Google Has Been Ratting Out YouTube Viewers to the Feds

You really need to keep an eye on the Department of Injustice these days because you never know what they’re up to. The latest example comes to us from Forbes this week. It involves Google and a collection of YouTube videos that have attracted the attention of the feds. It’s not just the creators of the videos who are of interest, however. Forbes uncovered warrants showing that the FBI had demanded user data on everyone who watched particular videos. We’re talking about tens of thousands of viewers in some cases. It remains unclear how many of these cases resulted in Google turning over the user’s data, but it’s almost certainly a non-zero number. The company has yet to offer specifics about compliance, but they claim to be making changes that will make it more difficult for user data to be vacuumed up on a massive scale in that fashion. 

Federal investigators have ordered Google to provide information on all viewers of select YouTube videos, according to multiple search warrants obtained by Forbes. Privacy experts from multiple civil rights groups told Forbes they think the orders are unconstitutional because they threaten to turn innocent YouTube viewers into criminal suspects.

In a just-unsealed case from Kentucky reviewed by Forbes, undercover cops sought to identify the individual behind the online moniker “elonmuskwhm,” who they suspect of selling bitcoin for cash, potentially running afoul of money laundering laws and rules around unlicensed money transmitting.

In conversations with the user in early January, undercover agents sent links of YouTube tutorials for mapping via drones and augmented reality software, then asked Google for information on who had viewed the videos, which collectively have been watched over 30,000 times.

Some of the video feeds in question were livestreaming public places where the swatting of police officers had taken place, so perhaps there was justification for investigating those. But others were instructional videos or tutorials. In one of the examples above, content creators published videos showing how to generate maps using a drone and some AI software. Without saying why, the feds demanded the names, addresses, telephone numbers, and user activity of everyone who watched the videos during a particular range of dates.

That example seems particularly egregious. People might have any number of reasons for watching such a video. While I’m sure it could be put to some nefarious purpose, some people might simply want to generate a cool map of their neighborhood. Others might find the technology interesting even if they don’t own a drone. Either way, just watching a video doesn’t offer evidence of anything. The act of watching shouldn’t put you on a list of potential criminal suspects.

Not all that long ago, I watched a video on YouTube showing someone attaching a (simulated) bomb to a drone. I looked it up as part of my research into a story about the Houthis. Did I wind up on the FBI’s “naughty list” and did Google turn over my data to the feds? Should I be expecting a knock on my door in the near future? Of course, now that I stop to think about it, I research so many crazy topics as part of my job that I’m probably on any number of lists that law enforcement keeps.

Google is claiming that they aren’t part of the problem in all of this. Their spokesman told Forbes that the company has a rigorous policy intended to “protect the privacy and constitutional rights of our users while supporting the important work of law enforcement.” But that sounds like they’re trying to have it both ways. Did they turn over the data of the users who watched the drone-mapping video? They’re not saying.

Google is also frequently called on to provide user information for people who are caught up in geofencing investigations. (That’s when the government wants the identity of anyone using a mobile device that enters a particular area at a given time, presumably where a crime has taken place.) That might be an effective way to narrow down a list of suspects, but it also vacuums up the data of hordes of other people who simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. What happens to all of their data? We’re unlikely to find out from the government any time soon. Google claims that a change to their system will make such geofencing searches impossible in the future. (So much for “the important work of law enforcement” I guess.) This is all very worrisome to online privacy activists and the rest of us should be concerned as well.