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So I don't think I actually have a problem with businesses handing over their customer data if there is a valid warrant or subpoena. That's the system working a

So I don't think I actually have a problem with businesses handing over their customer data if there is a valid warrant or subpoena. That's the system working as intended. The main crux of the problem here is that the DHS has been granted a wide berth by congress to issue administrative subpoenas - i.e. not reviewed by a real judge and not directed at criminals. In "good" times this made investigations run smoothly. But the reality now is that ICE is doing wide dragnets to make arrests without any judicial oversight and often hostile to habeas corpus. (Also, my understanding is that when banking is involved, it may also fall under the Banking Secrecy Act and Know Your Customer Rules - a whole other privacy nightmare.) I know we instinctively want to frame this as a privacy problem, but the real problem we need congress to act on is abolishing these "shadow" justice systems that agencies have been able to set up.

crooked-v 9mo ago
"Administrative subpoenas" have always been bullshit that mostly rely on there being no penalty for companies that hand over user information to anyone with a badge and then justify it with a five-hundred-page TOS document.
- linkregister 9mo ago
  Google, among most other tech companies, deny portions of administrative warrants. Here's a story about someone who was stressed out about their notification by Google (spoiler, Google decided to deny the government's request) https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/02/03/homeland-security-administrative-subpoena/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/02/03/hom... edit: It appears that this outcome is an outlier and most admin warrants are honored. It is unfortunate to see the Washington Post decline in reliability like this.
  - legitster 9mo ago
    Hence, why I wonder if this is specific their credit/banking products as part of Know Your Customer rules.
    - tadfisher 9mo ago
      Google does not provide those products (not in the US, as far as I am aware), but they are a money transmitter in the same vein as Square/Block, Stripe, and Venmo [0]. They won't be directly subject to the Bank Secrecy Act, but they partner with the major payment networks (who have their own rules and their own partner programs with banks) as part of Google Pay and customer payment profiles. But I don't think this matters much for this case, as DHS is not investigating financial crimes. This is about what discretion Google has to comply with administrative warrants, which is not settled law and isn't clearly spelled out in their own policy. 0: https://support.google.com/googlepay/answer/7160765?hl=en https://support.google.com/googlepay/answer/7160765?hl=en
      - legitster 9mo ago
        I just looked it up, and money transmitters are included in the Banking Secrecy Act as "Money Services Businesses". So yes, they have KYC obligations in the sense that they know where you are moving your money and are obligated to tell investigators. Unfortunately, KYC is used for much more than just financial crimes, and the precedent to comply is much more firmly established.
  - antonvs 9mo ago
    > It is unfortunate to see the Washington Post decline in reliability like this. In case you haven't been paying attention, Bezos has been all the way up Trump's ass for years now, and this is not in any way a coincidence. A few highlights: * The Post's refusal to endorse a presidential candidate in 2024 * The Melania documentary/bribe * The recent decimation of the Post's staff
- legitster 9mo ago
  There is a case to be made that administrative subpoenas can be good. They save taxpayers money, they speed up investigations, and they free up the court for more important matters. As with all things though, these agencies should not be self-regulated without civilian and judicial oversight.
  - amanaplanacanal 9mo ago
    They seem unconstitutional on their face, to me. Speeding things up because the Constitution makes it too hard is a bad idea.
  - ethanwillis 9mo ago
    Save taxpayers money? I don't think I've ever seen my taxes go down in any tangible way from all the supposed taxpayer saving initiatives over the years. Somehow we broke the "cheap, fast, good" metric and we don't even get "good" nor "cheap". I'd prefer good and what i'm paying regardless over some false "savings"
b00ty4breakfast 9mo ago
There will always be the opportunity for the foibles of humans to affect the procedures of the law. Trying to play "guess if the shadowy government agency is doing the right thing this week" is a losing game. They always take the proverbial mile, they are not ever going to be satisfied with the inch.
- Retric 9mo ago
  There’s definitely been variability in how far government agencies have been pushing under this administration. It’s going to get interesting if the next Democrat in the white house takes similar steps based on current precedent. That would hopefully result in long term reforms, but we might just be heading to civil war regardless.
  - anonym29 9mo ago
    Why even consider violent civil war a possible outcome when we can redirect to peaceful separation instead, before more innocent life is lost? Human life is more important than federal supremacy. The adults in the room need to reject the immature tendency towards violence even if we're to decide that we can no longer live together as "one nation".
    - leptons 9mo ago
      Splitting up the country to avoid a bloody civil war? Are you serious? The first thing that happens if California secedes is California's ports will be blockaded by US warships. And it's going downhill quickly from there. This administration would love nothing more than justification to lock up every citizen left-of-right-wing, or just exterminate them outright. They have been demonizing liberals for years as child molesters and satanists, casting them as less than human, violent, and depraved. You think a bloodless separation is possible? It's more likely that pigs will sprout wings and fly.
