The First Amendment applies to everyone on US soil, not just citizens. That’s settled law. The government can revoke visas for legitimate immigration violations, but it’s not allowed to use immigration machinery as a pretext to punish political expression. That’s exactly what they are doing. It looks like the courts will eventually put an end to this [0] but it won’t reverse the damage that’s already been done.
I’m generally receptive to point the finger at Google’s intentions but in their defense, administrative subpoenas frequently include non disclosure orders. Google’s own transparency policies have always carved out (industry standard) exceptions for cases where they’re legally prohibited from notifying.
Technically incorrect, Supreme Court precedent has held that aliens are entitled to lesser First Amendment protections while seeking to enter the United States. You could be on US Soil (i.e. entering customs at an airport) and those protections don't apply.
The person in question said he was in Geneva when he received the email from Google. Therefore is a non-US citizen residing outside the country entitled to 1A protections for something they said or did while in the US? I'm not expressing an opinion but I wouldn't take that statement as legal advice.
To condone what happens to him, you must first condone that your government lists and identifies people attending opponent meetings.
Whether the government waits for him to leave the country to violate his rights feels like a small detail in this issue.
Also, if you intend to claim that us foreigners are free targets for any abhorent behaviour of your government, maybe you should rename your bill of rights a bill of privileges.
Whoa! I’d slow down with the hypotheses, considering we have one side of the story.
What we do know is that the US, like all other countries, has wide legal latitude on not allowing foreigners into the country. You can be denied entry for no more than a Facebook like of the wrong post.
The policy of applying US immigration enforcement actions against legal visa holders who have attended specific legal (US based) protests has been publicly reported and confirmed by many government officials and is unrelated to anyone trying to enter the country.
Senior ICE officials have testified under oath in federal court that analysts were moved from counterterrorism, global trade, and cybercrime work to this group focused specifically on writing reports about people involved in student protests.
The EFF letter tends to line up with this guy’s story, though.
Also, since google complied without giving him the ability to challenge the request, we will never have another version. In that context, it feels fair to accept the only version we have.
The events he was likely targeted for happened on a campus in the US.
Yes, someone in customs at an airport can be treated as functionally “at the border” with reduced protections.
But you are conflating seeking entry with being present inside the country. That’s the legal line, and the Supreme Court has stated it clearly. “once an alien enters the country, the legal circumstance changes, for the Due Process Clause applies to all ‘persons’ within the United States, including aliens, whether their presence here is lawful, unlawful, temporary, or permanent.” [0]
As for the First Amendment specifically the Supreme court has reversed the deportation order of an Australian labor activist due to alleged Communist Party affiliation, concluding that “freedom of speech and of the press is accorded aliens residing in this country” [1]
The Geneva detail doesn’t apply. He was on US soil as a lawful visa holder when he attended the protest. It’s a question of where he was when the government action targeted his protected expression not where he was when Google emailed him.
His departure doesn’t retroactively strip the constitutional protections that applied when the conduct occurred.
> Yes, someone in customs at an airport can be treated as functionally “at the border” with reduced protections. But you are conflating seeking entry with being present inside the country. That’s the legal line, and the Supreme Court has stated it clearly.
At least in terms of being "at the border", United States v. Martinez-Fuerte would appear to disagree.
That legal line you mention is both figuratively and literally not at the border; protections are weakened up to 100 miles away.
> ... it’s not allowed to use immigration machinery as a pretext to punish political expression. That’s exactly what they are doing.
I agree: this is exactly what the administration is doing.
> I’m generally receptive to point the finger at Google’s intentions but in their defense, administrative subpoenas frequently include non disclosure orders.
Except immigration aren't allowed to put gag orders on administrative subpoenas [1]:
> First, any gag order in these subpoenas has no legal effect; you are free to publicize them and inform the target of the subpoena.
and
> The agency’s administrative subpoena power is limited, but ICE often uses the subpoenas to obtain more assistance than is legally required
This is the key problem. Companies like Google aren't making government agencies go to court to get a subpoena, they're not resisting that subpoena, they're not informing targets when they're legally allowed to and they're giving agencies more assistance than is legally required.
I don't think it's asking a lot to expect any platform to only provide the minimum legally required cooperation.
Does the government need a reason to revoke a persons visa? First amendment or not, that is the real question. If no reason is needed then whether the first amendment applies or not is moot.
There seems to be broad discretion that the government has in revoking visas.
> The government can revoke visas for legitimate immigration violations, but it’s not allowed to use immigration machinery as a pretext to punish political expression.
