Tell Me Whom You Follow

US court orders demanded identifying data from Google on users who had watched certain YouTube videos, according to Forbes. If every online profile is tied to a real identity, innocent citizens can be swept into investigations simply for what they watch, read or follow.

Every click can become a statement once it is linked to the user’s identity. Photo: Statement/AI

Once online profiles are tied to verifiable identities, follower lists, subscriptions and audience groups become searchable registers of people. That gives a 2024 Forbes report fresh urgency: according to the magazine, US court orders demanded that Google hand over data on users who had watched certain YouTube videos.

The orders did not concern only individual suspects, but entire audience groups within specific timeframes. The court sought names, addresses, telephone numbers and user activity, where such information was available to Google. If verifiable identities have to be recorded for purposes such as age checks, those details necessarily exist for every user in a detailed form.

A database of verified identities can become a valuable target for hackers and criminals. Photo: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

This would amount to a massive intrusion into citizens’ privacy. Politically, it is explosive.

In principle, any citizen can then come under scrutiny. It is enough to have watched a particular video or to follow a particular person on social media. There does not even have to be suspicion of a crime. In practice, the data can reveal a user’s political leanings, the activists he follows, the subjects he seeks out, whom he supports and in what way.

Proof of Silent Acts

A mandatory identity record would therefore matter long before any abuse occurred, because the data would already be there to be requested. Such a database would be useful in criminal investigations, civil litigation, administrative cases and matters of national security. Particularly sensitive is the ability to trace silent acts that reveal political, religious, professional or health-related interests.

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These possibilities are not fantasy or conspiracy theory. They are clear from the transparency reports of major technology companies. Official access to user data is not exceptional. In its transparency report, Google notes that authorities, courts and parties in civil proceedings regularly request user data. Apple also publishes half-yearly reports on government requests for customer data. Together, the reports show that such requests have become part of routine digital investigations.

Anonymity Is Freedom

The more precisely platforms connect user profiles with legal identities, in line with current demands in many countries to abolish online anonymity, the more easily digital actions can be turned into personal investigative data. Today, additional steps are often still required. Investigators have to combine IP addresses, device identifiers, payment data, email addresses or other traces. That is possible, but the effort is so great that the suspected offence has to justify it.

A mandatory identity system shortens that chain. It turns platform data into a pool of information already built to identify real people.

The UN special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression addressed anonymity and encryption in the digital sphere as early as 2015. The report examined whether privacy and freedom of expression also protect secure and anonymous communication. It concluded that anonymity can be an important condition for seeking information, forming opinions and speaking without intimidation.

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That assessment is particularly relevant to social networks, where reading, following and commenting often blur into one another. Follower lists and subscriptions would become personal registers. In such an infrastructure, it is no longer only a person’s own contribution that amounts to a statement. The mere question of whom someone follows can become a usable data set for police, friendly and hostile intelligence services – and criminals.