      - tracker1 9mo ago
        It goes both ways with plenty of people on the left talking about "re-education" camps for conservatives around the 2020-2021 timeframe.
LtWorf 9mo ago
> In "good" times this made investigations run smoothly. These times never existed.
- mindslight 9mo ago
  I'm getting tired of these comments that normalize being in the middle of the slippery slope as if it is merely the same as being at the top of the slippery slope was. They may not have been "good" times, but they were certainly better times when government agencies at least aimed to carry out their roles in good faith rather than minmaxing the rules to cause the most damage to enemies of the Party. Applying judgement while exercising delegated authority is exactly why these agencies were given wide leeway in the first place. And while we can say this was naive, it is even more naive to normalize the current behavior.
  - worik 9mo ago
    No. The difference now is the number of people feeling effected It always been thus for people at the margins
    - mindslight 9mo ago
      So we agree, including that there is a difference.
      - shevy-java 9mo ago
        But did you not disagree before? The "I am getting tired" statement kind of implies that.
        mindslight 9mo ago
        Different commenter and different statement.
      - bigbadfeline 9mo ago
        > So we agree, including that there is a difference. No, that's a distinction without a difference. I mean, it doesn't matter in the slightest if at some point in time certain powers weren't abused, if they're being abused now the situation cannot be tolerated. Arguing about how it's possible not to abuse the system is a waste of time at best and a diversion at worst.
sam345 9mo ago
I'm not an expert in fourth amendment but I do know that assuming a subpoena without judicial oversight violates the fourth amendment is not correct. All the fourth amendment guarantees is unreasonable search and seizure. In some circumstances a judicial subpoena may be necessary and others not. An administrative subpoena implies that there has been a legal procedure and the administrative agencies are not exactly run like the wild west.
- cyberax 9mo ago
  DHS/ICE is in a weird constitutional spot. Most immigration violations in the US are _civil_ violations. So the Fourth Amendment is less applicable. It's also why detained immigrants don't automatically get the right to be represented by a lawyer. ICE/DHS technically are just acting as marshals, merely ensuring that defendants appear at court proceedings and then enforcing court decisions (deportations).
  - epiccoleman 9mo ago
    It's not really that the 4th amendment is less applicable, it's that the procedural protections are lower in civil proceedings. I think it's a pretty big undersell to describe ICE as "marshals" too - they've got plenty of discretion in how they prioritize targeted people and who they detain. They are not just a neutral party executing court orders.
    - cyberax 9mo ago
      In theory yes, but in practice it's more unclear. There are conflicting Supreme Court precedents, that weaken the Fourth Amendment in cases where criminal penalties don't apply. Asset foreiture is another example. > I think it's a pretty big undersell to describe ICE as "marshals" too - they've got plenty of discretion in how they prioritize targeted people and who they detain. They are not just a neutral party executing court orders. Yep. That's also a difference between theory and practice.
  - wormius 9mo ago
    [flagged]
shevy-java 9mo ago
I don't see how what has been described here as "the system works as intended". A free state should not be able to sniff after people for made up reasons.
- Curiositiy 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - bobmcnamara 9mo ago
    [flagged]
- philipallstar 9mo ago
  In the sense that all reasons are made up, I suppose that might be true. But while deporting illegal immigrants for no other reason is totally fine, deporting the ones that also have a criminal conviction is definitely not made up reasons.
  - fakedang 9mo ago
    Yeah, and your point? ICE has already descended into detaining anyone, literally anyone, because they have quotas to meet. They seized a white Irishman last October who had a valid work permit and was just about to head to his green card interview. This is Gestapo all over again.
    - philipallstar 9mo ago
      [flagged]
      - BugsJustFindMe 9mo ago
        > We lock up innocent people all the time, as the court system is imperfect. That doesn't make something the Gestapo. Correct. The methods, the scale, and the targets do. Refusing to ever show any identification or proof of orders at all when that definitionally makes them a secret police does. Repeatedly violating federal court orders does (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46965333 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46965333). Repeatedly violating habeas corpus rights does. Assaulting people in the streets merely for witnessing does. Let us not forget that a woman was violently shoved backward to the ground while she was backing up in the lead-up to the killing of Alex Pretti, and the government's immediate response was repeated shameless lies and hiding or destroying evidence, just like they did with the killing of Renee Nicole Good, just like they did with the killing of Geraldo Lunas Campos, just like they did with Alberto Castañeda Mondragón, ... The list doesn't end. It's very weird of you to just ignore all of that.
atoav 9mo ago
