Google handed ICE student journalist's bank and credit card numbers
theintercept.com686 points by lehi 9 hours ago
686 points by lehi 9 hours 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.
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.
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.
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.
>Trying to play "guess if the shadowy government agency is doing the right thing this week" is a losing game.
Which is why the best strategy is to bring things out of the shadows and have the government operate in the open whether that is more literal by making their actions part of the public record or just figuratively by requiring a lot of disparate parts of the government to coordinate on something like this so it can only go wrong with truly widespread corruption.
Playing a cat and mouse game with the government via technology is also a losing game. They'll always have more money, people, and expertise on their side. When the heart of the problem is the humans involved, the solution is inherently politics.
> 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).
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?
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.
Re-read the first few sentences of his post.
> if there is a valid warrant or subpoena
It still shouldn't be secret. An ordinary valid warrant or subpoena wouldn't allow them to secretly search your house.
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.
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.
That guy had been overstaying a tourist visa for something like 17 years, and only started the green card process in April 2025. I don't think people who have overstayed tourist visas for 17 years should be eligible for any kind of permanent residency in the US, and would support laws making it impossible for someone in his position to get a green card or a work permit.
The fact that he is a white Irishman is legally irrelevant and enforcing immigration law in a race-neutral way is pretty un-Gestapo-like behavior.
Only because we made the "overstaying" an illegal offense. But there's no reason to -- if the guy was paying taxes the whole time, and never committed a serious crime, then we should be happy to welcome such guys, ramping up our GDP.
Don't forget that the paperwork costs a lot, if one has children, can get close to $10k.
Look at Spain -- instead of deporting "illegals", they just made them "legals" (those without a criminal record). Easy, problem solved.
If he was paying taxes during that time period he was also committing a felony.
All you need to pay taxes is an SSN. One can get an SSN in many ways, e.g. long ago on another visa. Same as income to pay on -- can be earned in many ways.
I like this theory of paying taxes is a felony, tell me more!!
Levity aside, working on a tourist visa is a violation but generally isn't prosecuted as a felony.
Also the grandparent post said "They seized a white Irishman last October who had a valid work permit and was just about to head to his green card interview."
If he had a valid work permit I suppose this means that he was allowed to work and pay taxes on that work, in other words - no, he was not committing a felony.
America's a society built around finding people to punish and watching them get punished. I don't understand it, myself. It's like Roman gladiator fighting. But Americans seem to need to feel like they're hurting people who "deserve" it and they can't do that by convincing themselves nobody deserves to be hurt.
The first lady originally came to the US on a tourist visa before getting work as a model and eventually applying for a green card several years later. Musk came to the US on student visa for a program that he never actually enrolled in. Even if you want to argue its "race-neutral", it's certainly not "proximity to the president neutral" so it still is very much "Gestapo-like behavior".
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I listed asylum seekers and visa holders in detention but they are definitely grabbing citizens too. Usually they do not hold them for very long.
This happened at the Target I shop at:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/13/ice-immigrat...
Two teenagers just doing their jobs, dogpiled by roughly four adult men, beaten up and released hours later. One of them was just dropped off at the Walmart down the street, the other they released at the federal building they’re working out of.
> Usually they do not hold them for very long.
I am confused here. If the law grants ICE (or whatever is the umbrella agency that ICE operates under) the power to detain to determine legality of the status, ICE does it, and then releases people back, the law works as intended, no?
I am confused what is the difference between this, and police who can detain a “tall man in black short and red hat” and 10 hours later (or whenever) release back due to new information, or mistake in ID?
I understand that we absolutely have to strive to zero of such cases, but operations at scale (like law enforcement) have zero chance to have no mistakes.
Replace "tall man in black short and red hat who may have committed a violent crime" with "anyone who looks like they may speak Spanish even if no crime has been committed," even if they have a valid government ID card and we arrive at the problem with ICE.
> "anyone who looks like they may speak Spanish even if no crime has been committed,"
There are two parts to it in my view.
First, sure, I understand where you are coming from. At the same time I find this argument a bit problematic because if the numbers on border crossings from South America are true, and majority of those that crossed through are from South and Central America, who do you think ICE is going to look for? Tall, blond, white people from Norway (and I am not saying that there are no people who are out of status from Norway)?
Second, while Trump and co claimed that they will go after "only after criminals", and ICE arrests a bunch of people who may be not criminals in the hardcore sense of killers, etc., but they do arrest a significant amount of those as well. I do not understand this -- if the person crossed the border, are they supposed to get a pass just because? Why?
There’s this case where a citizen was detained and they called his authentic RealID “fake”: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/24/us-citizen-d...
So even using valid papers on you is not enough. We’re beyond a “papers please” situation. It is up to their mood.
Just a handful of examples from last year. As a resident of Minneapolis I can assure you it is much, much worse than these few examples.
Are you not familiar with Liam Conejo Ramos? Or Kilmar Abrego Garcia? Just two other high profile cases, but this is far more prevalent than any reporting has outlined. Three of Liam’s classmates were also “mistakenly” shipped to Texas and returned. At least one of his classmates, a documented asylum seeker like the rest, is still in Dilley.
I am not familiar with the first one, but the second one is not a clear cut and not “everyone”.
Regardless, there is a huge gap between “literally everyone” and individuals who are not a slum dunk citizens, but have questionable status.
Regardless, I think this kind of sensationalism desensitizes the public to the point when no one cares.
Probably referring to this: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/seamus-cul...
This guy had an order of removal, so he seems to be a valid person to detain and deport, no?
Edit: the more I read about it, the more I am convinced he is not a "literally everyone" case.
He was in the US for 20 years, and had no green card. He has work authorization, which means he probably got it as part of the i485 application to get a green card due to his marriage. Other publications report that he came to the US on a tourist waiver visa program, and overstayed. So, what was his status all these years?
No wonder the trust in media is all time low -- this article did a sloppy job to paint a specific picture, and this picture has a bunch of holes in it.
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> 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). 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.
No, this is absolutely the system working as intended: The State exists to protect large monied interests and their power, and those entities in exchange will sell out individuals to the State that seek to undermine their power. The State will never not do this.
Like, I realize I'm the rambling anarchist up in here, but show me ANY government ever that didn't Murder and Pillage, two things that we all hate when perpetrated by individuals. There's no amount of democracy that can be injected into a hierarchy responsible for controlling hundreds of millions of people that will inhibit authoritarianism, the best people can hope for (and what many white/middle class citizens thought they had for the last few decades) is not being the target of that authoritarianism.
