> What’s the point of this comment? It’s an opinion piece, so we know it reflects the author’s opinions.
Well yeah, it's an opinion piece so OP is going to criticise their opinions and how they are framed.
Take the following:
> "This is a moment I’ve long worried would arrive. The way tens of millions of Americans use everyday Google products has suddenly become dangerous. Following the Supreme Court decision to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, anything Google knows about you could be acquired by police in states where abortion is now illegal [...] There is something Google could do about this: Stop collecting — and start deleting — data that could be used to prosecute abortions."
Now what he is effectively saying is - Google should destroy evidence of a particular crime (a crime I suspect most of us believe shouldn't be a crime, but is now a crime nontheless).
He isn't arguing Google should delete evidence of all crimes - just this specific crime.
So presumably we are arguing that Google should be able to decide which crimes are 'good' and 'bad' and then destroy evidence of things that it thinks shouldn't be crimes?
Once more - I personally agree with the author on abortion and don't think abortion should be illegal - but it's a really weird twist to ask Google to effectively intentionally and automatically detect when someone might be breaking a specific law, and then specifically delete just the data that they think could be evidence of law-breaking so that law enforcement can't get the evidence. I can't imagine this passing the sniff-test with prosecutors in terms of tampering/destroying evidence.
I mean if we are arguing for a blanket ban on law enforcement having data from Google then that is fine and a viewpoint I can understand - but only arguing for limitations in the context of abortion is the thing that seems strange.
Should they delete evidence if you crash your car so the police can't see if you have been using your phone when driving? Should they delete the evidence of who was at the congress riots? Should they let investigators trace if a suspect was at a particular location during a murder trial? It becomes a bit of a slippery slope trying to work out where the line is.
> it's a really weird twist to ask Google to effectively intentionally and automatically detect when someone might be breaking a specific law, and then specifically delete just the data that they think could be evidence of law-breaking so that law enforcement can't get the evidence.
To leave with only this interpretation of the article involves ignoring both the headline and the four suggestions that it argues for, which don't concentrate on abortion, but clearly call for rules that would protect women who have abortions to also be applied generally, to 1) all searches and history (possibly qualified with "health-related" exclusions by default in the spirit of HIPAA), 2) all location data, 3) 'incognito mode' in general, and 4) all chat and private messaging.
Abortion is what motivates him (or at least what he decided to hang the article from), but that's clearly one of the few issues that motivates wealthy elites because it has the potential to affect them or someone they love. Any truthful angle that gets anybody riled up against ubiquitous surveillance is good.
It actually argues for the scope of data deletion to be data specifically around sexual reproductive health, for the explicit purpose of deleting evidence of abortions for Roe vs Wade.
I agree that the other points are more broad - but I also think that these issues have to be looked at via more than a single lens. Just using the lens of 'abortion' for these data privacy issues leads to a much more limited scope of discussion than is ideal.
Well yeah, it's an opinion piece so OP is going to criticise their opinions and how they are framed.
Take the following:
> "This is a moment I’ve long worried would arrive. The way tens of millions of Americans use everyday Google products has suddenly become dangerous. Following the Supreme Court decision to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, anything Google knows about you could be acquired by police in states where abortion is now illegal [...] There is something Google could do about this: Stop collecting — and start deleting — data that could be used to prosecute abortions."
Now what he is effectively saying is - Google should destroy evidence of a particular crime (a crime I suspect most of us believe shouldn't be a crime, but is now a crime nontheless).
He isn't arguing Google should delete evidence of all crimes - just this specific crime.
So presumably we are arguing that Google should be able to decide which crimes are 'good' and 'bad' and then destroy evidence of things that it thinks shouldn't be crimes?
Once more - I personally agree with the author on abortion and don't think abortion should be illegal - but it's a really weird twist to ask Google to effectively intentionally and automatically detect when someone might be breaking a specific law, and then specifically delete just the data that they think could be evidence of law-breaking so that law enforcement can't get the evidence. I can't imagine this passing the sniff-test with prosecutors in terms of tampering/destroying evidence.
I mean if we are arguing for a blanket ban on law enforcement having data from Google then that is fine and a viewpoint I can understand - but only arguing for limitations in the context of abortion is the thing that seems strange.
Should they delete evidence if you crash your car so the police can't see if you have been using your phone when driving? Should they delete the evidence of who was at the congress riots? Should they let investigators trace if a suspect was at a particular location during a murder trial? It becomes a bit of a slippery slope trying to work out where the line is.