possible before complying ooh so maybe
maybe google was in the wrong here oh
no no oh sorry i'm skipping around that
was a letter from eff to big big
tech companies telling them to change how
they
they comply with information.
So, excuse me.
Yeah.
It's, it's, it's pretty interesting.
And I think it's, like you said, it's,
it's, I mean, kind of, I mean,
it's two sides of the same coin, right?
Like that's why people started talking
about de-Googling.
It's if, if information isn't encrypted,
isn't,
um, zero knowledge.
If the company's whole point is to know
who you are and know every single thing
about you.
And as Google famously said, you know,
to read your mind,
then that's a data that they can turn
over and they can hand over.
And so trying to move away from these
kinds of bigger companies into things that
are more privacy, respecting, um,
self-hosting,
certainly if you have that technical
expertise, but not everybody does.
Um, you know,
just things that are all done on device.
Like a lot of the discussion here was
about like Google maps and alternatives to
Google maps.
So, um, anything that's done on device,
anything that stores your data in an
encrypted fashion where they can't access
it or tries not to store your data
at all.
Uh, I mean,
that's kind of what we're all about at
privacy guides, big fans of that stuff.
Yeah, I think, you know,
moving away from as many Google services
is.
always going to be a benefit for your
privacy because just the nature of Google,
they're just one of the largest data
collectors in the world.
Um,
any data that you can avoid giving to
them is I would say a good, um,
but I guess in this case, um,
I guess this is sort of, uh,
I can't actually read the article because
there's, it requires an email.
Um, but I'm going to assume there was,
there was, uh,
it was a geo-fencing situation.
Is that how they were able to identify?
Let me see.
Let me go ahead and read because I
have it pulled up here and I'm skimming
it, but let's see.
Full extent of the information the agency
sought.
The subpoena provides no justification for
why ICE is asking for this information.
um it just requests that google not
disclose the existence of the summons for
an indefinite period of time good god
almighty um yeah he's this dude doesn't
even live in the country anymore that's
crazy if i i don't know it doesn't
specify how they got this person's
information or why they were part of this
or and i mean i could be wrong
it maybe maybe this was specifically
targeted at that person but
Yeah,
it's kind of light on details on that,
actually.
Yeah, that is kind of unfortunate.
I would have hoped there was more
information specifically about that.
But I think, you know,
avoiding using Google services,
like some people were in this thread,
they were talking about, you know,
avoiding using Google Maps and stuff.
I think, you know...
We could maybe touch a little bit on
protest OPSEC.
But generally,
you don't really want to be using
navigation things that are sending
information to the cloud,
because that location and your location at
a protest could be recorded.
And generally,
it's a good idea to be on the
safe side,
even though you're completely within your
right to do so.
you know,
it's better to be safer than sorry and
not have your location tied back to you
because this sort of thing can happen.
Like ICE agents can subpoena your
information from Google,
like what the heck.
But yeah, I think it goes without saying,
if you're going to a protest,
I would avoid bringing a phone entirely if
you can.
But I do realize some people might need
communication methods and also mobile
phones are quite good for recording any
activity at the protest because there's
always things that happen at protests
which need to be recorded for
transparency.
So I think that's also another thing but
definitely using like a de-Google device
is going to reduce the amount of location
information.
But there's always concerns with,
you know, cell tower triangulation,
that sort of thing,
especially these large events.
So there's always risks, I guess.
But I personally would just avoid taking a
mobile phone entirely because it's
you know,
the separate devices you can use.
Like you can bring a camera to record.
I know some people use walkie-talkies and
stuff.
So I don't know.
It's definitely...
a tricky, uh, situation,
especially when there's a lot of this, uh,
subpoenas coming.
And I do wonder, this says ICE subpoena,
like I've been seeing information about,
um,
the validity of some of ICE's subpoenas.
Like,
are they as valid as a judicial like
warrant or like a, like a, you know,
I'm not really sure what the term is
in, in the U S like a,
Do you know what that is?