Cat's out of the bag now and we're doing that thing we do every few decades where we weaponize the State against the citizens.
> The State exists to protect large monied interests and their power, and those entities in exchange will sell out individuals to the State that seek to undermine their power. The State will never not do this.
Reminds me of a certain ideology, can't quite put my finger on it.
I think it starts with F
The archive link isn't working for me atm.
But tech companies should be complying with subpoenas from governments in countries they would like to operate in. I don't like what is happening in the US either, but to me this feels like a problem with the electorate. Maybe it's possible for Google to provide some of these services without actually having access to the data under subpoena, but I don't know enough about what services they were using or how they work.
Ultimately, whether or not people are able to do anything involves consequences for their actions.
There's the "three" boxes of liberty that are meant to give a framework for how humans in a society are to introduce consequences to state actors who abuse rights: the soap box, the ballot box, and the jury box.
So we need to start using at least those three to prevent human rights abuses with regard to search warrants.
I take it you didn't include the fourth box because you didn't want to be flagged?
What about the consequences for the people that let in millions of illegal aliens with criminal records that harmed and killed Americans? Should those politicians be charged as accessories?
if only they had killed the Americans without harming them, but I think it was a step too far to harm the Americans and Kill them! That's rude. How many Americans did each of these millions of Illegal Aliens Harm and Kill, I'm guessing at least two due to the plural usage and there are millions of the Illegal Aliens therefore there are at least two million.
This means that the Illegal Aliens have evidently harmed and killed at least 4 million Americans.
I'm not gonna sugar-coat it here, that is a lot of harming and killing alright.
Can you list off the names and crimes of these millions of illegal aliens with criminal records so I can verify they exist?
are the millions of illegal aliens with criminal records in the room with us now? Can you show us on the doll where the millions of illegal aliens with criminal records touched you?
> A free state should not be able to sniff after people for made up reasons.
Right, exactly -- a free state should not do that, yet the system is working as intended, therefore we do not live in a free state. It's time to accept that.
Why would we accept that instead of changing it?
My interpretation of ModernMech's comment is that acceptance is a pre-requisite of changing it.
ie. if you didn't accept it, then you wouldn't feel the need to change it.
All systems work as intended — usually phrased as "the purpose of a system is what it does"
If this wasn't the intention they would have changed it by now.
You can't write rules against bad actors. There will always be some legal loophole a bad president can invent to exploit. if not for administrative warrants we would see some other creative (read: illegal) use of executive power.
The only option is to not elect someone that doesn't respect rule of law. And since I know some enlightened "centrist" will play the both sides game: What's 1 thing any previous president has done equivalent to violating posse comitatus.
I strongly disagree. You should always write rules under the assumption it will get in the hands of the worst people. If there is a 'become god-emperor' lever in your supposedly democratic government system then it is a shitty system.
Maybe so but what here really would've prevented this? The information involved is necessarily public: bank details and credit card numbers need to be shared otherwise why have them?
Writing a rule that says the government can't do this is just the government writing a rule it can simply remove it ignore when inconvenient.
The banking information belongs to the account holder and the bank. Google knows it by coincidence but should not share it because it isn’t theirs. If the government wants to know my banking details they can ask my bank. If they can’t figure out who my bank is they should get better at investigating. This approach is just exploiting Google’s wide reach.
> I know we instinctively want to frame this as a privacy problem, but the real problem
Both can be true at the same time.
It's a privacy problem because permitting things like this can lead to abuses.
> administrative subpoenas - i.e. not reviewed by a real judge
I have some bad news for you about magistrates.
> 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.
>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-...
> 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.
>I know we instinctively want to frame this as a privacy problem
How is that not also a privacy problem?
Or the FBI’s FISA system which was abused to gather intel. [1]
Government agencies are prone to abuse.
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.
> I know we instinctively want to frame this as a privacy problem
> In "good" times this made investigations run smoothly.
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
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.
A large part of why the government has slowly accumulated these powers is because Congress has been abdicating its power to the President under both Republican and Democratic administrations since the early 1900s.
The first change I would make with a majority in Congress is to change apportionment so that there is 1 representative per 50,000 people. All it needs is a simple majority, and it would neuter the rural-area advantage in the electoral college while also forcing the legislature to streamline its processes.
Texas will undoubtably try to gerrymander itself into a pretzel, but it's not nearly as easy to draw 582 stable districts that produce a huge Republican advantage - a minor demographic shift could easily lead to a backfiring blowout at the polls. With 6,835 seats in the House, Congress would be forced to streamline its procedures (goodbye, filibuster and reconciliation) and it would be significantly harder for the executive branch to ignore public disapproval.
Of course, this represents a ~15x dilution in the power of each current representative (who would then have to run in a new district) so I'm skeptical. Hopefully enough Democrats have woken up and realized that the country won't survive if it keeps going on like this and deep reforms are needed.
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.
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?
"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.
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/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.
Hence, why I wonder if this is specific their credit/banking products as part of Know Your Customer rules.
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
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.
> 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
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.
They seem unconstitutional on their face, to me. Speeding things up because the Constitution makes it too hard is a bad idea.
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"
> In "good" times this made investigations run smoothly.
These times never existed.
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.
No. Full stop.
Laws are supposed to be crafted to be as applied by anyone, anywhere and at any time. This is why lawyers and politicians are supposed to have foresight and be prudent.
You look at prior events and see them as justified due to the people involved and situations.
If the US government can, for example investigate Richard Spencer or some other extremist figure based on a web post, then they can do the same for someone else on the other end of the spectrum.
But even more terrifying is that they can do the same for someone not in the extremes.
When my friends on the left held power and used it to quash the speech of my friends on the right, I spoke up.
When my friends on the right are doing the same, I also speak up.
The sad irony is that those not in power protest only when it is not their side.
> If the US government can, for example investigate Richard Spencer or some other extremist figure based on a web post, then they can do the same for someone else on the other end of the spectrum.
> But even more terrifying is that they can do the same for someone not in the extremes.
This isn't a valid principle. It suggests that we should oppose laws against murder, because if the government can imprison a murderer, it can imprison someone who saved a life. Even more terrifying is that it can imprison someone who saved a dog's life or didn't save or kill any lives.
> Laws are supposed to be crafted to be as applied by anyone, anywhere and at any time. This is why lawyers and politicians are supposed to have foresight and be prudent.
Except this is both impossible and a bad idea, which is why we have judges, juries, elections, and every other part of the system intended to constrain the blind application of the law.
