This is a victory in a long fight, not just against blanket police surveillance, but also against a culture in which private, for-profit companies build special tools to allow law enforcement to more easily access companies’ users and their data—all of which ultimately undermine their customers’ trust.
Remember that Google not only cooperates with police, they will report users to the police for things their AI finds in that users photos or documents
When they have done that in the past and police investigated the police found no crime was done, but Google deleted their account anyway. They lost their contacts list, their photos, all the spreadsheets and documents in their Google drive, their email account, all their passwords (and the ability to reset those passwords because of the loss of the email account). The guy also used Google for internet and phone, which also went away when Google accused him
If you keep anything important on an online service, keep a backup offline (https://takeout.google.com/ for Google). Use a password manager that isn’t under control of a tech giant.
If you back up everything to an online service, choose one that allows you to encrypt your data so they can’t use it against you
Remember that Google not only cooperates with police, they will report users to the police for things their AI finds in that users photos or documents
When they have done that in the past and police investigated the police found no crime was done, but Google deleted their account anyway. They lost their contacts list, their photos, all the spreadsheets and documents in their Google drive, their email account, all their passwords (and the ability to reset those passwords because of the loss of the email account). The guy also used Google for internet and phone, which also went away when Google accused him
If you keep anything important on an online service, keep a backup offline (https://takeout.google.com/ for Google). Use a password manager that isn’t under control of a tech giant.
If you back up everything to an online service, choose one that allows you to encrypt your data so they can’t use it against you