If the linked article has a paywall, you can access this archived version instead: https://archive.ph/zyhax
The court orders show the government telling Google to provide the names, addresses, telephone numbers and user activity for all Google account users who accessed the YouTube videos between January 1 and January 8, 2023. The government also wanted the IP addresses of non-Google account owners who viewed the videos.
“This is the latest chapter in a disturbing trend where we see government agencies increasingly transforming search warrants into digital dragnets. It’s unconstitutional, it’s terrifying and it’s happening every day,” said Albert Fox-Cahn, executive director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. “No one should fear a knock at the door from police simply because of what the YouTube algorithm serves up. I’m horrified that the courts are allowing this.” He said the orders were “just as chilling” as geofence warrants, where Google has been ordered to provide data on all users in the vicinity of a crime.
I imagine that the viewer count far exceeds the comments, Im not going to look for examples to cite because I dont want to wind up on a list myself.
Point is that the act of wanting to identify people based on some content they watched is simultaneously incredibly worrying and absolutely understandable, the problem is that if you allow it for one thing then adding on second thing doesnt seem like such a stretch and then the slippery slope happens and hypothetically you cant get a government job because you watched a video on communism.