Google Takeout is a great solution to the problem of, how do we get Google programmers, without protest, to write functionality into their services to allow Big Brother to acquire a neat and tidy copy of all a user’s data?
I’m not complaining. I’m marveling at the clever solution to the problem of, “How do we get hundreds of product teams to support our legal obligations without feeling morally conflicted?”
Could you elaborate on that? Do you disagree that Google Takeout is used for government user-data requests, or that absent such functionality, programmers tend to balk at implementing such requests?
Google takeout is an inefficient tool for government requests, yes.
I'm sure it may get used but I highly doubt it's a primary tool in any way. PRISM revealed how much custom tooling is made specifically for governments and for giving back data to them, automatically addressing their requests etc. Takeout is slow, bulky, and its audience is the end user.
Legal processes take priority over virtually anything else; be assured that every large company has gotten and responded to valid legal process before these download tools were available.
Additionally, the scope of what's provided in response to legal process depends heavily on who and what was requested and so the software is far more complex than "download all the user's data". Investigators often aren't aware of what data these companies store and if it's not specifically requested then it's not provided. Lawyers basically copy and paste their last successful warrant/wiretap/whatever and send it to the judge because that's how the legal system works.
I don’t disagree with any of that. The Google Takeout interface makes it very easy for the user (or person responding to a search warrant) to pick and choose exactly what data to zip up.
Hey I see you got your Tinfoil hat on, but seriously what? Do you think its really tough to find a 50 group of bean counting programmers in entire google, who cant build this tool for BigB?
The functionality needs to be written into every product. Every PM would be aware of it, every software engineer would see the code. The story would leak and articles would get written about the “pervasive privacy back doors written into everything at Google”