What is the punishment though? According to the article (written by the same person whose data was subpoenaed) they are still around, alive, safe and sound in geneva, not even formally accused of anything.
So far there is only evidence of an investigation.
And pro-pal movements arr usually pro-terrorism, so it make sense to investigate.
I’m a First Amendment absolutist and AFAIK foreign students can protest, but this video shows to me it probably crosses the line into something else. Exactly what, I have no opinion.
It sounds like you're trying to shift the legal goalposts of "peaceful" into "gentle" or "inoffensive".
You have a First Amendment right to "peacefully" hurl the most awful insults you can think of at a police officer.
If that police officer feels "antagonized"--or even if your goal was to hurt their feelings--that does not permit them to abuse the special power of their workplace to attack you. If they try anyway, now that's a real crime.
"Settled law" isn't a matter of opinion and it doesn't mean it can't be reversed or overturned. It means the potential legal ambiguity at question has been adjudicated by the Supreme Court (or lower courts without higher court intervention), and that ruling is the operative interpretation that governs how every court below applies the law.
>We won’t give notice when legally prohibited under the terms of the request.
The post states that his lawyer has reviewed the subpoena, but doesn't mention whether or not it contained a non-disclosure order. That's an important detail to address if the claim is that Google acted against its own policy.
Google acknowledges that they should have given notice per their own policy and that they violated it. In this case, they said that they violated it because they had failed to respond to the subpoena within ICE's 10-day deadline:
> On November 20, 2025, Google, through outside counsel, explained to the undersigned why Google did not give Thomas-Johnson advanced notice as promised. Google’s explanation shows the problem is systematic: Sometimes when Google does not fulfill a subpoena by the government’s artificial deadline, Google fulfills the subpoena and provides notice to a user on the same day to minimize delay for an overdue production. Google calls this “simultaneous notice.” But this kind of simultaneous notice strips users of their ability to challenge the validity of the subpoena before it is fulfilled.
At what point does Google’s incompetence imply organizations that use its services are liable for negligence?
What if this were a bogus subpoena for a lawyer’s privileged conversations with a client? A doctor’s communications about reproductive health with a patient? A political consultant working for the democrats?
Google knows users care about their privacy, and it made the promise in its terms precisely for that reason. People pay attention to this stuff, as the popularity of this story shows.
Therefore, it's generally not going to be in Google's interest to break its own terms.
So what's going on? Did a Google employee simply mess up? Is the reporting not accurate or missing key details, e.g. Google truly is legally prohibited? Or is there some evidence that the Trump administration was putting pressure on Google, e.g. threatening to withhold some contract if this particular person were notified, or if Google continued notifying users belonging to some particular category of subpoenas?
Because Google isn't breaking its own terms just for funsies. There's more to this story, but unfortunately it's not clear what.
> Therefore, it's generally not going to be in Google's interest to break its own terms.
It is also not in Google’s interest to resist this administration. I would not be surprised if they decided to kiss the ring and be by internal policy more cooperative than what the law strictly says.
I guess we’ll get a better idea if more cases show up.
Previous administrations weren't easier to resist. Look up Joseph Nacchio's story. Short version: refuse to install https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAINWAY without a warrant, go to jail.
>Google knows users care about their privacy, and it made the promise in its terms precisely for that reason. People pay attention to this stuff, as the popularity of this story shows.
Do Google users care about their privacy? I'd expect not, given that Google is (and hasn't been shy about telling us about it) reading all their emails in order to provide more targeted advertisements.
And, as I mentioned, Google hasn't been shy about saying that's exactly what they do (prioritizing their ad revenue over their users' privacy), so I have to assume that Google users don't care about their privacy.
If they did care about their privacy, they'd self-host their email on hardware they physically control.
That's orthogonal to Google giving up data to the government, with or without notifying the user(s) in question, except that the above makes clear what we already know: Google doesn't respect the privacy of their users.
> Google knows users care about their privacy, and it made the promise in its terms precisely for that reason. People pay attention to this stuff, as the popularity of this story shows.
Does it know? And do users really care? Popularity on HN isn't popularity everywhere.
I'd wager most people don't care enough to move away from Gmail.
But even if they did, unfortunately this isn't the only variable a business is solving for. Corporations will generally just pick between the least unprofitable of two evils, not the lesser of.
A gag order would be from a judge. There would be severe penalties if a party breaks a gag order. A request not to notify is just a request; it has zero legal standing and there would be zero repercussions to ignoring it.