So this article,
I know what you're talking about.
You're talking about, real quick,
this article doesn't specify,
but it says that they identified this guy
through his Gmail account.
So I think you're onto something with the
geofence warrant thing.
And this was â I think recently geofence
warrants have been outlawed or at least
reigned in a little bit.
But this was like last â or two
years ago now,
so that was probably before that.
But yeah,
so basically there's two kinds of
warrants.
There's an administrative warrant,
and I think the one you're talking about
is called like a judge's warrant or
something.
And basically an administrative warrant
never goes in front of a judge.
It's basically â
I mean, I'm not a lawyer, obviously,
but from what I understand,
it's basically just like a fancy
letterhead.
Like,
it's really just ICE asking nicely with a
fancy letterhead, like,
please give us this data.
And companies absolutely do not have to
comply with that because a judge hasn't
signed it.
There's no actual, like,
legal enforcement behind it.
But â
We have seen this in all the big
tech companies.
And to be fair,
this is not unique to right now.
All the big tech companies will always
bend over backwards to suck up to
whoever's in office because not to be too
political,
but like they're going to outlast them,
right?
In three years,
Donald Trump's going to be gone.
But Apple's still going to be here.
Google's still going to be here.
Meta's still going to be here.
So to them, this is just a game.
It's like, okay, whatever.
Like,
let's make this guy feel good about
himself.
Again, both parties.
I'm not picking on Trump here.
Let's make this guy feel good about
himself for four years and then he'll shut
up and go away and he won't be
our problem anymore, four to eight years.
And we'll just keep doing what we've been
doing.
This is business as usual for them.
So yeah,
they're not at all incentivized to protect
your data.
They're incentivized to not cause problems
so that the government doesn't cause
problems for them.
It's a quid pro quo.
That's a tongue twister, but yeah.
But yeah,
I've been seeing those articles you're
talking about too.
A lot of these article or these subpoenas
don't have actual enforcement power behind
them.
It's just the government asking nicely and
they're totally going with it because it's
just easier for them.
So yeah.
Did you have anything else you wanted to
add or should we move on to questions
in the forum?
Yeah,
I think we should move on here to
the questions from viewers.
So we'll start with questions on our forum
thread first.
And that's firstly,
we'll look at any comments that are left
by some of our paying members.
And you can become a member by visiting
privacyguides.org and clicking the red
heart icon in the top right hand corner
of the page.
And yeah,
so we'll dive right into that forum
thread.
Is there anything you can see there, Nate,
that pops out to you right now?
So I checked in a little bit throughout
the week.
I haven't really been logging into the
forum lately, to be honest,
but I do occasionally check to see what
kind of threads are pretty popular and
what people are talking about.
And somebody actually turned this into a
question,
so I guess we'll go ahead and discuss
it.
But there was a big discussion about...
The term normie and whether or not that
is a label that should be used.
So, yeah,
I'm I don't know how Jordan feels about
this one,
but I'm trying to move away from that
term personally,
because I do think it can intentionally or
not.
I think it can come off as very
demeaning.
And even if you're not talking to people
who would fall under that category,
I think it's just very demeaning.
I don't know.
It's kind of, you know,
I always say like,
don't put anything in a format you
wouldn't want to be made public.
Right.
And so I wouldn't want to be caught
with somebody like, oh,
you had this private chat where you called
me a normie.
Like, that's really rude.
That's really messed up.
And, you know,
I think it's just I talk about this
a lot, too.
I think people just have different
interests.
You know,
some people are like super into cars and
they can tell you everything about how a
car works.
And some people are super into sports and
the Super Bowl after I just got done
trashing that.
But, you know,
I think just because we're super,
super into tech doesn't
make everybody else in normie or make
anybody like better than anyone else but
um yeah it's it's a term i'm trying
to move away from personally uh yeah i
don't know if you have thoughts on that
i think this is sort of falls down
this interesting thing here where we say
like uh you know what's normal like i
don't know i think this is kind of
a little bit uh
boxing people into a certain thing.