From my point of view it looks like the right only protests when it’s not their side.
That’s why Al franken resigned for a dumb photo, meanwhile republicans protect pedophile traffickers.
I would say that both sides have that view.
Most people are in a bubble and are unaware of what their tribe is doing.
I may be wrong but I think there have been Republicans who have resigned for extra-marital sex.
While we are screaming about the current POTS and his relation with Jeffery, we gave Bill Clinton a platform to speak during the 2024 Convention. When I bring that up, I get told "It's important that we beat Trump."
The Epstein was arrested in 2019, the files have been in the hands of both Democrats and Republicans. Neither group really looks like they want to prosecute anyone further; only use accusations that their opponents are in there to galvanize their base.
Who is Bill Clinton today? Some nobody with secret service protection? A bit less relevant than the current president, don't you think?
I'm not convinced that people really liked Bill Clinton while he was president. Democrats seem to want the files about him to be released.
I did not realize that we invited "nobodies" to speak at the convention; I can tell how shunned he was based on the Wikipedia page:
>Third night (Wednesday, August 21: A Fight for Our Freedoms)
>The third night was emceed by actress Mindy Kaling, featuring performances by Stevie Wonder, John Legend, Sheila E and Maren Morris. Vice presidential nominee Minnesota Governor Tim Walz delivered his acceptance speech. Pete Buttigieg also spoke.
>It was confirmed that Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi was scheduled to speak. The evening was headlined by Walz and Clinton.
Headline - verb - to be engaged as a leading performer in (as in show or performance)
>Clinton left office in 2001 with the joint-highest approval rating of any U.S. president. -Also Wikipedia
Yes, at this moment the current POTUS is more relevant. At the time however, both Trump and Clinton were both "Some nobody with secret service protection" with the only difference between them being one was running for his second term and the other was not.
>Democrats seem to want the files about him to be released. Everyone wants the files released and those responsible prosecuted...until they are the ones with the files. Then there are all sorts of hints and allegations that their opposition is featured heavily but no charges brought.
It's really sick, there are real people with lives who have been ruined. Committed suicide because of what happened to them and yet all those with the power to act just talk, be it democrats or republicans.
while former US President is about as far from a nobody as it is humanly possible the commenter’s points are all valid. while the current President is most definitely one of the most dispicable human beings than ever roam this planet the whole epstein business is far above any US politics. and Americans generally do not give a hoot about this (see election in 2025) - especially when victims are women and children.
What exactly are you saying "full stop" to?
You have said very little that addresses anything I said, except to appeal to some vague sense of "both sidesism" which is so far away from our current predicament that the only applications I see are (1) to say "I told you so", which isn't productive and widely misses the mark with me (2) normalize the current situation and/or absolve blame by shifting it onto the other side.
Investigative agencies are going to be able to investigate people. So supposing that the "US government can ... investigate Richard Spencer ... based on a web post" isn't a compelling argument unless your goal is to completely reject the concept of government. This can certainly be a consistent position (I've held it in the past), but it's not a common one.
At which point it comes down to accountability for how delegated powers are used - both in individual cases, and to stop patterns of abuse. For example I've long argued we need to neuter the concept of sovereign immunity, and start routinely compensating people who are harmed by the government but never convicted of breaking the law - one should indeed be able to "beat the ride". So I'm not waking up to this in 2025 clutching my pearls gasping "I can't believe the government can just do this". I've been following how the government operates unaccountably for quite some time, and I'm pointing out that the current regime is still a marked escalation.
This isn't to say I am pushing lame answers like "just vote Democrat" (I don't consider myself a Democrat). And I do agree that meaningful reform needs to be in general terms (eg aforementioned sovereign immunity example). But I also think that dismissing our current situation as some mere extension of what has been happening for a while is a terrible way of framing things.
I am saying "No. Full stop." to the idea that we ever had a time when the government was attempting to carry out their roles in good faith.
"For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law" - Óscar Benavides, former president of Peru.
This can only be true if the law is broad and relies on "good faith". This is why laws and court ruling are often narrowly tailored, to prevent a precedent being set that will open the door for future abuse down the road.
>Investigative agencies are going to be able to investigate people. So supposing that the "US government can ... investigate Richard Spencer ... based on a web post" isn't a compelling argument unless your goal is to completely reject the concept of government. As has been often said, you can get a grand jury to indite a ham sandwich.
I suppose I could have fleshed out this argument a little further, a distillation of my point would be that "investigations" are carried out with little or flimsy evidence as a pretext to go on fishing expeditions to find something, anything to actually charge the person with.
>we need to neuter the concept of sovereign immunity I wish we could get the government to hold themselves accountable, however they would need to pass a law to override the concept and they do not seem to be in any hurry to do so.
I am not attempting to say I told you so to you, nor normalize the situation. I disagree with your assessment that there ever was a "better time" and invite not only you but everyone to stand against bad laws and practices no matter the letter after the name.
And I'm getting tired of these comments that normalize the awfulness of the past. We can be pragmatic in recognizing that "our guys" also did bad things. Less bad than awful is still bad. If we choose not to recognize our own foibles then we just fall down our old patterns of "it's someone else's problem".
Because otherwise, better than what we have now is an abysmal target and we should aim for better.
> We can be pragmatic in recognizing that "our guys" also did bad things
What do you mean "our guys" ? I don't have guys. I consider myself a libertarian, was both sidesing up until June of 2020, and had never voted for a major party in a national election until 2020 when I voted for Biden - which I view as me getting older and more conservative - aka valuing our societal institutions and values after seeing how much Trump openly trashed them instead of showing an ounce of leadership during Covid.
Even with this perspective, I still think it is foolish to write off the current administration as if it's just another iteration of back and forth corruption rather than a shameless wholesale kicking over of the apple cart.
No.
The difference now is the number of people feeling effected
It always been thus for people at the margins
> It always been thus for people at the margins
It's worth pointing out that "criminals" are generally "people at the margins"... If for no other reason than to point out that pithy comments like this are often so vague as to be worthless, or even counter-productive!
It's also a good thing that antisocial behavior is often isolated to "the margins", so your statement can even be considered a good thing, by the same metric!
TL;DR: Twitterisms like this are stupid.
So we agree, including that there is a difference.
> 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.
I'm not arguing that it's possible to not abuse the system. I've recognized abuses for quite some time, regardless of which political team has been in power. The point is that we need to avoid normalizing our current situation by pointing to previous abuses.
But did you not disagree before? The "I am getting tired" statement kind of implies that.