Administrative subpoenas are tenuous at best, but in the absence of an actual court order, words from ICE attorneys or officers saying "You are ordered not to disclose the details of this subpoena" have no actual weight in law.
This exactly. It's like everyone is assuming whatever ICE ordered Google to do was completely lawful. Even if this administration was a tightly run ship, when an agency gets a massive funding increase and daily quotas to hit like ICE did, all bets are off and you should never give them the benefit of the doubt. Obviously when the DHS secretary is calling American protesters domestic terrorists, cosplaying as a cop, and spending $200M+ on ads that feature herself, then you definitely give maximum scrutiny to everything that agency is doing/did.
> First, numerous other individuals have challenged recent administrative
subpoenas in court after receiving notice, and the Department of Homeland Security has withdrawn those subpoenas before reaching a court decision.
They don't want a ruling against them.
> [The subpoena would have been quashed because] there are facial deficiencies in the subpoena, including that the subpoena is missing a “Title of Proceeding.”
I’m really hoping this leads to criminal convictions once these clowns are voted out of office.
Congress needs to retroactively eliminate the presidential pardon, or (more realistically) states need to pass laws allowing them to prosecute members of the federal government (the federal government already did this to the states; the result would be symmetric, and likely survive legal challenges.)
> In September 2024, Amandla Thomas-Johnson was a Ph.D. candidate studying in the U.S. on a student visa when he briefly attended a pro-Palestinian protest. In April 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent Google an administrative subpoena requesting his data.
> This document explains two key ways that recipients can resist immigration
administrative subpoenas: First, any gag order in these subpoenas has no legal effect; you are free to publicize them and inform the target of the subpoena. Second, you do not have to comply with the subpoena at all, unless ICE goes to court—where you can raise a number of possible objections—and the court orders compliance.
It's relevant if you follow their legal advice and the government decides to pursue a case against you.
Even if you're in the right, defending yourself in a legal proceeding is expensive. You need a checkbook that can back up your confidence in what they're telling you.
And sure, Google has that money, but they're also fighting off half of congress trying to break up their business.
It's in their best interests to do whatever the DoJ asks of them.
Weird take. When it comes to trying to compel tech companies to not be evil, trying to use legal precedent for crimes you can charge them with is usually difficult and turns into a semantic debate. I think what's more important is that we recognize when people and companies abuse power to do evil things, regardless of what legal precedent or written corporate policy is relevant. These companies act exactly as evil as they can possibly get away with without pushing us to other products and services.
Frankly I trust the EFF more than anyone else in this situation/conversation. So I will assume there is a very clear basis.
I don’t know what you mean by “activism narrative” but the EFF has been fighting for your digital rights for many, many years. It reads like you consider their work disingenuous, but I can tell you from firsthand experience it is not. They deserve less skepticism than you’re giving them.
John Perry Barlow‘S EFF surely did, but are you sure you can trust Nicole Orze’s EFF to fight for your rights if one of your sympathies doesn’t align with current California’s sensibilities?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicoleozer
She is a lawyer from California and educated at Berkeley. What are the chances she thinks you are a Nazi for something like driving a Tesla? I bet that are much higher than zero. And since the EFF doesn’t defend “Nazis” you are out of luck.
You might think I am being prejudiced, but she already dropped EFF Twitter/X account, the one with more views per post than any other social media, claiming it didn’t had enough impact.
This story is the one that finally pushed me to leave google. I moved off my ~20 year old Google account and deleted everything off their services including almost a decade of Google photos. I cancelled my Google one subscription for extra space. I'm now self hosting what I can and paying proton mail for everything else. I refuse to allow a company that will hand over data at the request of an administrative warrant to hold my data.
This. The real solution here is to keep your data, encrypted, on your own devices. The idea that everything needs to be in the cloud is absurd and naturally leads to concentration of power.
That is A solution. To be "the real solution", it needs to be within the grasp of a regular person. Self hosting your entire digital life is absolutely asking too much of the vast majority of people
This is like saying the real solution to bad practices of food companies is to exclusively grow your own food, or the answer to anti-repair practices is to only build your own devices, vehicles, etc. Contractors cut corners? Don't try to regulate, just learn carpentry, plumbing, and HVAC plus codes!
You said it better than I could! As someone who does software for a living, do I want to come home and maintain a homelab that hosts photos, email, decentralized social, etc? Hell no!
Even if it's fun as a hobby, I don't want to be on call for my own basic online services.
This is what stops me from doing it. I used to host all my own stuff, with custom setups etc etc. But you end up having no free time, or reduces it at best, and it'll break down at the least convenient time.
