Look at this goverment spy truck disguised as a Google Streetview car

[andy_hilmer]

Needs more banana.

[Dimitrios_Papag]

You’ve been Zucked.

I like how they get to say “oh it was just some internal prank guy”.

[anon27554371]

In all seriousness:

Google
FBI
[generic, general, “cast a wide net”] spying

?

What’s the difference, these days?

Friends working in IT in Palo Alto tell me that Tha Feds have a dang office with locked doors inside Google’s own dang office building.

Can we all just call it for what it is already?
All-one-all-one-ok-ok!

[newliminted]

I’m using ‘FBI Surveillance Worm’ on Slither.io.

From the article:
“If I were Google, I would be seriously rankled over the use of their logo to hide surveillance,"

Right. Google prefers their surveillance right out in the open.

[NickSay]

But mooooooooom!

They get to do warrantless surveillance - why can’t I?!?

[fuzzyfungus]

Does anyone know what trademark law has to say about this sort of activity?

I imagine that undercover cops are given a certain amount of latitude to adopt realistic disguises(at least in part because, if they do it correctly, almost nobody ever knows that it was actually a disguised cop rather than whatever the cop was disguised as); but if I were a company with a well-recognized brand, albeit one dogged by certain customer concerns regarding privacy, I’d be inclined to feel that the use of my trademarked livery on state surveillance hardware poses a serious risk of trademark dilution, reputation damage, and various other tortious things, especially if it is repeated, ongoing, and gets discovered.

Do LEOs have some sort of trademark law immunity for this purpose? Could Google sue them into a smoking crater?

[fuzzyfungus]

That’s arguably why Google might be especially rankled: they’ve had enough trouble with privacy concerns regarding street-view vehicles, and their services generally, so having undercover cops operating LPRs under the same brand name is very, very, unlikely to help.

[manybellsdown]

I’ve seen those guys as well as the Google autonomous car around my neighborhood:

Gettin’ charged up at the grocery store!

[drew_millecchia]

Can LEO go undercover as UPS or FedEx? I would figure that would be the same thing.
However, I would think that an undercover operation would need other legal requirements or cooperation. They couldn’t just drive around in a UPS truck giving out speeding tickets.