@htpcnz An interesting take

@lindegardxyz I don't know. But if Google doesn't want it to escalate to that scale, perhaps even to the public sector (incl of other nation states), their gigantic legal team will need to present some form of evidence they have not been eavesdropping. As yet they have not, while the civil lawsuit seems to contain enough material to convince juries that the 'false accepts' (queries passed outside of defined 'hot words') have been happening frequently.

@mikebabcock Fair. Hence I used "seems". However they have not contested it with evidence, despite having hundreds of lawyers. Just simply denied wrongdoing.

I would not give them the benefit of the doubt. They're a mining company.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_litigation

@rzeta0 @analogfusion What there is not however is a single unified platform 'workspace', that people have grown accustomed to like, integrating auth flow with devices & application layer & across the platform space.

Nextcloud, to some degree, have made headway in this regard, at least so far as the sync, drive, calendar, docs, conferencing needs cluster.

Implementing high-reputation & sovereign mail transport with secure webmail atop is especially tricky, which is why I teach it. 2/2

@rzeta0 @analogfusion Feasible alternatives to Google platforms? Many have emerged, & are increasingly used by non-technical sorts. BigBlueButton easily replaces GG Meet (I have migrated many off Zoom and GG Meet to this platform), Nextcloud replaces GG Drive and so far as many needs GG Docs (as above), Cryptpad likewise (albeit a little more geeky), GMail has many self-hosted alternatives (have moved many to Roundcube or SnappyMail) alongside click & go third party alts like Tutanota, ++ (1/2)

@analogfusion The only way forward is ground-up, community led and supported, migration off their platform surface and onto ethical alternatives.

(Based on your profile, I see you know this, just sounding it out for the thread)

@analogfusion 100%. They would have put it aside. Nothing a barrage of marketing, of smiling homes and workplaces living their best possible lives through Google, can't fix. It's dark.

As we guessed, it seems that despite Google saying they were not making recordings of people's voices and mining them for advertisers, they were doing exactly that.

If it was a colleague caught wiretapping the workplace, we'd have them sacked and never speak to nor trust them again. In the case of Google, it's even more personal.

No Google service is free. We are the terrain they extract from. We always pay.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-voice-assistant-lawsuit-settlement-68-million/

#bigtech

In the leadup to & throughout WW2, US tech giant IBM chose to be the "information muscle" of the Nazi Party, running census & kill accounting for Hitler's Final Solution.

As this shitty loop comes round at scale, tech giants once again center themselves within the white supremacy project. Rather than combine their power to fight back, the CEOs & investors of these corps *choose* to side with the hateful & increasingly lethal regime.

Helping friends & fam off #bigtech is a moral imperative.

@solitha Good idea. Depending on how you can fix it, could use a technique like this, but opaque. https://julianoliver.com/projects/public-patch/

If you are in the US and have an Amazon Ring camera, disconnect it. The camera may be being used by ICE, by way of its participation in a Flock AI surveillance network.

Or sure, smash if it feels better.

https://futurism.com/future-society/amazon-ring-cameras-ice

https://www.404media.co/ice-secret-service-navy-all-had-access-to-flocks-nationwide-network-of-cameras/