So what about the Amsterdam government handing over the records to the new Nazi government in the past century? Under the back then new laws this was legal and lead to the genocide of countless people who happened to have the wrong belief listed in that data. Please never make the mistake to confuse something being legal for something being fair or ethical.
- direwolf20 9mo ago
  I wouldn't give any power at all to Hitler. I wouldn't name him head of state. I wouldn't even let him vote in a town hall meeting about fixing a water main leak. By the principles you have stated, then, I shouldn't let anyone be head of state, and I shouldn't let anyone vote to fix water main leaks?
  - atoav 9mo ago
    So what you say is that if someone is clearly ethically wrong, it doesn't matter whether it is legal or not. That is also my opinion. If we are lucky, we are born into a society in which what we perceive to be right aligns with what the rules say. The next step down on the luck ladder would be a society where there is misalignment in some cases, but there are mechanisms you couls use to change the rules (as is the case in most free countries), and then there are cases where not only are the rules unfair, but you have no way of changing them. In that case resistance is only way to deal with it. Now with the wisdom of hindsight you can say, the Nazis were clearly bad. But this was much harder to see for thr people during the time. I know because one of my grandfathers was in the Wehrmacht while the other hated the Nazis. Money quote (translated from German): "Everybody thought Hitler would make Germany great again". My grandfather died in 2009.
godelski 9mo ago
> I know we instinctively want to frame this as a privacy problem I think it is, but I think this is a more fundamental level of privacy than most people are thinking of when they think of privacy > In "good" times this made investigations run smoothly. Privacy people often talk about a concept called "Turnkey Tyranny". Really a reference to Jefferson's "elective despotism". The concept is that because any democracy can vote themselves into an autocracy (elective despotism) that the danger is the creation of that power in the first place. That you don't give Mr Rogers (or some other benevolent leader) any power that you wouldn't give to Hitler (or any horrifying leader). Or as Jefferson put it The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold of us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered. > but the real problem we need congress to act So no, that is not the "real problem". They should be involved but there are more fundamental issues at hand. Power creeps. Power creeps with good intention[0]. But there is a strong bias for power to increase and not decrease. And just like power creep in a movie or videogame it doesn't go away and can ruin everything. Jefferson himself writes a lot about this tbh. It is why we have a system of checks and balances. Where the government treats itself adversarially. But this is also frustrating and makes things slow. So... power creeps. So the real problem we need to solve is educating the populous. They need to understand these complexities and nuances. If they do not, they will unknowingly trade their freedom to quench their fears. And this is why it is a privacy problem. Because we the people should always treat our government adversarially. Even in the "good times". Especially in the "good times". The founders of the US constitution wrote extensively about this, much like the privacy advocates write today. I think they would be more likely to take the position of "why collect this information in the first place?" than "under what conditions should this information be collected?". Both are important questions, but the latter should only come after the former. Both are about privacy. Privacy of what is created vs privacy of what is accessed. [0] You mentioned banking, so a recent example might be the changes in when transactions of a certain level trigger a bank report. The number has changed over time, usually decreasing. It's with good intention, to catch people skirting the laws. You'll never get 100% of people so if this is the excuse it an be a race to reporting all transactions. Maybe you're fine with Mr Rogers having that data, but Hitler? You have to balance these things and it isn't so easy as the environment moves. You solve a major part of the problem with the first move but then the Overton window changes as you've now become accustomed to a different rate of that kind of fraud (and/or as adversaries have adapted to it). A cat and mouse game always presents a slippery slope and unless you consider these implicit conditions it'll be a race to the bottom.
fc417fc802 9mo ago
> In "good" times this made investigations run smoothly. In good times they were still a blatant form of government abuse however the majority were completely unaffected and so didn't get riled up about it. Similar to how a vigorous defense of freedom of speech is somehow consistently less popular among constituents of whichever party happens to be in power, as well as when applied to "objectionable" political views.
golemiprague 9mo ago
[dead]
h4kunamata 9mo ago
>"So I don't think I actually have a problem with businesses handing over their customer data if there is a valid warrant or subpoena. That's the system working as intended." This person right here is the problem in our society. Things never and will never get isolated to "valid warrant". Look around us, social after social media in order to "protect the kids", you must provide your personal information to them. Many people see nothing wrong with that and yet, service after service, business after business are being breached left and right. Discord will mandate ID verification, just recently they have been breached. Back to the article, if Google can do that for an immigrant, what make you think that Google won't do the same with your data as citizen whenever for whatever reason?? Don't agree with things you don't fully understand its consequences.