The last part about it breaking can of course be true, although knock on wood has not happened to me in quite some time. But I don't find myself spending all that much time on my selfhosting setup day to day. Once a week I do a backup to external storage and upgrade software and that's it most of the time. Once everything's set up it is mostly quite hands off.
That said, I also don't think selfhosting is a realistic solution for most people.
Ideally, self hosting shouldn't be like building your own devices, vehicles, furniture and pipes. It should be like owning your own devices, vehicles, furniture and pipes. Go to a store exchange money and it runs itself with minimal maintenance. I'm not saying we are there, but it's clearly a state that could exist.
It still is risky, as who knows what tools NSA & cie really have. Even if it feels safe now, it can be stored by them, and what will (quantum?) computers be able to do in a decade? And how will the US gov look like at that time?
Forget that. If they are really so motivated, they can get a warrant to raid your home and confiscate your hard drives.
It's not an apples to apples comparison because an administrative warrant served to Google is much different from raiding your home but if they wanted to they could.
At this point, acting as if America (and many parts of the world for that matter) aren't living under an authoritarian government is futile. We still have freedoms but they're trying really hard to take them away from us.
Even if the encryption is sound, some day in the future laws can be written that compel a citizen to relinquish their passwords. In 2000, the UK passed a law called RIPA that can be used that way. They say it is only used in emergencies, but who is to say what constitutes an emergency.
Of course, technical solutions are only helpful for a small portion of the population, while the default is what happens to most people. Since this is Hacker News, for plausible deniability for forced password disclosure, you can use VeraCrypt hidden partitions.
Migrating is such a good feeling. You don't have to do it all at once, either: I migrated to fastmail over the course of several years. Each time google did something that got my blood pressure up I went into my password manager and migrated another account. In aggregate it was a hassle, but these days I almost miss the feeling of being able to do something in response to stinky actions from google.
I don't think fastmail is going to help you. They are subject to legal requirements too and probably American jurisdiction also despite what their particular position is. https://www.fastmail.com/blog/fastmails-servers-are-in-the-u.... People love to hate Google but they're just doing what any corporation subject to law is going to do.
> It has been pointed out to us that since we have our servers in the US, we are under US jurisdiction. We do not believe this to be the case. We do not have a legal presence in the US, no company incorporated in the US, no staff in the US, and no one in the US with login access to any servers located in the US. Even if a US court were to serve us with a court order, subpoena or other instruction to hand over user data, Australian communications and privacy law explicitly forbids us from doing so.
They can say what they like, and I am a customer, but in hand-wavey generalization terms one should be aware that Australian law enforcement has excessively broad access to telecommunications data on request and a long history of doing the bidding of the United States. Carriers are forced to retain your data for 2 years.
Under TIA Act provisions (such as s180), an authorised officer of a criminal law‑enforcement agency can authorise access to prospective telecommunications data [metadata only; not whole messages] if satisfied it is reasonably necessary for investigating an offence punishable by at least three years’ imprisonment. (In other words, ~any time they want)
Example: the data‑retention regime’s records were being accessed over 350,000 times a year by at least 87 different agencies, including non‑traditional bodies such as local councils and the RSPCA [pet cruelty nonprofit].
Given Australia's population is only 28M, that means roughly 1 in every 80 people gets communications metadata pulled by their own government annually.
Yep, I am a fastmail user, born and live in Oz. I just assumed that this data would be collected either on this side or via the US servers. Also, we are still a part of the 5 eyes alliance.
I wasn't looking to dodge US jurisdiction, I was looking to dodge "our craptacular moderation AI had a brainfart when reviewing your account and now you are locked out of your life."
I recently migrated off of my legacy "Google Apps for Your Domain" (now Workspace) account to a mix of self hosting and a regular old vanilla gmail account.
It was a real eye opener to experience how challenging it was to move my data from one Google account to another. Takeout is nice in theory, but there is no equivalent "Takein" service that accepts the data form import to another Google account in the format produced by Takeout! I naively assumed "Export Google calendar from here, import same files to there" but nope, that did not work at all. Maps data was even worse.
I've migrated everything from Google except for Google Voice. I have yet to find an alternative that can match the feature set and ease of use, regardless of the cost.
I have one page with my full history of text messages, full transcription of all voice messages, contacts information connected with every number, and I can search everything. I can configure which of my phones ring.
And, possibly most importantly to me right now, my current phone has only a data connection and I make and receive calls using the Voice app. I think SIP eats too much battery and data and doesn't work well for wifi<->lte switching, but it's been a long time since I used it much.