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.
> An administrative subpoena implies that there has been a legal procedure and the administrative agencies are not exactly run like the wild west
Hard disagree. The fact that a government agency "reviewed" its own subpoena before enforcing it does not follow the spirit of the Fourth Amendment, which is to prevent government overreach in taking your belongings and information.
In fact, to take your definition of what's not unreasonable to its logical conclusion, by definition any process an agency came up with would be acceptable, as long as they followed it.
I think a better definition of a reasonable search and seizure would be one where a subpoena goes before a judge, the target of the subpoena is notified and has the opportunity to fight it, and where there are significant consequences for government agents who lie or otherwise abuse the process of getting a subpoena.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,[a] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
>>no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation<<
that means there must be affirmation of probable cause to an overseeing body [i.e. judiciary]
administrative warrants are a process of "i know im right i dont need someone else to look things over"
If the party on the receiving end of a search needs to be a lawyer to simply understand the legality of a warrant, I’d argue the search is unreasonable.
> All the fourth amendment guarantees is unreasonable search and seizure.
Are you saying that by the existence of the fourth that unreasonable search/seizures are guaranteed to happen? It can't guarantee protection from them either.
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).
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.
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.
They're actually abducting people from court proceedings (and other scheduled official proceedings) and violating court decisions.
LOL if that's what you think they're doing.
??
What exactly do you disagree with? Most immigration violations are a civil matter (USC section 8). There are criminal violations like human trafficking or illegal entry. But if you came into the US with a visa and then overstayed, you're not committing anything criminal.
And even illegal entry is a misdemeanor, the maximum punishment is at most 6 months in jail. So yeah, ICE and DHS _technically_ don't have more power than regular marshals for most immigration cases.
Which should scare you, btw. There are plenty of civil violations that can be similarly weaponized in future.
>"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.
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.
>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.
Google discloses stats about government requests via FISA / National Security Letters: https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/us-national-...
I was in one of these published NSLs issued by FBI a few years ago. I was notified by Google after the nondisclosure period.
What did you get the NSL for?
Did it result in you being raided?
Were you ever indicted or convicted of anything?
I dunno. Maybe because I used to do research at a Chinese lab when I was a student? That was my impression when I was once questioned for many hours by DHS at the airport. It's impossible to get an answer. They are granted broad legal authority to screen foreign nationals.
No indictment. Nothing physical. But a lot of headaches like delays in visa/immigrant application :shrug:
It was obviously such a credible threat that they couldn’t get a judge to sign a real warrant and had to do a warrantless fishing expedition.
care to explain how you got added to it? what happened then? did you fight it?
See the other comment.
> did you fight it?
I talked to university lawyers (and LLMs) regarding another issue with DHS. For the sake of national security, they have the legal authority. There isn't much I can do. Unless I can prove they discriminated against me due to my race, national origin, etc. -- which may be the case but how can I prove that. I requested FOIA from DOS/DHS. What I got was basically no more than the original applications I submitted.
Why change the title?
"Google Fulfilled ICE Subpoena Demanding Student Journalist’s Bank and Credit Card Numbers"
Just a thought, maybe the poster was using original title but source later updated it.
https://web.archive.org/web/20260210171513/https://theinterc... -- "GOOGLE HANDED ICE STUDENT JOURNALIST’S BANK AND CREDIT CARD NUMBERS"
Please don’t forget to upload your driver’s license and ID for validations to keep the children safe!
Very much this. We need to keep children safe from those predators that the government are trying their best to protect!!!
Were they legally required to?
For a normal subpoena from a court, yes.
For an "administrative" subpoena from an agency, they take a risk in court.
Judicial review is deferred. If Google thinks the subpoena is egregious, they can go to court and argue. But in the meantime they can either carry it out or risk being held in contempt if they don't and lose in court.
According to this article, it is treated as a request and often denied by the company. The target of the warrant did go to court to quash it, but that was already after Google declined to share the information.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/02/03/hom...
edit: it appears that either 1. the Washington Post is printing misinformation, or 2. I have made a grave misinterpretation.
Washington Post can be relied on to publish disinformation, not just misinformation:
https://bsky.app/profile/cingraham.bsky.social/post/3mecltnb...
Washington Post editorials have gotten pretty conservative, but that's different from articles in the news section.
(It seems similar to the difference between the Wall Street Journal's reporting and editorials.)
If their editorial content is for sale, is it not reasonable to assume the rest is for sale also?
The above example isn’t a “conservative” editorial, it is a partisan editorial. A legitimate organization would never publish such inconsistent writing.
the only way to legally search a house, car or force companies to hand anything over is with a judge signing it off
the article isn't clear about it but it implies that this was not approved by a judge but DHS alone, this is also indicated but the fact that the supona contained a gag order but Google still informed the affected person that _some_ information was hanged over
now some level of cooperation with law enforcement even without a judge is normal to reduce friction and if you love in a proper state of law there is no problem Keith it.
Also companies are to some degree required to cooperate.
What makes this case so problematic is the amount of information shared without a judge order, that ICE tried to gag Google, that Google did delay compliance to give the affected person a chance to take legal action even through they could, and last but but least that this information seems to have been requested for retaliation against protestor which is a big no go for a state of law
Apparently around 300 students have been deported over pro-Palestine activism, similar to the person in the article who self-deported
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/04/05/visa-immigrati...
> Legally, the answer is murky, one expert told The Washington Post — at least when it comes to combing through Supreme Court decisions for answers. The court has been clear that First Amendment protections from criminal or civil penalties for speech apply to citizens and noncitizens alike. What’s less settled, however, is how those protections apply in the immigration context, where the executive branch has broad discretion to detain or deport.
Why is this a bad thing? It's just like India kicking out those two tourists for political signs. I can't see any benefit at all to allowing tourist or student visas is this case to participate in "activism".
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/india-orders-british-tou...
Non-citizens have constitutional rights as well. The DHS having the ability to produce subpoenas without judicial oversight is definitely a bad thing.
The law is both in wording and spirit pretty clear that
- any civilian has a right for free speech, and protests count as that
- any civilian has a right for due process
There is nothing murky about that.
There are just people pretending it's murky (in this and many other cases) to systematically undermine the US constitution.
Which is a huge problem (beyond this specific case and made much worse by the state of current supreme court).
According to the ACLU, they are not [1]. So Google voluntarily handed over user information. It requires a court order to enforce it and that requires a judge to sign off on it.