- hodgehog11 9mo ago
  Maybe it is to a child or average citizen, but I don't believe that "not understanding the consequences" is the case here on HN. This is just a difference in philosophy, the old "freedom vs. security" tradeoff that everyone falls down on a little differently. Giving up your data to a company (and therefore the government) in exchange for services is a trust exercise, and there are ways to avoid making it, but they have significant unavoidable costs. It's an easier decision when you don't fear your own government, but where you fall on the spectrum rapidly changes when your government makes you the target. Of course you can say "the government is always going to turn on you, so you should never trust them!", but you'll sound like a loon to many native citizens of a Western nation that have had little to fear for decades. The US is just experiencing a little more of what the citizens of communist and fascist nations have experienced. Over time, that might lead to rapid societal change, or maybe it's too late.
  - h4kunamata 9mo ago
    >Over time, that might lead to rapid societal change, or maybe it's too late. Seeing how things are going, not to mention Microsoft blocking European politician e-mail account by Trump orders, it is past too late.
behole 9mo ago
[flagged]
singleshot_ 9mo ago
> administrative subpoenas - i.e. not reviewed by a real judge I have some bad news for you about magistrates.
- monocasa 9mo ago
  And yet ICE can't be bothered to reach even that low bar.
  - singleshot_ 9mo ago
    To be completely fair, neither of us is even a magistrate.
jauntywundrkind 9mo ago
It's kind of sort of glorious how Google and ICE are both setting their reputation on fire like this at the same time. The cloud has such a long legacy of being the safe easy convenient place that you just don't have to think about. Nations have somewhat kept their fingers out of the cookie jar. But now it's just wanton unchecked madness, with no real process, with no judicial review. Google giving in to ICE so quickly is absolutely existentially destructive to Google's business model, of the cloud being a default place you can put your stuff & rely on. The cloud never deserved this reputation, and there was a certain freight train of inevitability that was coming crashing in from the future, that nations would make the cloud untenable & hostile a space. That felt inevitable. But this is so much harder worser faster dumber than could be expected.
paulddraper 9mo ago
Or the FBI’s FISA system which was abused to gather intel. [1] Government agencies are prone to abuse. [1] https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/fisa-investigation https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/fisa-investigation
46493168 9mo ago
> I know we instinctively want to frame this as a privacy problem, but the real problem Both can be true at the same time.
- asdfman123 9mo ago
  It's a privacy problem because permitting things like this can lead to abuses.
ycombinatrix 9mo ago
>In "good" times this made investigations run smoothly. Yeah no. This was always bad and is often abused by law enforcement (& people pretending to be law enforcement) https://gizmodo.com/fake-cops-stole-user-data-from-meta-and-apple-1848727857 https://gizmodo.com/fake-cops-stole-user-data-from-meta-and-...
DetroitThrow 9mo ago
>I know we instinctively want to frame this as a privacy problem How is that not also a privacy problem?
cyphar 9mo ago
> So I don't think I actually have a problem with businesses handing over their customer data if there is a valid warrant or subpoena. That's the system working as intended. I disagree -- the third party doctrine that allows for governments to avoid serving/addressing warrants to the people whose data is actually being subpoenaed directly leads to things like the FISA warrant-rubber-stamp courts in the US. If the data stored on third-party servers on behalf of someone is not considered "papers and effects" of that person then it is entirely justified to subpoena every email stored on mail.google.com because it's just morally equivalent to a subpoena for "all of Foomatic's business records between 2020-2025". It seems bonkers to me that things that are essentially implementation details (such as the way that MTAs work and the lack of crypto-obfuscation in email) should allow for a legal interpretation of the 4th amendment that effectively neuters it. Letters sent via snail-mail are handled by several third parties in a very analogous way to emails but (mostly due to historical reasons, such as the fact that letters existed during the drafting of the bill of rights) we do not apply the third-party doctrine to letters. Of course, the US government has spent decades chipping away at the privacy of snail mail, so eventually we may end up in a world where snail mail and email are treated the same way (just not in a good way).
- dataflow 9mo ago
  Could you explain/cite what you mean by letters not working the same way? You're saying government agencies can't give give the same sort of subpoena to said third parties? Or that if they did, it wouldn't work?
  - idiotsecant 9mo ago
    Parent post explained this exact point in the post you're replying to
antonvs 9mo ago
> I know we instinctively want to frame this as a privacy problem It absolutely is a privacy problem. If that information was in your house, the 4th amendment would apply and they'd have to show up with a real judicial warrant, so you'd know what was happening. Even if that's the "system working as intended" (intended by who exactly? I'm sure Peter Thiel loves it), anyone who cares at all about their own privacy should be using providers outside of US jurisdiction, because the US government does not, in practice, protect its citizens against unreasonable search and seizure as described in the Constitution.