Um,
I'm not really a fan of that idea.
I think, you know,
normal is kind of what even is that?
Like that's, that's pretty,
that's pretty broad.
Right.
And I think calling people,
a normie.
I don't know.
I don't think you should say that to
someone's face.
Like I wouldn't like to be called a
normie.
Like that's not very nice.
Um,
so I always go for like less privacy
conscious people or something like that.
Um,
so I always go for something that's a
little bit more neutral.
It's not, it has,
doesn't have a negative connotation, um,
or can be perceived in a negative way.
It's true.
Like if someone doesn't like aren't as
concerned about their privacy,
then
they're less privacy conscious.
So I think something like that, or just,
you know, I don't know.
I can't really think of any other way
to address this, I guess,
or address someone like that.
But I think it's,
it's sort of an othering,
it's an othering thing.
It's like trying to other somebody.
And I'm not really a fan of that
language personally.
Yeah, I don't know if it's any better,
but that's why I've started using the term
mainstream users because it's not â I
don't know.
Maybe that's still not the best term,
but I think I like yours less privacy
conscious because it's more â when
something goes mainstream and it catches
on in the masses,
there's a certain way that people use
things,
whether that's music or tech or something,
and there's just a certain way that people
interact with it where it's more â
I guess it's more casual to them.
These are all band tattoos on my arms,
and I have met plenty of people that
are into these bands,
but not enough to get tattoos.
So it doesn't make me any better than
them.
I'm not more of a super fan,
especially some of these bands.
I've met people that are like,
I don't even know all the words,
and you do.
So it's very, I don't know.
It's just trying to acknowledge, I guess,
that
Yeah, it's just trying to remove that.
I don't really like that term either,
especially also because I also just don't
like anything that comes out of deep
internet culture, to be honest.
And I feel like that term does.
But yeah,
trying to find something more neutral so
that people don't feel like I'm talking
down to them would be really nice.
Yeah,
I'd say that's probably a good direction
to go generally.
So there was quite a lot of discussion
in that thread around, you know,
is this a good idea,
is this a bad idea?
I guess we've sort of shared our thoughts
on this.
And there was another person who mentioned
there was an age verification bypass tool.
I mean,
I'm not sure if we can really comment
on that.
That might be slightly legally grey area,
I would say.
It's there.
You can use it if you want.
We're not going to promote that,
but that's the thing that you can do.
I think it's only going to cause more
harsher restrictions in the future because
as soon as they figure out people using
these tools,
they're going to require ID documents for
everybody.
They're not going to do these age
estimation techniques anymore.
So I think it's, you know,
get in while you can,
but I think this is only going to
get worse if there's people bypassing it.
And, of course,
there's always going to be people
bypassing it.
So it's kind of inevitable that it becomes
ID documents or not.
So I think that's the direction things are
going in.
But, I mean,
it certainly is a work in progress.
Yeah.
I was just going to say,
I only saw it in one place,
so I don't know how true it is,
but apparently Discord is talking about
switching their ID verification service to
a different provider.
specifically in response to this script
that you're talking about.
And like I said, I don't even know,
would Discord have a way of knowing
potentially who used it and who used the
script versus who genuinely used the
service that it's tricking and reversing
that?
Or would that make them more likely to
flag you as somebody who needs to age
verify because you tried to use this
script?
Maybe you're a minor.
Yeah,
I feel like it could backfire for sure.
So...
yeah um real quick before we move on
to other questions um when they were
having this normie discussion uh one one
person said uh they said maybe because
somebody said you know this is the reason
that privacy guides in the community exist
to spread tech awareness to those who
don't yet know or care and uh somebody
else said you know maybe someday we'll be
able to reach some people but most of
the people said most of the normies won't
even hear about this community
unfortunately too busy with their lives i
i mean
I want to make it clear,
I don't think it's everybody's job to
teach everybody,
especially in all kinds of subjects.