This is somewhat analogous to ICE's use of administrative warrants, which really have no legal standing. They certainly don't allow ICE to enter a private abode. You need a judicial warrant for that. That too requires a judge to sign off on it.
[1]: https://www.aclu.org/documents/know-your-rights-ice-administ...
> They certainly don't allow ICE to enter a private abode.
I'd just note that ICE is (falsely) claiming otherwise these days.
https://apnews.com/article/ice-arrests-warrants-minneapolis-...
"Federal immigration officers are asserting sweeping power to forcibly enter people’s homes without a judge’s warrant, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo obtained by The Associated Press, marking a sharp reversal of longstanding guidance meant to respect constitutional limits on government searches."
Indeed, law enforcement officers frequently lie about laws in order to accomplish their goals. This erodes public trust in law enforcement. As a society we should structure incentives such that agents of the government should be exposed to the externalities resulting from their actions.
> As a society we should structure incentives such that agents of the government should be exposed to the externalities resulting from their actions.
That’s the most oblique way of writing “lock and load” that I’ve ever seen.
That’s one interpretation.
The same could describe “abolish qualified immunity and make law enforcement carry insurance like doctors.
Too much malpractice? Insurance goes up.
It's a recommendation for us to lobby Congress to make an amendment to US Code. It would add a requirement for mandatory disciplinary action for agents in the government who breach public trust, with a series of specific elements to ensure a narrow application of the policy.
It's delightfully surprising to see text interpreted in different ways. It would not have occurred to me to have considered your understanding.
You may not advocate violence on HN. That's why the other guy spoke of the "three" boxes of liberty.
The government (=Stephen Miller) said ICE agents have "federal immunity," so good luck with applying "externalities resulting from their actions."
And ICE/DHS leadership is openly issuing memos advising agents to ignore Federal Court rulings. It's so fucked up.
This is more aimed at individuals or smaller actors that may be getting subpoenas from ICE.
There is actually a legal standing for DHS to issue these administrative warrants on corporations in this way.
Probably so. But what relevance does "legally required" have in a country sliding into autocracy?
Because it’s important context for understanding what the “point” of the article is. It could be any of:
- reporting on google’s violation of privacy laws or handing over info they weren’t required to
- reporting on the US government’s abuse of existing process that Google was legally required to comply with but ought to have challenged
- calling attention to investigatory legal practices that are normal and above-board but the author of the article wishes they were otherwise.
Some of these are motives are closer to the journalism end of the spectrum and some of them are closer to advocacy. I interpret this article as the third bucket but I wish it were clearer about the intent and what they are actually attempting to convey. The fact that the article is not clear about the actual law here (for example, was this a judicial subpoena?) makes me trust it less.
It reflects even worse on Google for vacuuming up and keeping the data.
They can’t really refuse to hand over the data, but they could purge and stop collecting identifying data on Americans. As is, they are tacitly complicit by collecting data they know will be used against protesters.
> they could purge and stop collecting identifying data on Americans.
That's their entire business model though...
giant private companies like Google are not ever going to be involved with defying court orders, especially ones that do lots of business with the federal government (which will be just about any company even half of google's size). You can say it's wrong or whatever but it's like asking a brick wall to do an Irish jig.
The only solution to this problem is for the US to have a vastly more active anti-monopoly regime so that companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon etc. are simply not allowed to exist at such scales where consumers are locked into them.
it depends if potential reputation damage is high.
Apple was fighting for user's privacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_d...
Let's be real, if a bigtech ignored judicial orders, whether you would describe it as "fighting autocracy" or "corporate fascism" is 100% dependent on who is currently in office
Google is a multi trillion dollar company, not a scrappy libertarian upstart ready to gamble everything in court
Centralised bank system, centralised internet, centralised power. What could possibly go wrong?
The title should be Google handed _over_ these things. Otherwise it reads as though they were handed _to_ Google.
It's both: The user handed them to Google, Google handed them to the government.
What are some ways users can insulate themselves from something like this?
Don't use products from large US tech companies?
Apple has a slightly better track record than Google of fighting this stuff, but ultimately if you're using a product from a US tech company then it's likely ICE can get their grubby little mitts on everything that company knows about you
Is there any evidence that Apple fights administrative subpoenas issued by US federal agencies?
Or is Google just more transparent than Apple about the government orders it complies with?
For example, after the Department of Justice demanded app stores remove apps that people use to track ICE deployments, Apple was the first to comply, followed later by Google.
It's a constitutional right to record them doing their duties, in public. That's clear.
Here's a question: Is making a reporting system around that, for the purpose of/approaches/is realtime tracking, also protected? Maybe related to "non-permanence"?
(references welcome)
> It's a constitutional right to record them doing their duties, in public. That's clear.
Less clear than it used to be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Guevara_(journalist)
From the wikipedia article: "Guevara was ordered removed from the United States by an immigration judge in 2012"
The removal case was administratively closed on appeal which meant that he was legally authorized to stay in the US while waiting for a green card application to go through.
He was here on a work permit when the police arrested him for filming a protest. Journalism isn't a crime so all the charges connected to his arrest were dropped, but ICE placed a detainer on him to keep him locked up anyway. A judge granted him bond so that he could be released but ICE fought that too and continued to keep him locked up. Finally they reopened the 2012 case and used that to kick him out of the country.
Sure it is. The same way it was legal to track and report on CIA "extraordinary rendition" flights using publicly available information.
What is not protected is actual interference or obstruction, and first amendment protections can be lost if the system’s design, stated purpose, or predictable use crosses from observation and reporting into intimidation or operational coordination that materially interferes or obstructs.
Given how these systems are already being used, and the likely intent behind building one, that's a real risk if you're not careful.
Alternatively, use them pseudonymously? There's little reason any of these companies need to know your real identity. This will both reduce the likelihood of ICE finding your account from a real-life interaction, as well as reduce the likelihood of ICE finding your real-life identity if they do get your account data (they'd at least need to dig through it more than just going by first/last name on the account itself).
> (they'd at least need to dig through it more than just going by first/last name on the account itself).
FYI this is beyond trivial and automated to the nth degree. There is so much more to go off of than some form fields to uniquely identify a person.
For linking activity back to your person? Without name, payment details, photos of face, or IRL social graph the easiest path that comes to mind is IP address. But that's going to involve additional inquiries and is likely ambiguous (unless you live alone, but determining that is again more work).
“allow google to search for devices on your network?”
I’m not trying to be condescending here, but I’m just asking what someone thinks is happening here and what they can do with information scanned on your network.
