alt Hacker NewsFrom the article: "Google says it stopped responding to geofence warrants last year, because the company no longer stores such data and instead keeps location data on each user’s device. But law enforcement has made geofence requests of other tech companies, including Apple, Lyft, Snapchat, Uber, Microsoft and Yahoo"
That explains the changes Google did to the Timeline and why you can't see it in the browser anymore. That is great from them actually.
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I think the trigger was this: https://www.axios.com/2022/07/01/google-delete-location-hist...
Google never gets credit for shit like this, or their results in zero-knowledge maths and implementations, which are genuine public service beyond immediate productization.
Only two of these companies actually needs your location data to function, it's Uber and Lyft. There's a reasonable case telcos might also need the data for network purposes, but cell tower data isn't going to be as accurate as GPS. It's safe to say everyone else is basically collecting data for serving ads even if they say otherwise.
The opposite of dragnet surveillance, which is what flock and geofencing warrants are: data aggregated and shared without the consent of the user, is data collection minimization even when done for security or apps.
Completely concur with this, though I do miss being able to browse for places in Google Maps and easily see when I was last there. This functionality disappeared when my location information went local only.
I hate this change. I loved how the original Timeline worked, and now it's unusable. I don't care about courts subpoeaning my data. I'd love to opt in to previous status quo. I don't care about the loss of "privacy" in the context that was never important to me.
Most people are like me: they don't care about being protected from the courts, because the courts don't pose risk to them, and as a matter of statistical fact, they are correct.
Google got caught in the aftermath of the Carpenter vs. US ruling. https://www.techdirt.com/2023/12/18/google-disrupts-geofence...
By stopping that one specific way they supported warrantless surveillance, Google probably managed to make the current round of litigation moot so that Google won't suffer a negative ruling on the merits. They can start all over again in a slightly different way once the attention goes down a bit.