I'm not sure what the OP does, but at least for me I find myself chained to Google Voice for SMS 2FA use because it's basically the only phone number provider that cannot be exploited with a sim swap attack (same deal with Google Fi). And while I don't necessarily trust Google, their account security is leagues ahead of anyone else imo.
I previously looked at jmp.chat but they didn't really inspire confidence on the security front.
Anticipation of stories like this are why I didn't rely much on Google 20 years ago.
Never used Gmail other than as a throwaway account.
Went many years before I had a Youtube account. Finally made one to upload some videos. I am normally not logged in.
(OK, OK - I was more concerned with them suddenly charging for a "free" service, as well as selling data to commercial enterprises than with them giving to the government).
Does anyone else remember Epic 2014? It was a video made years ago that speculated about the future of the internet and media, with the end game being personalized news written by a computer. The timeline is off but the brand names are mostly the usual suspects. Rewatching it now gives me this uncanny feeling.
Edit: People are not understanding the humor in the question. I implied I predicted this reality 20 years ago, and he's asking for another prediction 20 years out.
If you haven’t already, have a look at Immich. It’s a fantastic self hosted replacement for Google photos. They have pretty much perfectly replicated the UI.
Have you tried Ente.io and have any thoughts on comparison? I only use ente and have been happy with it but hear many good things about immich. Does it support E2EE?
Immich is self hosted only so it doesn’t really need e2ee since you can just encrypt the disk of the server. It also runs a load of on server machine learning stuff for automatic people tagging and search.
Ente is selfhosted (also has a hosted version) but encourages family use so I think that's why they do E2EE. It also does all the ML on the client side for people tagging and search.
Mozilla backed it with a grant but that was a few years ago.
I've built a tool that scanned my inbox, identified tiers of emails per various criteria (essentially how personal, important, unique/irreplaceable etc the information contained therin is) and built semantic search over it.
My initial motivation for this was the "account 89% full" notice, so I wanted to delete all the old junk to free up some space. But after reviewing what's in there (and I've had that account since ~2004) the opposite sentiment arose: delete everything important, unique, personal. Leave them with the junkyard of various subscriptions, newsletters, just the digital flotsam that's both ambiguous and meaningless -- perfect for appearing both legitimate and irrelevant.
Protonmail is widely believed to be compromised and some evidence supporting this has come forth in two separate incidents in the last year.
Protonmail also has gone on record stating that they will comply with legal orders from the Swiss government to spy on and turn over the private data of their users.
Swiss law has recently gotten significantly more aggressive in recent years, especially wrt to prosecuting climate activists. Criminal damages for drawing with chalk on pavement, for example...
Look up the "Secret Files Scandal" of 1989 and decide for yourself how comfortable you are with Swiss law.
> Protonmail is widely believed to be compromised and some evidence supporting this has come forth in two separate incidents in the last year.
There has been no evidence of this, stop spreading misinformation. They're clear on what they can and can't hand over and what you can do to reduce the information that they can hand over like billing info. For some inexplicable reason people expect a corporation to disregard legal government warrants and subpoenas. Thinking any company would do this is next level delusion. Even if you self-hosted, you wouldn't be able to escape this because it would just end up with you in jail.
The only protection against that is end to end encryption. And to this day Proton has handed over zero data that falls under their E2EE umbrella.
At best, even if you assumed that they were collecting incoming/outgoing emails before encryption it would be nonsensical to think that this wasn't happening to other providers, it's just the nature of email. Nobody who cares about absolute privacy should be using it as a means of critical communication regardless.
The notion that Proton capitulates and somehow hands over your emails or other encrypted data is false and completely unsubstantiated. Unlike Google on the other hand, who will hand over your entire inbox unencrypted with zero issue to DHS/the FBI merely for writing a letter to an attorney:
Nice. I want to do the same too. What process/workflow did you use to move all the websites you had given your email addresses to, to move to your proton email? I am guessing it will take several years, but I would like to start the move of my gmail.
Use of Google seems to have become implied consent for them to use or give away any and all of your data, for whatever purpose, to any government, legal entity, or advertiser.
Have you run into any serious complications doing that? I'm a bit worried that I've used my google account for so long and for many things that I might accidentally lock myself out of something important without it.
I migrated away from my main email, it wasn't a Google mail but it was on the providers domain.
First I signed up with Proton Mail and added my own domain, they fit the bill for me, YMMV.
Then I did a search in my password manager and went through those accounts.
Then I just let the old account sit there for a year. Each time I got an email from something I cared about I'd log in and change mail.