crooked-v 9mo ago

"Administrative subpoenas" have always been bullshit that mostly rely on there being no penalty for companies that hand over user information to anyone with a badge and then justify it with a five-hundred-page TOS document.

linkregister 9mo ago
Google, among most other tech companies, deny portions of administrative warrants. Here's a story about someone who was stressed out about their notification by Google (spoiler, Google decided to deny the government's request) https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/02/03/homeland-security-administrative-subpoena/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/02/03/hom... edit: It appears that this outcome is an outlier and most admin warrants are honored. It is unfortunate to see the Washington Post decline in reliability like this.
- legitster 9mo ago
  Hence, why I wonder if this is specific their credit/banking products as part of Know Your Customer rules.
  - tadfisher 9mo ago
    Google does not provide those products (not in the US, as far as I am aware), but they are a money transmitter in the same vein as Square/Block, Stripe, and Venmo [0]. They won't be directly subject to the Bank Secrecy Act, but they partner with the major payment networks (who have their own rules and their own partner programs with banks) as part of Google Pay and customer payment profiles. But I don't think this matters much for this case, as DHS is not investigating financial crimes. This is about what discretion Google has to comply with administrative warrants, which is not settled law and isn't clearly spelled out in their own policy. 0: https://support.google.com/googlepay/answer/7160765?hl=en https://support.google.com/googlepay/answer/7160765?hl=en
    - legitster 9mo ago
      I just looked it up, and money transmitters are included in the Banking Secrecy Act as "Money Services Businesses". So yes, they have KYC obligations in the sense that they know where you are moving your money and are obligated to tell investigators. Unfortunately, KYC is used for much more than just financial crimes, and the precedent to comply is much more firmly established.
- antonvs 9mo ago
  > It is unfortunate to see the Washington Post decline in reliability like this. In case you haven't been paying attention, Bezos has been all the way up Trump's ass for years now, and this is not in any way a coincidence. A few highlights: * The Post's refusal to endorse a presidential candidate in 2024 * The Melania documentary/bribe * The recent decimation of the Post's staff
legitster 9mo ago
There is a case to be made that administrative subpoenas can be good. They save taxpayers money, they speed up investigations, and they free up the court for more important matters. As with all things though, these agencies should not be self-regulated without civilian and judicial oversight.
- amanaplanacanal 9mo ago
  They seem unconstitutional on their face, to me. Speeding things up because the Constitution makes it too hard is a bad idea.
- ethanwillis 9mo ago
  Save taxpayers money? I don't think I've ever seen my taxes go down in any tangible way from all the supposed taxpayer saving initiatives over the years. Somehow we broke the "cheap, fast, good" metric and we don't even get "good" nor "cheap". I'd prefer good and what i'm paying regardless over some false "savings"

b00ty4breakfast 9mo ago

There will always be the opportunity for the foibles of humans to affect the procedures of the law. Trying to play "guess if the shadowy government agency is doing the right thing this week" is a losing game. They always take the proverbial mile, they are not ever going to be satisfied with the inch.

Retric 9mo ago
There’s definitely been variability in how far government agencies have been pushing under this administration. It’s going to get interesting if the next Democrat in the white house takes similar steps based on current precedent. That would hopefully result in long term reforms, but we might just be heading to civil war regardless.
- anonym29 9mo ago
  Why even consider violent civil war a possible outcome when we can redirect to peaceful separation instead, before more innocent life is lost? Human life is more important than federal supremacy. The adults in the room need to reject the immature tendency towards violence even if we're to decide that we can no longer live together as "one nation".
  - leptons 9mo ago
    Splitting up the country to avoid a bloody civil war? Are you serious? The first thing that happens if California secedes is California's ports will be blockaded by US warships. And it's going downhill quickly from there. This administration would love nothing more than justification to lock up every citizen left-of-right-wing, or just exterminate them outright. They have been demonizing liberals for years as child molesters and satanists, casting them as less than human, violent, and depraved. You think a bloodless separation is possible? It's more likely that pigs will sprout wings and fly.
    - tracker1 9mo ago
      It goes both ways with plenty of people on the left talking about "re-education" camps for conservatives around the 2020-2021 timeframe.