I don't follow how that's relevant? In terms of the information yielded by an administrative subpoena of an account will that even appear? I'm not clear how the result of the scan is being used.
Suppose the data is retained in association with your pseudonymous account. So now in addition to my IP they have, what, the internal IPs and device names from my LAN? How does that lead directly to me without significant additional effort? I think their best option is still hitting up my ISP to get the billing info and service address of the account.
You can’t do that. If you think you can, you haven’t tried recently.
They all require phone numbers, and they almost all require phone numbers tied to ID-based names. They require CC even when you aren’t buying stuff. It’s very difficult even for experts to achieve truly pseudonymous use.
A prepaid SIM or burner phone can still be purchased no? I believe the CC requirement can be bypassed if you create your Apple ID from trying to "purchase" a free app (or for the accounts that do require payment, I wonder if a gift card can be used).
I'm guessing your constraint is impossible as living in the US pretty much requires banking and working with companies that will gladly give government agencies your information. I severely doubt that tech is the only group doing this.
> Don't use products from large US tech companies?
What does large have to do with it? Why do you think smaller companies are any more likely to resist? If anything, they have even less resources to go to court.
And why do you think other countries are any better? If you use a French provider, and they get a French judicial requisition or letters rogatory, then do you think the outcome is going to be any different?
I mean sure if you're avoiding ICE specifically, then using anything non-American is a start. But similarly, in you're in France and want to protect yourself, then using products from American companies without a presence in France is similarly a good strategy.
Are they going to stop because a company fights a subpoena? Or perhaps in the case of some touted alternatives, even if a subpoena were acted upon, no data would be intelligible?
Maybe they'll just show up to your house next time. I'm not sure why people complain about US companies complying with US government subpoenas. Isn't that how it is supposed to work? Imagine if the opposite were routine, would you like that?
People want to stop using Gmail to feel agency in a situation where the real problem is their own government. The real answer thus lies in deeply reforming a federal government that really both sides of the aisle (in their own way) agree has gotten too powerful and out of control.
It's more nuanced than "the federal government is too powerful." I feel more like non-law-enforcement agencies like ICE are too powerful right now, but I also believe that the FBI and the DOJ had a good mandate that should be preserved. And I also believe that antitrust needs to be a high priority. Please don't lump me in with people who just want to tear it all down so they can live in a fiefdom. There are good people in the US government, and there are good things about it. It's just not all of it is good and none of us can agree at all times on what's bad here.
If you've had a 100%-tolerance policy to illegal immigration for years then that's the government not being powerful enough, or not using its power to the correct level for its citizens. If there's a better, gentler fix for illegal immigration then everyone would absolutely love that, but it's such a huge thing to tackle due to the previous years' encouraging of illegal migration.
The system is clearly breaking. Rather than couching your language in rehashed partisan politics that will only lead to further and more egregious breaks, the best thing you could do is acknowledge these events as a system failure. The safest thing is then to first work to defang the system. This is also bipartisan and more likely to succeed.
Just look at the situation as the founders would. It's amazing a society that came from a generation that engineered their own form of government is now trapped by their forebears' invention. They told us explicitly they were merely men, not gods. When America was founded it was a weak, newborn power of 3 million people who were forced to make awkward compromises mostly to protect the country from being recolonized by European domination. And yet our system of government has remained mostly unchanged from the founding.
Any of you Americans out there worried about a European armada? Or the British burning down the White House again?
America's sister republic - the French - has gone through many more iterations. Your problem is you have no imagination. Regardless of what you think of Trump, he does. He is an avatar for a group of people that understand correctly that what had been the prevailing system was no longer responsive to the times, so they are essentially remaking it on the fly. What is your answer to that, that isn't just lets rewind the clock? You tried that with Biden and the disease became worse.
Do it a second time and I fear the future will bring you someone who makes Trump look like a saint.
ICE is a law enforcement agency.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Immigration_and_...
No they do not. Apple intentionally preserves backdoors in the e2ee of iMessage (via iCloud Backup) to aid the FBI.
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/exclusive-apple-droppe...
(the opt-in e2ee for iCloud Backups is irrelevant - approximately nobody turns it on, so everyone you talk to is leaking all of your chats.)
Wild guess: You like Apple more than Google.
I only guessed that because that is a strange conclusion to draw when Apple was involved in PRISM, they worked with China to black pro- democracy hong kong apps, and I believe they turned over data to China and Russia.
Apple's PR/marketing is best in class, so I can also see this just being a knowledge level error rather than bias.
You don't have to like Apple to recognize that they take a materially different stance from Google when it comes to user privacy.
Take this, for example: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102630
You can trivially disable web access to your data; at that point, Apple literally does not have the keys to your end-to-end encrypted data and cannot read or disclose it.
Exactly Apple has and will continue to comply whatever is needed to help authoritarian regimes to crush their citizens while Google refused to. It's hard to look at Apple in any other light.
This is not all so straightforward. I'm afraid Apple's "privacy stance" is just marketing, even if they might be a tiny bit better than Google:
https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/04/10/apple-makes-it-re...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42014588
I don't really understand the point in these cases specifically. If not Google, the government can always ask a bunch of other companies like utilities or stores about your details. It's a fool's errand to protect your payment info, ID, etc from the government, since it's issued or authorized by them in the first place.
With regard to more important info, treat Google and any other company's software as government-accessible. Don't put anything that could be even suspicious, since even if you can win in court, your time gets wasted by government employees getting paid for it. People keep forgetting it, but the cloud is just someone else's computer.
As a rule: don't bother with trying to "opt out" of data collection. Reject the collection entirely either by forcefully blocking it (ublock Origin for instance) or straight up not using the service.
Privacy crash course (non exhaustive):
- Do not use social media
- Install Linux on your PC/laptop, buy a phone compatible with GrapheneOS
- Self-host any cloud services you may need (file sharing etc.)
- Communicate over Signal or self-hosted Matrix/XMPP
- Use throwaway SIM cards and phone numbers where they make sense
- Unplug the cellular modem in your car (if applicable)
- Pay with cash or crypto
- Use fake identities for anything that isn't government related (paying taxes)
- Use Tor, VPNs, and ad blockers
Vote for politicians who support checks and bounds, demand accountability from those in power, and participate in civics.
how naive to think this current administration will play by the rules in the next general election
Be outside the US and/or don't use products from US companies?
Believe it or not, tech companies must comply with the authorities of countries they operate in. They're also not required to tell you, sometimes they're compelled to not tell you.