It's been a year now, and I'm about to terminate the old account. All I get there now is occasional spam.
I really dreaded this, but all in all quite painless. And next time it should be easier since I now own the email domain.
edit: Forgot to mention I use Thunderbird, so old email I archived to local folders. That's part if why I ended with Proton, their IMAP bridge allows me to keep using Thunderbird.
I started doing this a while ago, but made the mistake of buying a .io domain. With the future of that domain uncertain, I’ve been rolling that back, not back to Gmail, but to the underlying Proton account for the moment.
I’ve also had some bad experiences with rates being raised on domains. That still ends up feeling like a risk to me, as the problem of domain squatters has not been solved, and the “solution” being employed seems to be continued rate hikes and exorbitant pricing for “premium” domains. It makes buying a domain for email not seem worth it… or at least not without its own long-term risks.
My current project has been trying to reduce my footprint, by deleting old and unused accounts, so any future migrations will be easier. I’ve found with many sites, this is easier said than done. For example, I deleted my Venmo account at least 2 months ago, yet I just got an email from them yesterday about reviewing privacy settings. Did they delete my account? They sure didn’t delete all my data if I continue to get emails. I’m betting they just set a ‘delete’ flag in the database. The lack of accountability and transparency on these things is really bad.
> My current project has been trying to reduce my footprint, by deleting old and unused accounts
I've actually split the accounts. I have a Gmail which I use for "throwaway" accounts, like shopping sites where I don't care if I lose access. But it's probably better to exercise some account hygiene and do some spring cleaning every now and then.
I exported all my email with Google Takeout, and Claude Code was able to write me a threaded email viewer local web app with basic search (chained ripgrep) in about 10 minutes, for any time I need to search archived emails.
One thing I've not seen mentioned when people talk about moving to an owned domain is what happens when you don't own it anymore?
There are a million services that assume that if you have access to the email content you are the account holder. Google claims they don't recycle email addresses, but if you lose your domain, the next owner has access to all emails from that point forward.
If something happens and you're unable to renew your domain, are your next of kin out of luck?
> If something happens and you're unable to renew your domain, are your next of kin out of luck?
I'd say "don't do that". I had a friend pass which I knew had a custom domain for email, I told the relatives they had to be on the ball regarding renewal.
At least my registrar will keep sending invoices for a few months without letting go cough cough, so should be enough time to get the certificate of probate. With that the heirs should be able to get the invoice so they can pay.
Nothing. To the contrary things work BETTER outside the google eco system. The way to do it is incrementally. You don't just yolo delete you Gmail day 1. I still have mine, it's just getting almost no traffic today. Start by moving to an alternative email provider. I use proton. Buy a domain so that you can move providers easily in the future and use catch all email. Do a Google takeout and store the backup somewhere safe (I just use two hard drives sitting and home, replicated). Move the thing that you need day to day somewhere else. You can pay for someone to host it for you or self host. I'm self hosting immich for my Google photos replacement. I'm using proton calendar and email for Gmail service replacements. I was already using signal for most communications, but do that. I moved to graphene to get off of android and there are some sharp edges there if you want off Google play. I had to give up Android auto and gps tends to work worse (graphene does support android auto but I didnt like the tradeoffs). Nothing dealbreaking but can be annoying.
For general security, I also use a yubikey for all services that support it, froze credit with all agencies, and added phone support passwords to all my financial institutions.
> I just use two hard drives sitting and home, replicated
The failure modes of that are fire/natural disaster, and thieves. Do that, but also have a geographically redundant backup scheme. Either encrypted eg Backblaze or a relatives house in another state.
Damn that’s wild to me, because Gmail absolutely refuses to send things to spam despite me incessantly marking them as spam.
I honestly assumed that everyone had a rotten time with Gmail spam filtering but I guess it’s just a me problem. I suppose that means I’m up for an interesting time dealing with it as I move to a custom domain somewhere else.
Anyone have any recommendations for providers that have exceptionally good spam filtering? Hell I’d even just settle for ones that honor “mark as spam,” because Gmail absolutely does not.
Interesting, I have used Fastmail for probably a decade plus at this point, and whether it's my obsessive rating of false negatives and positives, it is amazingly rare that I get spam slip into my inbox (maybe one message a week from ~100/day received, while my spam folder gets about 10/day).
I, too, mark all positives and negatives obsessively, but still get the same obvious spam in my inbox too often for my liking. Still, though, I love Fastmail.