But this is why we ask you guys
to share videos, share social media posts.
Look for those opportunities when somebody
is like, oh,
I'm having a hard time remembering
passwords.
There's too many passwords.
Send them the Privacy Guides page about
password managers.
Somebody asks you about VPNs,
send them the page about VPNs.
Just look for those little opportunities
to kind of spread the word, I think,
because you don't want to be too heavy
handed with it.
But yeah, you're right.
If we just depend on people to magically
find their way to the forum or to
privacy guides, like some people will,
but a lot of people won't without a
little bit of a nudge and a little
bit of help.
So yeah,
I just wanted to address that one.
Exactly.
Yeah,
there was one person at the end of
this forum thread under the username me,
and they had some questions around what
we're talking about,
about the Discord stuff.
So first question was,
do you think Discord is testing the waters
for ID verification?
We kind of talked about that before.
Yes,
I think they're going to move towards that
eventually,
especially because people keep bypassing
it.
And I don't think like age estimation
technology is very good because like we
talked about before, it's kind of racist.
It's kind of sexist.
It doesn't really...
equally verify people based on their
appearance like it's kind of problematic
like that also you're just scanning
people's faces which you know biometric
fingerprints are kind of like it's hard to
change your face like you only have one
face and
It's like your fingerprint, right?
Like it's identifiable,
extremely identifiable.
You can't change it.
That's a problem.
Especially because, you know,
these companies are saying,
we'll delete it.
Don't worry.
We'll delete it straight after.
And it's like, all right, well,
I guess we'll see.
Yeah.
Pinky promise.
Right.
I actually I want to point out, though,
when you were saying like you can't change
your face.
I read that that's actually how some
people are getting around this in like
other places where age verification has
already been enforced,
like in the UK is I'm assuming mostly
women because, you know,
women generally tend to be better with
makeup.
They're putting on makeup to make
themselves look older than they really
are.
and i know i've i've definitely seen i
don't know about y'all but my wife has
shown me videos on tiktok of somebody
who's like very masculine guy and then
puts on makeup and it's like the most
beautiful woman you've ever seen or vice
versa and so like yeah just adding to
your point about like this isn't gonna
work and i understand that not everybody
can do that i sure can't do that
i don't know the first i know what
mascara is i know what eyeliner is i
know what lipstick is that's the extent of
my makeup knowledge
So obviously, not everybody can do that.
But it just goes to show how this
trying to guess it with biometrics is
horribly flawed.
And yeah,
it's probably they're going to have to
tighten it up, which I'm not happy about.
But yeah.
yeah they'll be releasing the uh the
you'll have to do a uh a blood
donation you'll have to do a you'll have
to test your cells to make sure to
see how old you are we've partnered with
and me i don't know hopefully not that's
like a black mirror episode or something
um but uh so many headlines now we're
once black mirror episodes and i'm not
even being sarcastic
It makes me so mad.
It is kind of unfortunate.
And I guess the next question that me
had was,
do you think this will affect Discord user
base in any significant way?
I'm a, I guess,
I don't know if this is the right
word, nihilist.
I don't think this is going to basically,
it is going to put a little bit
of a dent, I think.
Like at the start,
it's going to cause a little bit of
a dent.
Like right now,
there's definitely people leaving.
But I think it's the problem with these
community things, right?
Because it's fine if you move.
I don't know if anyone here has done
this before, but people have been like,
that's it.
I'm moving to Signal.
I'm ditching WhatsApp forever.
And nobody else follows you.
you're going to go back to WhatsApp.
It's kind of the problem.
You need everybody to be up and want
to do that as well.
And I just don't think that it's
particularly easy to just up and move your
entire community to a different platform.
And people are very resistant to change,
especially when everyone's been enjoying
Discord since twenty sixteen.
They're enjoying it apart from the age
verification stuff.
So
I don't know.
There's always people who are very
critical of Discord,
but I think they are very much a
vocal minority on Reddit,
on internet platforms.
