U.S. District Judge Susan Illston.
Posted on 06/01/2013 9:17:11 AM PDT by tobyhill
A US judge has ordered Google to comply with FBI secret demands for customer data, despite earlier ruling the warrantless orders unconstitutional.
District court judge Susan Illston this week rejected the internet search giant's argument that so-called National Security Letters (NSLs) violated its constitutional rights. As such it ordered Google to hand over private information relating to US citizens to federal agents.
It comes despite Illston earlier ruling the letters unconstitutional in a separate case in March. In that case, brought by non-profit advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the judge said that such demands violated the right to free speech.
She also ruled against gagging clauses attached to the demands that prevent the recipients of NSLs from disclosing the mere existence of an order.
"The court concludes that the nondisclosure provision violates the First Amendment … the government is therefore enjoined from issuing NSLs … or from enforcing the nondisclosure provision in this or any other case," Illston concluded in March.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Did they also ask for IRS agents data?
Time to ditch Chrome. I use DuckDuckGo as a search engine. Have a gmail account but don’t use it for anything important. Haven’t been able to 86 the android phone yet though.
I use FireFox. I do use the Google search engine because it seems to be more thorough when I’m looking for a photo or graphic. I also like the fact that it allows me to see if there are larger sizes of a certain item, if I’m looking for a quality copy.
Consider "Startpage" as well, ditto that on gmail acct, only use google for pedestrian searches such as a pizza shops phone number...
Thank you.
I have used StartPage in the past as well. Another good option. I will use google at times but only for innocuous search subjects.
The smartphone is a problem though. Having to choose between Google, Apple and Microsoft when it comes to privacy is the height of ‘lesser of evils’. If Blackberry wanted to make a comeback, one marketing strategy highlighting respect for privacy could be effective.
The Bill of Rights ain’t worth the parchment it’s printed on; Google should have known that.
Facebook cooperated and sold their data to the IRS.
Catch me up on this please. I am 2 fingers away from going Galt on FB.
It took me awhile to even consider FB, but my relatives seem to like it because it was a good way to keep up collectively and email/phone was just too much of a bother. So I joined and now I hate it! I hate that I’m drawn to it, mostly political. I hate that I waste my time being political instead of enjoying what I thought it would be.
I would have been gone a long time ago.
I just found this in my bookmarks.
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/the-irs-wants-you-to-share-everything-91378.html
Take your pick, some actually make sense...
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance (1841)
Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.
Aldous Huxley, "Do What You Will" (1929)
Consistency is a virtue for trains: what we want from a philosopher is insights, whether he comes by them consistently or not.
Stephen Vizinczey, "Good Faith and Bad"
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Oscar Wilde, "The Relation of Dress to Art"
Consistency is the enemy of enterprise, just as symmetry is the enemy of art.
George Bernard Shaw, "The Lure of Fantasy" (1991)
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Crack-Up" (2/36)
If a person never contradicts himself, it must be that he says nothing.
Miguel de Unamuno, "Godel, Escher, Bach" (1979)
Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
Bernard Berenson, "Notebook" (1892)
Of course I'm inconsistent! Only logicians and cretins are consistent!
Tom Robbins, "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues" (1976)
A silly ass ... wrote a paper to prove me inconsistent. ... Inconsistency is the bugbear of fools! I wouldn't give a damn for a fellow who couldn't change his mind with a change of conditions.
John Arbuthnot Fisher, "The Royal Navy in the Fisher Era", 1904-1919.
I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own tastes.
Marchel Duchamp, "Marchel Duchamp: Anti-Artist" (3/21/45)
The problem with being consistent is that there are lots of ways to be consistent, and they're all inconsistent with each other.
Larry Wall, perl6-language mailing-list
Psychotics are consistently inconsistent. The essence of sanity is to be inconsistently inconsistent.
Larry Wall, Usenet article (1998)
Inconsistently Yours,
GtG
Google will appeal this decision to a higher court all the way to SCOTUS?
All of those people were just smashing words together. Pretty but then again none of them actually applies. The situations they describe, if any, are separated by time and space, and in fact allow that perfect alignment of fact must always produce perfect alignment of result. Anything else is madness. The judge is mad, or a tool, or a criminal. No alternative.
Me too, but I have only anecdotal evidence. During a recent audit of my wife's business, the IRS agent confessed (perhaps accidentally) that one of the things that had triggered the audit in the first place was the perceived gap between our reported income and our apparent lifestyle as depicted in our Facebook photos.
All of our photo albums are set to Friends only - in theory, he should not have been able to see any of those pictures at all unless he A) bribed one of our friends (or they reported us to the IRS for a reward, which is not impossible), or B) was able to access "secure" areas of Facebook through a backdoor.
Given Facebook's revenue problems, I made the logical deduction that the company has started "selling" access to their vast archive of personal data to government agencies in return for favorable tax treatment or some other such benefit. When the IRS wants to investigate a particular individual, they are now free to go on fishing expeditions through your Facebook Timeline and photo albums.
The audit amounted to nothing, of course, since my wife's business is quite small - but my faith in Facebook's privacy settings is now at absolute zero.
I use startpage.com and it’s the only search engine I use.
http://www.ixquick.com try this one on for size.
Try mine.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston.
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