The idea that a tech company can outright oppose the state is pure fantasy... They still must operate within laws.
don't use centralized services, especially ones located in USA.
also self hosting (mail, contacts, storage, ...)
[flagged]
> Follow the law. As a guest in a country, treat your host with respect. Do not support terrorist groups.
The article describes Thomas-Johnson as a "student activist and journalist" and "whose work has appeared in outlets including Al Jazeera and The Guardian".
Are you saying that there is evidence elsewhere that he is part of some terrorist organisation? Hey wait a sec, perhaps you are confusing "Al Jazeera" with "Al Qaeda". You know Google is your friend - oh wait...
Do you have any specifics about the law they allegedly broke?
Doubtful, charcircuit deliberately writes inflammatory comments just to throw them over the fence and refuse to elaborate.
Sometimes I choose to not respond to people who reply to me in bad faith or if it is a tired argument. This comment thread is about how to avoid having law enforcement query Google for your data. My suggestion was to avoid getting in trouble in the first place to remove the need for law enforcement to care about you in the first place.
I am not part of the law enforcement operation. I don't have all of the details about what the person in the article did or did not do. Regardless of lacking that knowledge I can provide advice to avoid law enforcement.
> I don't have all of the details about what the person in the article did or did not do.
How is your advice supposed to actually pertain to insulating against federal mistreatment, then? Contextually it reads like a series of accusations, which the parent is calling you out on.
Because being proactive in preventing and adversarial relationship between law enforcement and yourself is an easier position to avoid it in than when you are in an adversarial one.
What I'm curious about is whether this payment information is from spending money or from YouTube's requirement of doing a symbolic credit card payment to authenticate that you're an adult - and other potential checks for YouTube partners.
Basically YouTube's form of age verification that takes place such as when they can't figure out whether to serve you mature videos or not.
For more context see the Cornell article from last year
> The first email, sent on May 8 from Cornell International Services, stated that his immigration status had been terminated by the federal government. The second email, sent from Google on the same day, notified him that his personal email account had been subject to a subpoena by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on March 31.
https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2025/11/immigration-autho...
Basically he was a British national with a student visa who was going to be deported for pro-palestian activism (under Trumps executive order mandating immigration authorities to do so), so he self-deported. Other's mention in the thread it's not clear if Google handed over any information.
I remember someone saying that there is no privacy in large companies because they make money by selling or sharing users' personal data :/
Biggest thing to note is that this was a so-called "administrative" warrant, not a real judicial warrant. Google did this voluntary.
"full extent of the information...including any IP masking services"
This suggests that Google aggregates derived information based on how a user uses Google (i.e. VPN info). The fact that derived info was also potentially passed along is particularly upsetting to me.
Aside from the fact that I don't think companies should be able to collect user data at all (if you disagree, I think there's a good chance you're at least a little bit fascist), this amounts to Google providing free surveillance services to the government.
If you squint, it's minority-report-esque: eventually Google will tell the govt who it thinks is likely to commit crimes based on how they interact with its AIs. Almost certainly coming to a society near you soon.
Now google is full of evil acts.
> on tech companies to resist similar subpoenas in the future from DHS without court intervention.
Haha nice one, these tech companies are willing to have a deal with devil to get those lucrative Gov contracts, and since it’s the the wild west now in the US, the only action users can do is abandoning all these tech companies and look for alternatives.
We, the America-hating liberals, have been warning about these "administrative subpoenas" for years, but we've always been blocked with "So, we're all gonna have wait for a judge to sign a warrant before we can stop the next 9/11?!"
Good.
Does anyone still remember when Western countries were scared of Huawei because the Chinese would use their hardware to spy on people?
Well, guess what? The U.S. also has their own Huawei. But, at least, they're "democratic" and follow "the rule of the law" (for whatever these words mean nowadays).
Just out of curiosity. Are there any companies today that are seen the way Google used to be seen, as a generally “good” corporation/companies that are also a important player? Maybe Mozilla Foundation?
There are no good mega-corporations, only a honeymoon period where they haven't grown large enough to start horse-trading for favorable treatment from the state.
Maybe Valve?
Agreed. Nvidia too maybe? That said, Nvidia is highly competitive and has built a walled garden via their software so I have mixed feelings.
Anthropic seems to be chasing that angle (c.f. their run of "AI that doesn't advertise to you" commercials).
By the way, perhaps your point of view on Google has evolved but on the question of the way Google is seen today by American consumers it is still right up there with Kleenex and Jesus. Furthermore, pretty much everyone, in America and abroad, views business as both more ethical and more effective than governments and non-governmental organizations.
> Furthermore, pretty much everyone, in America and abroad, views business as both more ethical and more effective than governments and non-governmental organizations.
"Transnational oligarchic mega-corporations" !== "business".
People don't like the former. They like businesses that operate at closer to human and community scale.
Blizzard, Microsoft come to mind
How far back do you have to go for Microsoft to be seen as "good" the way Google was?
Windows XP for me
.NET and VS Code gave some people the impression that MICROS~1 had become good and nice.
yep re blizzard. they've gotten lots better since the msft acquisition, based on my (limited) experiences with the newer employees there.
Blizzard ~10 years ago, maybe. Microslop has always been one of the worst. I don't understand why anyone would have a positive disposition towards Microslop.
Blizzard is a bunch of sex pests and Microsoft is the guys with the AI upsells on every inch of their OS...
There are exactly zero organizations that will refuse to comply with subpoenas and warrants. It isn't up to business to fix the national government.
> executive orders targeting students who protested in support of Palestinians, Thomas-Johnson and his friend Momodou Taal went into hiding
Ah. They went into hiding. That explains why there are very few pro-Iran protests: for a second I thought there were double-standards when it came to protesting and that that was why we had non-stop pro-Gaza protests but hardly any protests to criticize the tens of thousands of victims the islamist iranian regime made in a few days.
> “As a journalist, what’s weird is that you’re so used to seeing things from the outside,” said Thomas-Johnson, whose work has appeared in outlets including Al Jazeera and The Guardian.
Where can I read the entirety of her work: that is, including her coverage of the tens of thousands of civilians executed by the islamist iranian regime?
For you're not telling she's not covering those because the islamist iranian regime happens to be pro-Hamas and anti-jews right? (btw I'm not jewish)
Right?
"Google complies with federal warrant", more news at 11
I left google search for duckduckgo a few years ago due to all the marketing drivel returned. I guess there is yet another, better reason, to avoid google.
As for gmail, it joined my old yahoo mail as a dumping ground. If some site wants an email, they get my gmail address, which I never go to these days.
