If you’re not familiar with the LEGO scandal, the tl;dw is that this YouTuber Reckless Ben (Ben Schneider) has been investigating a stolen set of LEGO worth ~$100-200k (depending on who you ask) and the local police dept and criminal justice system has been colluding with the criminals (all members of the local Mormon church) to get him to STFU. The long version is, very long. You can check his channel for more.
Previously the local police dept managed to get a warrant to raid Ben’s rental home with guns drawn and arrest him, based on what is clearly fabricated evidence. Here they appear to have done it again to get access to his Google account.
The linked video is mirrored on Peertube and timestamped to the relevant section.
Ben does also provide a copy of the subpoena in the video but I cannot vouch for its’ validity, and he has used placeholder evidence before, but that’s neither here nor there.
Anyway, the part that was relevant to this community was that in the course of their investigation they subpoenaed Google, and Google handed over basically his entire life to them. I’m sure this was very useful in their investigation.
I don’t necessarily blame Google here for complying with a subpoena, but the moral of the story is to stop giving Google your data, because everything you say and do can and will be used against you in a court of law, with or without legitimate justification, and the more stuff you give them, the more ammunition you’re providing the prosecutor.
This is also not exclusive to Google. Anything not local, self-hosted or encrypted a la Proton can be subpoenaed and the provider will have to comply. It just so happens that Google probably has more information about literally everyone in the world than any other particular entity.
Damn, I hadn’t heard about this but that video is a wild ride…
It’s good to have reminders of what is and isn’t private.
Google accounts aren’t “free”.
Why would Legos cost so much?
I think it’s the largest single collection of Star Wars Lego.
Also, people like collecting things and will pay money for rare and unique items.
It was a very large collection of unopened boxes that aren’t made anymore.
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Link to article?
Am I wrong or is $100k not even money enough for how big this scandal has been?
Expect it to become more common.
Oh, is this what’s going to happen to me in my support of the Mormon Church by forming the cult of Mormon Occultism? Whatever. I expected this twelve years ago when the CIA contacted me, covertly, on an acid trip. Hard to explain, but I have, thoroughly, in my book. But the goal of my mission now is truthtelling, and somehow I knew there would be a lengthy legal battle with “a church” in my future during my fateful acid trip where aliens revealed themselves to me. Hard to explain, but I portray it poorly deliberately because that helps the dazzle camouflage. We know what we’re doing. But, I had an experience with the Mormon Church. God, who is that organization of three letters that’s always watching, told me to keep on keeping on. Staying silent while screaming. Has anyone ever tested you were a pedophile? It’s weird what the Mormon Church prophets from. I’m a master baiter. I’m a fisher of men, I said. I’m a cop, I said in my last post, but the silent don’t even read this far.
wat
Go, go gabba gotcha!
Man, all I want is to non-sexually explain my strangeness in development, that the average prude would assume is sexual by default. I lost my “mom” five times, alright? I’m a little weird. Can I talk about this stuff to heal skillfully? Asking the gods here…
I’ve been following this and he keeps making so many mistakes. Stop talking to the police, bro. Stop trying to get the shop owner on camera.
File lawsuits against the company (I know he tried and the cop refused to issue the summons illegally, so you do it again after filing a complaint against the police), and file every lawsuit possible outside of that district.
But that’s not good views for YouTube. He just keeps giving them more ammunition to go after him.
Lawsuits do no good when they are invisible. He’s exposed insane police and judge corruption that would be swept under the rug becuase of no exposure. If utah decides they dont like you or me, we would be fucked, in jail for made up lies, becuase we dont have millions of people watching.
Yes he has also done some dumb shit for sure.
i guess he lives up to the name Reckless Ben huh lol
I genuinely think this guy was born without fear. Like it simply doesn’t function in his brain. The more into his past you dig, the more you realize that him calling himself Reckless Ben is not a joke. We are all lucky that he is using his fearlessness for good. To him, this entire thing is just an interesting experience or however he phrased it. I can’t help, but admire him.
How did we not see this!?
In the above video, his decision to attend a protest wearing a beard is beyond dubious. I sure hope he had several independent lawyers weigh in on exactly what he could say and do that won’t violate the court order, because on the surface that seems like begging the judge to throw him in jail. Even if he technically followed the order, the appearance of it is probably enough for the judge to go nuclear.
Most everything leading up to that I could write off as a combination of telling a good story, boundary testing, and shining a light on how absurdly corrupt our criminal Justice System is in operation, but that beard scene has me concerned that Ben just lost whatever ground he had to stand on.
After he got forcibly muted by court I believe he finally spoke to lawyers and then he won pretty quick.
I suspect he was playing 4D chess, and decided to show what your chances are in the system if you play it by the book and alone, which most people who can’t afford a lawyer would do, and what also the thieves relied on. They told the victim directly try to sue us and you’ll end up paying more in lawyer costs.