I've run into one government website that required email addresses to come from gmail.com, outlook.com, or another common domain, and several websites that won't let you change your email address once registered. It also makes it really confusing if someone needs to share Google Docs with you. So I've moved as much as I can off of Google, but some stuff will linger forever.
Personally, I deleted everything I could but kept the Gmail account for a couple of years with a forward to my new account, and after that, I also deleted it. Google Takeout is a very useful way to quickly create a backup of everything Google.
Note that there was a major press cycle about this in October / November of last year - a quick Google showed stories in the Guardian, The Intercept, and the Cornell Sun, as well as commentary on Reddit. Not inconceivable that they found about it last October and had six months to leave and de-Googlify.
> Note that there was a major press cycle about this in October / November of last year
Fair point. However...the parent's comment is also fair because the article does a poor job of raising this material fact. You have to click through a sub-article.
It's almost like this article should be tagged (2025) because it's basically a replay of the author's account from 2025.[0]
As other comments say, it was a major story months ago. I started moving off around December. It's a long process to switch over all email accounts. I only recently got self hosted kubernetes set up for immich as a Google photos replacement and some other hosting needs but for the most part I am off google. I get probably 1-2 emails a week still going to Gmail but when I do I just switch those accounts to my new email. It will be a while before the old Gmail is deleted entirely unfortunately.
I didn't mention it in op but I also moved to graphene os which tbh feels much better than android has recently.
Setting aside the fact that this is a new account and it's their only post, what about the timeline is difficult to understand?
The request came in April 2025, and the user was notified the following month. That's next to a year for them to hear about it internally and then quit and setup self-hosting prior to today.
If they were motivated enough by this story to delete 20 years worth of history maybe they were motivated enough to create an account and talk about it?
I don't care. The UX means I can't give it any credibility.
For all I know this could be somebody's OpenClaw spouting bullshit. The default credibility of all throwaways is zero and that was even true before 2023.
If you let it influence your opinion in any way you're a fool.
From busterarm's profile: "Most people are stupid and/or on drugs."
The account is from 2013 but given that profile, I can't give it any credibility. After all, it could be somebody's OpenClaw having been granted control of the account.
> After all, it could be somebody's OpenClaw having been granted control of the account.
Luckily for HN, I actually have a post history. You can use my post history, textual analysis and statistics to make an informed decision about whether I'm a bot or not. Whether I'm being consistent or spouting any random bs.
The account I was responding to doesn't have anything.
> The account is from 2013 but given that profile, I can't give it any credibility.
What's in my profile is a statistical fact. It's there as a reminder, to me, not to expect everyone to see the world the same way that I do. To be comfortable with strong disagreement.
Just a hair shy of half the population is below average intelligence. Roughly 1 in 4 people has a cognitive impairment. This is of any age but trends upwards with age, reaching 2 in 3 by age 70. 1 in 4 Americans take psychiatric medication. 1 in 4 participates in illegal drug use. We haven't even touched on alcohol abuse.
My profile statement is just objective reality, whether you're comfortable with being stated openly or not.
One of the best things about hn is that accounts are cheap and disposable. For me, most threads get their own account. I don't like people tracking my full comment history across the internet with it all tied to one account, even when it's just one I use to comment on harmless tech stories
This is a violation of the guidelines: "Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to."
`Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to.`
This just proves my point to discount what you say. You're basically admitting to being a pest.
Oh ok, I'm fine with that, but that newbie account is following the rules and being respectful. Same cannot even be said about some accounts with 9999 points.
More than that but they back up the things they say with something more than vapor.
You don't have to dox yourself, but people have to be able to at least call you out on consistency. There needs to be some indication that you're not _just_ a sockpuppet.
Otherwise I don't have any justification to engage with your expressions seriously.
Depends on how legitimate you consider an administrative warrant and how willingly you think complying with one is.
On a more practical level, forcing them to go to court might not be much better. If this went to a FISA court, those are essentially rubber stamps and give nearly 100% approval.
It was 13 years ago that Snowden told us they were using FAA702 as the #1 source of sigint to warrantlessly obtain any data they want from major service providers.
Did you not understand it at the time? Did you not see the news stories? This isn't rhetoric, I'm genuinely curious. It's been public knowledge for a long long time that Google hands data over to the USG without a warrant (likely without even Google eyes on the request, via automated means).
What changed that this story was the one that made you react?
That statement is true at face value. But if you look at how Eric Schmidt travels with government representatives, how rich and powerful BigTech is, and how much they individually and collectively spend on lobbying, then they could be a massive obstacle if they only cared.