But how did google get this person's info ? Are they spying on their emails, or worse yet, are they scraping data for apps you installed on your android phone ?
What do you think is going to happen when DDG or Fastmail gets a FISA warrant? You think they will stand their ground and go to prison to protect your info?
History (like the PRISM project) says no.
The article indicates even Meta pushed back on some of these:
> Unlike Thomas-Johnson, users in that case were given the chance to fight the subpoena because they were made aware of it before Meta complied.
I think those are two different orders: one with a gag order and one without.
In cases without gag orders, Google has pushed back or requested users fight the subpoena.
In this instance, Google got a gag order while Meta doesn't appear to have gotten one. I'm not sure how gag orders like this can be legal. I'm sure there's like Nat Sec defenses but it sure seems dangerous to say the target cannot be notified of such requests.
Just wish I could get off gcal. Too many friends/family on it
Fastmail's calendar works reasonably well. My two complaints with it:
- There isn't a convenient calendar widget; Google's calendar widget only works with Google's calendar. I'd like something exactly like Google's calendar widget but working with Fastmail's calendar.
- Sites that integrate with Google Calendar but not with arbitrary CalDAV servers.
I could live without the latter, but the former is a dealbreaker; I'd switch given a functional widget that is fully self-contained and doesn't require some separate sync app.
Google ought to rethink its policy of disclosing government subpoenas to users. Every time this happens, the media uses it to attack Google. They'd be better off leaving users in the dark about these legally required data disclosures. Even if most users don't go crying to the media when it happens, it's still not worth it.
Ever occur to you that it's good for Google if there's some public visibility of what Google is being forced to do?
Ultimately it's better for the public and users to be informed about this occurring though. If Google wanted to they could salvage it and explain their legal duties and how that applies to these situations. I don't think Google is worried though. They have multiple captive markets and have seen continued growth so it's obviously not affecting the bottom line.
It's a good contrast to Apple where any bit of bad news that makes headlines becomes priority one to fix. Which just creates a privileged class of users and makes the brand look fragile.
Why the hell did Google even have his bank account numbers? I wish there was more information on which Google service(s) this data was pulled from.
You can setup ACH for a number of Google services; Cloud, Workspace, the Play Store.
The famous "Don't be evil" ia more and more ironic. But to be honest, if they got the court order there is really nothing's they could do.
In this case you should blame the game not the player.
Several companies have resisted these court orders successfully. Google can afford a lawyer to go over the order with a fine tooth comb if they wanted to - it's just easier to roll over and let the government rub their belly.
Trump has also repeatedly used government apparatus to illegally retaliate against companies and individuals for not going hos way, with no consequence, so it is hard to entirely blame corporations for behaving that way
They changed the motto to "do the right thing", because, apparently "evil" is too ambiguous. "Do the right thing" is more suitable motto for a company whos CEO was a buddy of Epstein. Tech CEOs helped get Trump elected and strengthen ICE regime to protect the billionaires, they were all involved.
That was really their argument?
Quite contrary, the "right thing" is the ambiguous one. I think that most people agree what is evil. Certainly much more than what is right.
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Look how far they'll go to protect Israel. But when it comes to Epstein friends and co, they need evidence to proof that water is wet..
Like I said previously [0], Big Tech giants such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon cooperate with ICE just like how Palantir does.
So when are you going to stop using Google? (You won't will you?)
These kind of condescending comments are a bit much, especially when not everyone has the luxury or know-how to deFAANG their lives. For instance, whether or not (I) personally want to avoid it, I use some of this for actual work, and there is no alternative. Comments like this seem to imply then I have no right to complain about it, which is frankly ridiculous - there is a world where FAANGs can exist without being far reaching apparatuses of an authoritarian regime. They do so because it is convenient and the existing power structure incentivizes it.
Like what am I gonna do in a job interview - "Oh, you guys use gsuite? Sorry, I deFAANGed."
Come on.
We're on the forum where people are most capable of doing this for themselves.
And if your company uses GMail that is less than ideal for de-Googling, but it does not meaningfully impact the benefits of de-Googling your personal life.
Refusing to run all your search history, personal transactions, and correspondences through one of the fascist state's pet companies is still beneficial.
If you use a work google profile on your home network, tied to your real name, it definitely affects your personal life
It's almost like there should be some third party that represents people who could regulate companies like Google and prevent them from becoming too big. Maybe there are some examples from US history where some such third party existed.
> So when are you going to stop using Google? (Never)
Why the meta commentary? Obviously some of us have unFANGed their lives.
When I was a student, I could never have gone to such lengths to avoid government scrutiny.
He must have plenty of money.
LOL, any of you still using Google? I'm down to 5%.
2026 will be the year I get to 0%.
edit: "directly using"
Remember "Don't be evil"? It's crazy anyone would trust a corporation with anything these days.
It's crazy that "corporations = bad" passes as insightful comment on HN these days.
I don't think it's as simple as "corps. = bad". It's more that naive slogans like "don't be evil" used to be taken seriously. Companies exist to make money. This is ok! It generally works well in a capitalistic system. But to expect more than that people are realizing is a pipe dream... which is why you need good rules in place (i.e., regulations, laws) to direct companies and their behaviors.
Big capital is presently running the USA. Democracy no longer exists there as a factual entity - whether it is ICE agents gunning down US citizens or whether it is corporations run by the superrich spying on people and undermining their ability to e. g. protest.
There is too much a focus on Trump here - one should focus on the whole criminal entity. The whole network. It is true that the fish starts to rot from the head (well, not quite, but it is a common saying), but in reality there are numerous parts that are rotting away.
IMO there has to be a re-distribution of both wealth and power; as well as influence.
This does not surprise me. The continued existence of Google is a net negative for humanity.
Sadly, it didn't start out like this.
I would say that it's just ordinary greed driven company. Which is basically normal corporation.
Why net negative tho?
The "net" refers here to "the good that Google does" (e.g., some pretty impressive networking research) is outweighed by "the bad that Google does," such as the linked article.
Nothing is pure evil or pure good. Gauging where on the scale a person or group lies is really hard, and subjective.
So, I try and keep score on the big players, but understand that my judgement is fallible.
Oh I understand what you meant by net negative, I was more curious about the thing's you perceive negatively. I myself consider them net neutral but the trend itself is negative.
Ragebait article. Headline should be "Google complies with court order"
Not actually a court order. That's the problem. Administrative subpoenas don't come from a judge, and the target wasn't given notice in order to challenge it in court.