LtWorf 9mo ago

> In "good" times this made investigations run smoothly. These times never existed.

mindslight 9mo ago
I'm getting tired of these comments that normalize being in the middle of the slippery slope as if it is merely the same as being at the top of the slippery slope was. They may not have been "good" times, but they were certainly better times when government agencies at least aimed to carry out their roles in good faith rather than minmaxing the rules to cause the most damage to enemies of the Party. Applying judgement while exercising delegated authority is exactly why these agencies were given wide leeway in the first place. And while we can say this was naive, it is even more naive to normalize the current behavior.
- worik 9mo ago
  No. The difference now is the number of people feeling effected It always been thus for people at the margins
  - mindslight 9mo ago
    So we agree, including that there is a difference.
    - shevy-java 9mo ago
      But did you not disagree before? The "I am getting tired" statement kind of implies that.
      - mindslight 9mo ago
        Different commenter and different statement.
    - bigbadfeline 9mo ago
      > So we agree, including that there is a difference. No, that's a distinction without a difference. I mean, it doesn't matter in the slightest if at some point in time certain powers weren't abused, if they're being abused now the situation cannot be tolerated. Arguing about how it's possible not to abuse the system is a waste of time at best and a diversion at worst.

sam345 9mo ago

I'm not an expert in fourth amendment but I do know that assuming a subpoena without judicial oversight violates the fourth amendment is not correct. All the fourth amendment guarantees is unreasonable search and seizure. In some circumstances a judicial subpoena may be necessary and others not. An administrative subpoena implies that there has been a legal procedure and the administrative agencies are not exactly run like the wild west.

cyberax 9mo ago
DHS/ICE is in a weird constitutional spot. Most immigration violations in the US are _civil_ violations. So the Fourth Amendment is less applicable. It's also why detained immigrants don't automatically get the right to be represented by a lawyer. ICE/DHS technically are just acting as marshals, merely ensuring that defendants appear at court proceedings and then enforcing court decisions (deportations).
- epiccoleman 9mo ago
  It's not really that the 4th amendment is less applicable, it's that the procedural protections are lower in civil proceedings. I think it's a pretty big undersell to describe ICE as "marshals" too - they've got plenty of discretion in how they prioritize targeted people and who they detain. They are not just a neutral party executing court orders.
  - cyberax 9mo ago
    In theory yes, but in practice it's more unclear. There are conflicting Supreme Court precedents, that weaken the Fourth Amendment in cases where criminal penalties don't apply. Asset foreiture is another example. > I think it's a pretty big undersell to describe ICE as "marshals" too - they've got plenty of discretion in how they prioritize targeted people and who they detain. They are not just a neutral party executing court orders. Yep. That's also a difference between theory and practice.
- wormius 9mo ago
  [flagged]

shevy-java 9mo ago

I don't see how what has been described here as "the system works as intended". A free state should not be able to sniff after people for made up reasons.

Curiositiy 9mo ago
[flagged]
- bobmcnamara 9mo ago
  [flagged]
philipallstar 9mo ago
In the sense that all reasons are made up, I suppose that might be true. But while deporting illegal immigrants for no other reason is totally fine, deporting the ones that also have a criminal conviction is definitely not made up reasons.
- fakedang 9mo ago
  Yeah, and your point? ICE has already descended into detaining anyone, literally anyone, because they have quotas to meet. They seized a white Irishman last October who had a valid work permit and was just about to head to his green card interview. This is Gestapo all over again.
  - philipallstar 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - BugsJustFindMe 9mo ago
      > We lock up innocent people all the time, as the court system is imperfect. That doesn't make something the Gestapo. Correct. The methods, the scale, and the targets do. Refusing to ever show any identification or proof of orders at all when that definitionally makes them a secret police does. Repeatedly violating federal court orders does (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46965333 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46965333). Repeatedly violating habeas corpus rights does. Assaulting people in the streets merely for witnessing does. Let us not forget that a woman was violently shoved backward to the ground while she was backing up in the lead-up to the killing of Alex Pretti, and the government's immediate response was repeated shameless lies and hiding or destroying evidence, just like they did with the killing of Renee Nicole Good, just like they did with the killing of Geraldo Lunas Campos, just like they did with Alberto Castañeda Mondragón, ... The list doesn't end. It's very weird of you to just ignore all of that.

atoav 9mo ago

So what about the Amsterdam government handing over the records to the new Nazi government in the past century? Under the back then new laws this was legal and lead to the genocide of countless people who happened to have the wrong belief listed in that data. Please never make the mistake to confuse something being legal for something being fair or ethical.