Never let yourself become dependent on something a company has control, if at all possible. They will use it as leverage to coerce concessions from you that drive you further toward controlling nothing at all.
Even 10 years ago this would have caused a riot. People are so domesticated these days.
You either aren’t paying attention to what he’s doing, or you weren’t paying attention 10 years ago. This is absolutely normal behavior for the legal system.
He does business using google services - they subpoenad his google account. That’s how this works.
This type of thing was definitely happening 10 years ago and people were actually less worried about it than they are today
Delusional
I mean how much has Steven Dongzinger alone shone a light on this? Way more eyes on this than there were ten years ago.
IIRC The Civil Rights Lawyer from Audit the Audit is helping him out. Shit is fucked if it has his attention. Hope it turns out ok.
I’m not entirely clear on why this guy stuck out his neck so far over a situation that was never his to deal with in the first place.
Content
I mean just so you know this dude is making bucks off of YouTube views. Now, idk it its like a boatload of money but he is compensated for his time that way.
That said though imagine how bleak the world would be if no one stuck their neck out for anyone over something that didn’t involve them. We should all try to help the common man if we can.
Its his job?
Just as an fyi, if you’d self hosted your services, they would probably subpoena you, and you would be obligated to give them all your data from your own server, and if you’d refus, your be in deep, deep shit
It doesn’t matter where you store data, if it’s stored, it can be used
“Sorry I’m a complete amateur. I don’t even have an A+ cert. I ran a Docker update and it corrupted EVERYTHING and I lost the encryption key to my offsite because I’m such an idiot I’m so sorry.”
“Well boys I sure hope you can get in to this because I lost the password ages ago I remember it was a set of 15 random words with capitals in random spots but just can’t remember the order…”
Then your lawyer gets to tell the jury that you complied.
I imagine it’d still be preferable to make them go through you and your lawyer for that info, where you could still have some measure of control.
How so? You cannot be forced to accuse yourself. If your self-hosted data is on encrypted hard drives then they can’t do anything about it.
Except in the UK where you can be forced to provide decryption keys.
If your self-hosted data is on encrypted hard drives then they can’t do anything about it.
They’re trying to “fix” that alright. Reminder to those in the US to call your reps and take action before it’s too late. There’s a whole slew of these things trying to pass.
That’s not correct
You’re half right, in that ultimately they can compel you to hand over your data, but there is a higher bar to clear for them to get your personal data stored locally.
For one, they can’t compel you to turn over your data with a subpoena, they’d have to actually go in front of a judge and get a warrant.
Probably wouldn’t be very hard to get from what i can see in this case
It would at least be harder, and have real constitutional ramifications. But yes, ultimately if there’s enough corruption they will get their hands on the data
It would at least be harder, and have real constitutional ramifications.
Not really that much harder. From Harvard Law Review
We found that 93.56% of warrant affidavits areapproved on their initial submission, and only 6.44% are denied (ignoring those submissions that are withdrawn before a decision is made). And once we account for the ability to resubmit affidavits, the eventual approval rate reaches 98.14%.
I think the real takeaway is to not put all your eggs in one basket, so they would need separate subpoenas.
Getting access to just his Google Account could contain Google Voice text messages, voicemails, and call history. Google search history, Google Maps location history, everything in Google Docs, Gmail, YouTube, and probably other stuff I’m forgetting. That’s all with a single subpoena, which includes a lot of things irrelevant to the case.
Google doesn’t store map data anymore. It is all local.
That’s just map data. Your travel/location data is still stored acvount-side unless you disable history in acct settings.
Edit: 2 settings, “Timeline” and “Maps History”.
Timeline is a “feature” that tracks where you’ve been.
And that’s where good encryption comes into play. At least in the US, (where this case is happening), they can compel you to turn over the encrypted data blob. But they can’t compel you to give them the password to access the data. Because forcing you to give up the password would violate your 5th amendment right to remain silent.
Also, they probably wouldn’t subpoena you and give you a chance to respond; they would just bust your front door down and take your server. You wouldn’t have an opportunity to peacefully turn the data over to them. Only the wealthy get subpoenas. The rest of us get no-knock search warrants, dead pets, (because cops will shoot any dogs that are present when they execute the warrant), and traumatized/injured/killed family members who happened to be home at the time.
they respected the lemon pound cake tho…
That incident reminded me of Kevin Mitnick leaving a box of donuts for the FBI lol.
Don’tbe evilYeah, again, even if they are evil in general, I can’t necessarily blame them here. They were complying with the law.
And who makes the law in the empire?
Exactly. And if the law doesn’t suit their needs, change it until it does.
The lesson here is not to trust Google or other non-encrypted storage with your stuff. There are email providers that are more protective of your stuff, but more than that: don’t store everything in one place. That way if one account is compromised, not everything is exposed. And American companies are more likely to share your data than European ones.
Yes I did say that but thank you for reiterating.
