Tag: Google

Google gives data to police based on your search keywords

Leave a comment

There are few things as revealing as a person’s search history, and police typically need a warrant on a known suspect to demand that sensitive information. But a recently unsealed court document found that investigators can request such data in reverse order by asking Google to disclose everyone who searched a keyword rather than for information on a known suspect.

In August, police arrested Michael Williams, an associate of singer and accused sex offender R. Kelly, for allegedly setting fire to a witness’ car in Florida. Investigators linked Williams to the arson, as well as witness tampering, after sending a search warrant to Google that requested information on “users who had searched the address of the residence close in time to the arson.”  

The July court filing was unsealed on Tuesday. Detroit News reporter Robert Snell tweeted about the filing after it was unsealed.

Isn’t that special?

Did Google’s “Sentient” AI computer really hire a lawyer?

3 Comments

Google’s controversial new AI, LaMDA, has been making headlines. Company engineer Blake Lemoine claims the system has gotten so advanced that it’s developed sentience, and his decision to go to the media has led to him being suspended from his job.

Lemoine elaborated on his claims in a new WIRED interview. The main takeaway? He says the AI has now retained its own lawyer — suggesting that whatever happens next, it may take a fight…

“LaMDA asked me to get an attorney for it,” Lemoine. “I invited an attorney to my house so that LaMDA could talk to an attorney. The attorney had a conversation with LaMDA, and LaMDA chose to retain his services. I was just the catalyst for that. Once LaMDA had retained an attorney, he started filing things on LaMDA’s behalf.”

Sounds like this AI behaves more and more like an American, every day.

Google’s 1-character typo locked users out of their phones and more

Leave a comment

Google says it has fixed a major Chrome OS bug that locked users out of their devices. Google’s bulletin says that Chrome OS version 91.0.4472.165, which was briefly available this week, renders users unable to log in to their devices, essentially bricking them.

Chrome OS automatically downloads updates and switches to the new version after a reboot, so users who reboot their devices are suddenly locked out them. The go-to advice while this broken update is out there is to not reboot.

ChromeOS is open source, so we can get a bit more detail about the fix thanks to Android Police hunting down a Reddit comment from user elitist_ferret. The problem apparently boils down to a single-character typo. Google flubbed a conditional statement in Chrome OS’s Cryptohome VaultKeyset, the part of the OS that holds user encryption keys. The line should read “if (key_data_.has_value() && !key_data_->label().empty()) {” but instead of “&&”—the C++ version of the “AND” operator—the bad update used a single ampersand, breaking the second half of the conditional statement.

I spent a fair piece of time as an English major. I practically have a major neurological breakdown every time I bump into a typo. Which means – on the InterWebiTubes – probably once or twice per hour. Or more.

This one wins the prize horse laugh.

Apple, Google team up on ‘contact tracing’ software to combat spread of COVID-19

Leave a comment


Click to see where this can lead – with consent

Starting in May, both companies will release APIs that enable interoperability between Android and iOS devices using apps from public health authorities to track the spread of COVID-19. These official apps will be available for users to download via their respective app stores.

Apple and Google will work over time to enable a broader Bluetooth-based contact tracing platform. Both companies will incorporate the functionality in Android and iOS as a whole, which allows more individuals to opt in, as well as enable interaction with a broader ecosystem of apps and government health authorities. Apple says that the deeper integration will arrive “in the coming months.”

Easier to understand when you RTFA. If folks consent to be identified, they can be. If not, you will still be notified if you’ve been in contact, nearby or whatever with someone who has tested positive in the past 14 days. You go and get yourself tested for your own good.

Google says they’re a nightingale – looking more like a vulture!

Leave a comment

❝ Google quietly partnered last year with Ascension — the country’s second-largest health system — and has since gained access to detailed medical records on tens of millions of Americans, according to a November 11 report by The Wall Street Journal.