direwolf20 9mo ago
I wouldn't give any power at all to Hitler. I wouldn't name him head of state. I wouldn't even let him vote in a town hall meeting about fixing a water main leak. By the principles you have stated, then, I shouldn't let anyone be head of state, and I shouldn't let anyone vote to fix water main leaks?
- atoav 9mo ago
  So what you say is that if someone is clearly ethically wrong, it doesn't matter whether it is legal or not. That is also my opinion. If we are lucky, we are born into a society in which what we perceive to be right aligns with what the rules say. The next step down on the luck ladder would be a society where there is misalignment in some cases, but there are mechanisms you couls use to change the rules (as is the case in most free countries), and then there are cases where not only are the rules unfair, but you have no way of changing them. In that case resistance is only way to deal with it. Now with the wisdom of hindsight you can say, the Nazis were clearly bad. But this was much harder to see for thr people during the time. I know because one of my grandfathers was in the Wehrmacht while the other hated the Nazis. Money quote (translated from German): "Everybody thought Hitler would make Germany great again". My grandfather died in 2009.

godelski 9mo ago

> I know we instinctively want to frame this as a privacy problem I think it is, but I think this is a more fundamental level of privacy than most people are thinking of when they think of privacy > In "good" times this made investigations run smoothly. Privacy people often talk about a concept called "Turnkey Tyranny". Really a reference to Jefferson's "elective despotism". The concept is that because any democracy can vote themselves into an autocracy (elective despotism) that the danger is the creation of that power in the first place. That you don't give Mr Rogers (or some other benevolent leader) any power that you wouldn't give to Hitler (or any horrifying leader). Or as Jefferson put it The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold of us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered. > but the real problem we need congress to act So no, that is not the "real problem". They should be involved but there are more fundamental issues at hand. Power creeps. Power creeps with good intention[0]. But there is a strong bias for power to increase and not decrease. And just like power creep in a movie or videogame it doesn't go away and can ruin everything. Jefferson himself writes a lot about this tbh. It is why we have a system of checks and balances. Where the government treats itself adversarially. But this is also frustrating and makes things slow. So... power creeps. So the real problem we need to solve is educating the populous. They need to understand these complexities and nuances. If they do not, they will unknowingly trade their freedom to quench their fears. And this is why it is a privacy problem. Because we the people should always treat our government adversarially. Even in the "good times". Especially in the "good times". The founders of the US constitution wrote extensively about this, much like the privacy advocates write today. I think they would be more likely to take the position of "why collect this information in the first place?" than "under what conditions should this information be collected?". Both are important questions, but the latter should only come after the former. Both are about privacy. Privacy of what is created vs privacy of what is accessed. [0] You mentioned banking, so a recent example might be the changes in when transactions of a certain level trigger a bank report. The number has changed over time, usually decreasing. It's with good intention, to catch people skirting the laws. You'll never get 100% of people so if this is the excuse it an be a race to reporting all transactions. Maybe you're fine with Mr Rogers having that data, but Hitler? You have to balance these things and it isn't so easy as the environment moves. You solve a major part of the problem with the first move but then the Overton window changes as you've now become accustomed to a different rate of that kind of fraud (and/or as adversaries have adapted to it). A cat and mouse game always presents a slippery slope and unless you consider these implicit conditions it'll be a race to the bottom.

fc417fc802 9mo ago

> In "good" times this made investigations run smoothly. In good times they were still a blatant form of government abuse however the majority were completely unaffected and so didn't get riled up about it. Similar to how a vigorous defense of freedom of speech is somehow consistently less popular among constituents of whichever party happens to be in power, as well as when applied to "objectionable" political views.

golemiprague 9mo ago

[dead]

h4kunamata 9mo ago

>"So I don't think I actually have a problem with businesses handing over their customer data if there is a valid warrant or subpoena. That's the system working as intended." This person right here is the problem in our society. Things never and will never get isolated to "valid warrant". Look around us, social after social media in order to "protect the kids", you must provide your personal information to them. Many people see nothing wrong with that and yet, service after service, business after business are being breached left and right. Discord will mandate ID verification, just recently they have been breached. Back to the article, if Google can do that for an immigrant, what make you think that Google won't do the same with your data as citizen whenever for whatever reason?? Don't agree with things you don't fully understand its consequences.