I think a lot of people just use
the platform and don't really care.
So that's my nihilistic opinion, I guess.
Sadly, I agree with you.
And I have seen,
I think it was even in that Ars
Technica article we showed at the
beginning,
Discord explicitly said that they expect
that some people are going to be upset
and leave.
And real quick,
I kind of want to go back to
something you said, I think,
when we were having that discussion.
If you're a creator of any kind,
which I know is probably not most people
watching,
but if you are some kind of a
creator,
and most of our viewers probably have
already thought about this,
but if you are a content creator of
any kind,
You, in my opinion,
you desperately need to be thinking about
diversifying your community because this
could happen anywhere.
Reddit has already done this once.
Discord is now doing this.
Facebook has done this like five hundred
times.
Twitter could do this like any platform
you're using could change their terms of
service tomorrow.
And it just sucks to suck.
So like having parallel communities,
having Discord and Matrix,
having Facebook,
Facebook or Twitter and Mastodon having,
you know, like at Privacy Guides,
we have Ghost as one way to support
us.
We have YouTube subscriptions.
We have cryptocurrency,
like putting all your eggs in one basket.
We often talk about that in terms of
our data.
Like some people, rightfully so,
I'll keep this a short rant.
Some people don't want to put everything
in Proton,
not because they don't trust Proton
necessarily,
but because that's all your eggs in one
basket, your email, your VPN,
your password, your cloud storage,
totally valid.
So same thing if you are in any
kind of a situation where you have control
over your community,
whether you're a creator,
whether you're an advisor to somebody,
definitely recommend like, hey,
we don't necessarily have to leave
Discord,
but what if we did spring up a
Matrix server and start building over
there too?
And then when something like this happens,
you're not rebuilding from scratch and
you're not trying to convince everybody.
And it'll be a whole lot easier too
when people find out.
It's like, you know, hey,
if you're pissed off at Discord,
we have a parallel community.
Like, like, like, like, like, like, like,
like, like,
The last thing I wanted to add is
I don't think a lot of people are
going to leave,
but one thing I think might be effective,
I've seen a lot of people canceling their
Nitro.
And I think that might be a great
compromise for a lot of people who
maybe...
maybe don't feel like matrix is a good
alternative.
Um, canceling your nitro.
If enough people do it will absolutely,
uh, scare discord.
And I mean, I get it.
I don't pay for nitro,
but there have been times I'm like, man,
I kind of wish I did.
Cause that would be a really nice feature,
but you can still use it without nitro.
And, and again, if enough people do it,
you can kind of eat your cake and
have it to where you can send a
message without having to fully leave the
platform.
I don't think it would be as extreme
as everybody leaving, but yeah,
Yeah, I don't know.
I just wanted to throw that out there
personally.
I think, yeah,
it's good if you are a Nitro subscriber.
The issue that they get you with that
because there's a badge for being
subscribed to Nitro for a certain amount
of time.
And if you cancel your subscription,
it starts over again.
So I think they've kind of built in
all these little...
uh ways to keep people on the platform
uh to keep paying for that subscription
personally i don't think i could use
discord without nitro i can't go without
my stickers i don't know what i'm gonna
do um but yeah i'm lucky i'm not
on that platform anymore and i'm on other
ones that stickers aren't a paid feature
because why should they be that's silly um
but yeah i think
you know, like Nate said,
setting up alternatives for your
community.
I think a lot of people don't really,
you know,
a lot of people just use Discord for
like chatting to their friends and like
gaming stuff.
And I think move that group chat over
to Signal.
Works fine.
Move that group chat,
move it over to Signal or Matrix or
Any of the other recommendations we have,
I don't think it will be a terrible
experience.
And I think you'll avoid a lot of
the awful stuff with Discord.
I think a lot of times Discord is
in a position where they can kind of
leverage things and do crappy stuff
because everyone's there and they don't
want to move.
So this is another instance of them being
like, well, too bad.