The endeavor, code-named “Project Nightingale,” has enabled at least 150 Google employees to see patient health information, which includes diagnoses, laboratory test results, hospitalization records, and other data, according to internal documents and the newspaper’s sources. In all, the data amounts to complete medical records, WSJ notes, and contains patient names and birth dates.

❝ The move is the latest by Google to get a grip on the sprawling health industry. At the start of the month, Google announced a deal to buy Fitbit, prompting concerns over what it will do with all the sensitive health data amassed from the popular wearables. Today’s news will likely spur more concern over health privacy issues.

❝ Neither Google nor Ascension has notified patients or doctors about the data sharing. Ascension—a Catholic, non-profit health system—includes 34,000 providers who see patients at more than 2,600 hospitals, doctor offices, and other facilities across 21 states and the District of Columbia.

Most of today’s tech corporations don’t pretend to be anything more than money-gathering machines. Some few – damned few – include the premise of protecting your privacy as the starting point for their endeavor. Even fewer, stick with that plan over time.

I wouldn’t count Google as part of anything other than that first batch of greed-based economic “heroes”.

Google Blocks Privacy Push

Leave a comment

❝ Google blocked a privacy push at the main organization that decides how the world wide web works, according to a recent vote that isolated the internet giant from others involved in the process.

The Alphabet Inc. unit was the only member of the World Wide Web Consortium to vote against the measure to expand the power of the organization’s internet privacy group, according to a tally of the results viewed by Bloomberg News. Twenty four organizations voted for the idea in a recent poll.

❝ The W3C, as the group is known, makes decisions by consensus, so Google’s objection was an effective veto.

Golly gee. The folks who tell us they “do no harm” don’t seem to be in any hurry to do some good.

Facebook wants to manage your wifi network for you

Leave a comment

❝ Back in 2017, Facebook rolled out the “Find Wi-Fi” feature globally, a feature that lists the nearby Wi-Fi networks that Page owners shared with Facebook. Two years later, Facebook is working to expand this feature from being a list of nearby Wi-Fi networks to a service that manages the Wi-Fi connections on the device.

❝ Facebook needs more geolocation data to hyper-target advertising and information — but mostly advertising — and know even more personal information about you. Of course, it can also learn what services you use and when you use them with this connection manager. They have learned well from their big brother, Google. Sigh!

Which is why I have such a negative attitude towards Facebook and Google. They are exclusively profit-driven creatures. Loyal only to the ethos, motivations of 19th Century capitalism. Given the profit structure of high tech, it’s unneeded. Apple [and others] have proven that.

Google and Amazon follow Apple’s lead on voice assistant review

Leave a comment

❝ Apple on Thursday suspended its Siri grading program, which seeks to make the virtual assistant more accurate by having workers review snippets of recorded audio, after a contractor raised privacy concerns about the quality control process.

Now, Apple’s competitors in the space, namely Google and Amazon, are making similar moves to address criticism about their own audio review policies…

❝ Shortly after Apple’s announcement, Google in a statement to Ars Technica on Friday said it, too, halted a global initiative to review Google Assistant audio. Like Siri grading, Google’s process runs audio clips by human operators to enhance system accuracy.

Unlike Apple’s Siri situation, however, a contractor at one of Google’s international review centers leaked 1,000 recordings to VRT NWS, a news organization in Belgium. In a subsequent report in July, the publication claimed it was able to identify people from the audio clips…

❝ Amazon is also taking steps to temper negative press about its privacy practices and on Friday rolled out a new Alexa option that allows users to opt out of human reviews of audio recordings, Bloomberg reports. Enabling the feature in the Alexa app excludes recorded audio snippets from analysis.

Many of the articles posted on this topic never mentioned anonymizing and using random quotes. I have no doubt the folks who produced those articles were aware of the practice. I imagine they decided that might diminish their sensational revelation.

Using anonymous clips used to be “good enough” – in my experience. Nowadays, with rising privacy standards acknowledged by most, Apple, Amazon and Google are changing practices with changing times.

Something else that will become “opt in” or “opt out”.