hodgehog11 9mo ago
Maybe it is to a child or average citizen, but I don't believe that "not understanding the consequences" is the case here on HN. This is just a difference in philosophy, the old "freedom vs. security" tradeoff that everyone falls down on a little differently. Giving up your data to a company (and therefore the government) in exchange for services is a trust exercise, and there are ways to avoid making it, but they have significant unavoidable costs. It's an easier decision when you don't fear your own government, but where you fall on the spectrum rapidly changes when your government makes you the target. Of course you can say "the government is always going to turn on you, so you should never trust them!", but you'll sound like a loon to many native citizens of a Western nation that have had little to fear for decades. The US is just experiencing a little more of what the citizens of communist and fascist nations have experienced. Over time, that might lead to rapid societal change, or maybe it's too late.
- h4kunamata 9mo ago
  >Over time, that might lead to rapid societal change, or maybe it's too late. Seeing how things are going, not to mention Microsoft blocking European politician e-mail account by Trump orders, it is past too late.

behole 9mo ago

[flagged]

singleshot_ 9mo ago

> administrative subpoenas - i.e. not reviewed by a real judge I have some bad news for you about magistrates.

monocasa 9mo ago
And yet ICE can't be bothered to reach even that low bar.
- singleshot_ 9mo ago
  To be completely fair, neither of us is even a magistrate.

jauntywundrkind 9mo ago

It's kind of sort of glorious how Google and ICE are both setting their reputation on fire like this at the same time. The cloud has such a long legacy of being the safe easy convenient place that you just don't have to think about. Nations have somewhat kept their fingers out of the cookie jar. But now it's just wanton unchecked madness, with no real process, with no judicial review. Google giving in to ICE so quickly is absolutely existentially destructive to Google's business model, of the cloud being a default place you can put your stuff & rely on. The cloud never deserved this reputation, and there was a certain freight train of inevitability that was coming crashing in from the future, that nations would make the cloud untenable & hostile a space. That felt inevitable. But this is so much harder worser faster dumber than could be expected.

paulddraper 9mo ago

Or the FBI’s FISA system which was abused to gather intel. [1] Government agencies are prone to abuse. [1] https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/fisa-investigation https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/fisa-investigation

46493168 9mo ago

> I know we instinctively want to frame this as a privacy problem, but the real problem Both can be true at the same time.

asdfman123 9mo ago
It's a privacy problem because permitting things like this can lead to abuses.

ycombinatrix 9mo ago

>In "good" times this made investigations run smoothly. Yeah no. This was always bad and is often abused by law enforcement (& people pretending to be law enforcement) https://gizmodo.com/fake-cops-stole-user-data-from-meta-and-apple-1848727857 https://gizmodo.com/fake-cops-stole-user-data-from-meta-and-...

DetroitThrow 9mo ago

>I know we instinctively want to frame this as a privacy problem How is that not also a privacy problem?

cyphar 9mo ago

> So I don't think I actually have a problem with businesses handing over their customer data if there is a valid warrant or subpoena. That's the system working as intended. I disagree -- the third party doctrine that allows for governments to avoid serving/addressing warrants to the people whose data is actually being subpoenaed directly leads to things like the FISA warrant-rubber-stamp courts in the US. If the data stored on third-party servers on behalf of someone is not considered "papers and effects" of that person then it is entirely justified to subpoena every email stored on mail.google.com because it's just morally equivalent to a subpoena for "all of Foomatic's business records between 2020-2025". It seems bonkers to me that things that are essentially implementation details (such as the way that MTAs work and the lack of crypto-obfuscation in email) should allow for a legal interpretation of the 4th amendment that effectively neuters it. Letters sent via snail-mail are handled by several third parties in a very analogous way to emails but (mostly due to historical reasons, such as the fact that letters existed during the drafting of the bill of rights) we do not apply the third-party doctrine to letters. Of course, the US government has spent decades chipping away at the privacy of snail mail, so eventually we may end up in a world where snail mail and email are treated the same way (just not in a good way).

dataflow 9mo ago
Could you explain/cite what you mean by letters not working the same way? You're saying government agencies can't give give the same sort of subpoena to said third parties? Or that if they did, it wouldn't work?
- idiotsecant 9mo ago
  Parent post explained this exact point in the post you're replying to

antonvs 9mo ago

> I know we instinctively want to frame this as a privacy problem It absolutely is a privacy problem. If that information was in your house, the 4th amendment would apply and they'd have to show up with a real judicial warrant, so you'd know what was happening. Even if that's the "system working as intended" (intended by who exactly? I'm sure Peter Thiel loves it), anyone who cares at all about their own privacy should be using providers outside of US jurisdiction, because the US government does not, in practice, protect its citizens against unreasonable search and seizure as described in the Constitution.