This is our platform.
We're going to enforce this.
And people have been going on about how
crap Discord has been going.
They moved all their apps to web apps,
even on mobile.
And people were really unhappy with the
performance.
People were saying there's loads of bugs.
And I think it's...
Discord doesn't really care about their
users because the web app is,
let's all admit,
it's much easier to develop a web app
than doing native apps.
So I think they care about the money.
They care about,
like Nate said at the start,
this is about them getting their public
IPO completed for the most amount of
money.
Yeah.
Yeah, and real quick, just to...
You keep mentioning small groups and
chats.
I agree a hundred percent.
If the only thing you really use Discord
for is to keep up with a handful
of friends or all the servers you're in
or small servers with you and ten of
your friends,
Signal will work perfectly for that.
Even Matrix will work perfectly for that.
The challenges really start to come in
when you have these big,
large public communities if you're a
content creator or something.
I think Matrix will be a bigger ask
and even Signal, I think,
would be a really tall order there.
But yeah,
if it's just like you and a few
of your friends in some group chats or
some one-to-one chats, like, yeah.
Signal works great.
Matrix works great.
SimpleX works great.
Like,
a lot of the stuff we talk about,
we promote on the website will work just
fine.
One more quick thing, not to, like,
give everybody all the advice,
but one thing that occurred to me while
you were talking is also, like,
you could set up on your own as
a fan, you could set up, like,
a fan community.
Like,
I've seen or I've known of discords that,
like,
were set up as a fan run community.
And then once that content creator got to
a certain size,
they kind of discovered it and they were
like, oh,
I already have a community on Discord.
I didn't even know that.
And of course,
because all the moderators were fans,
they were like, yeah, come on in.
We'll make you an admin.
We'll like treat you like royalty.
And so it's, I mean, it's a stretch.
I will admit that.
But if you go start your own parallel
fan group on matrix and it gets big
enough,
maybe whoever you're starting the fan
group about one day, we'll just be like,
I mean,
I have like five hundred people over
there.
Maybe I should go ahead and just make
an account and check in every once in
a while.
So, yeah, I don't know.
It's a thought.
yeah um but yeah we are sort of
getting to the end of the of the
live stream here i just want to cover
one quick question here um because we are
just we just passed two hours for the
live stream um and we try to keep
it within two hours so one last question
here the good thing about it in is
that it will eventually happen to discord
and other privacy invasive platforms
resulting in people leaving it someday
sadly that day may be very far in
the future
Um, this is a comment by anonymous.
I think uh,
i'm not sure if I agree because um,
for instance,
I can think of so many platforms that
are just Absolutely terrible like there
are so many people who just keep using
facebook I don't know what the what the
issue is,
but basically any event here in australia
like it's always on It's always on
facebook instagram
Facebook Messenger.
It's a terrible platform.
If you talk to anyone that uses Facebook
or Facebook Messenger,
they'll tell you that it is absolutely
buggy.
It's a terrible platform.
It's not fun to use.
It's constantly breaking.
But it's still the platform that everyone
is on because of this network effect that
we're talking about.
So I don't know if people are actually
going to leave
Um, people always say, oh,
I'm going to leave, but it's like,
will you though?
Um, I guess we'll see how it goes,
but I am definitely not,
wouldn't be surprised if things go back to
normal in a month from now.
I sadly agree with you.
I have not heard a single good thing
about Facebook in probably close to a year
now, maybe even more.
I literally, not one person has been like,
you know,
people hate on Facebook too much.
I kind of like it.
It's like,
I've heard people defend certain features,
but even then they're like, yeah,
it's crap except for these two things.
Like,
and yet people are still using Facebook
like crazy.
They haven't had a dip in revenue yet.
I think they did one time,
but not since then.
So-
Unfortunately,
I share your nihilism on that one.
Yes.
And with that being said,
let's move into the outro here.
All the updates from this week in privacy
will be shared on the blog,
which has already gone up.
Thank you, Nate.
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