It's good that people migrate, just remember that you haven't deleted anything. They have all of that data and so do various US government agencies and, who knows, maybe other third parties.
Also remember, that when you exchange email with people who use GMail, then they've got you again.
it was mainly meta-data they acquired, which paints a fairly complete picture of what you do on the internet anyway. an isp can hand it over also but google likely just has more of it to give.
weird everyone's focusing on privacy and google.... Not the actual insanity of a government targeting people who are legally allowed to be in the US.
You can try to find a way to keep things private, and many of the people on HN likely have the capability to do so. But hiding from your government because they are weaponizing your information against you seems to be the wrong approach. I just don't understand the American people just rolling over and letting their country / rights / freedoms just be obliterated.
Was it a right he had in the first place? Many countries make it illegal for foreigners to undertake political activities as a condition of their visa, for good reason.
the problem is, technically yes, they have a right, but their visa can be arbitrarily cancelled for very unspecified reasons, like the government not liking what you are doing and calling a potential security risk. This targeting of people, because they can, amazes me that Americans are so accepting of it. To me this says they'd do this to their citizens if they could. You already have the attack on birth right citizenship to try and take away protections so they can target more people. This targeting on political grounds is nuts. It's so anti American but somehow so many are convinced that it's not a bad thing.
IDK, I think "foreigners shouldn't be coming over here as guests and then trying to influence our politics" is a reasonable stance, and doesn't say anything about targeting citizens.
If that were a uniform stance, maybe, but when it's used for partisan reasons by the party in power it's a different story. That's also not the law, the law is that anyone in the country has the right to free speech. If rights only apply to citizens it is a mockery of the freedoms this country is built on.
you expect them to recall some analogous example of politic deportations years ago?
and anyway, almost certainly the answer is yes; it is not hard to believe that a person's stance is that systematically deporting people for disagreeing with the government is wrong. "Trump bad" is very often on the basis of principles which trump is violating, not just because it's Trump. Surely you realize that people are mad at him a lot because of the thing he does?
When did Obama create a masked gestapo that kills innocent civilians? Oh right. Never. Both siding with trump makes you look like a bot troll or worse.
I'd say the difference with the deportations under Obama (aside from deporting more people while spending less money doing it) is that he followed the law when doing so
weird, don't you think that stance is just fear of free speech? I see it as completely unreasonable. America (of the past now?) has a history of inviting all kinds of people to discuss politics, philosophy, religion from all over the world.... but now you are scared of what people have to say? Also if you don't recognize that it is political targeting (not of citizens, but anyone by any means the government has its disposal), then that's a real problem. We can see the targeting of legitimate visitors, attacks on birth right citizenship, attempts to reconstruct electoral borders. Mass firing from the government institutions of people with differing opinions. Like I said, it's weird americans are so accepting.... "seems reasonable".
Yes, the First Amendment applies to all people within the territory of the United States equally. US law does not limit the political speech of non-citizens present on visas.
Do you feel that way about the second amendment too? Just curious if we’re picking and choosing what visitors can legally do. What if SCOTUS said that people means citizens and not visitors for guns, don’t you think that would apply to visa, immigrants, or visitors as well?
I think in the second amendment "the people" are quite clearly the citizens so they can secure their own "free" state. Where the first amendment is about limiting what the government can do so they can't make laws against free speech.
Was it a right that should be had, should be the question. I don't think you are refuting the parent claim. Americans are rolling over and justifying terrifying out reach from not-very-organized authorities (ICE). The American set of freedom, liberties and rights are more fragile than Trump's ego.
I find it similarly weird that a post threatening genocide remains up, whilst a post depicting Trump as Dr. Jesus was so offensive it had to be taken down and 'explained away' as something other than what it was.
Only on the darkest timeline is a picture more offensive than the threat of genocide.
Gives a good insight into the psyche of power in the US (and probably the psyche of power in general).
I still don't understand. Who gave ICE such power, and who is ordering them to do all this? To me, ICE's actions are similar to those of a private army.
The people. We voted for the people who gave the power, and we re-elected them. It’s really that simple. Is it “too late” now? maybe, but we had ~25 years since this all started post 911 to react, and chose not to.
> We voted for the people who gave the power, and we re-elected them.
That would be true if We The People were reliably informed when we showed up to cast our votes. However, in recent years, we have become detached from reality. "News media" companies pivoted away from keeping their audiences informed about things that mattered and instead focused on capturing audiences and keeping those audiences maximally engaged so that they could be sold to advertisers and otherwise exploited.
Now when people show up to the polls, they think they're voting to keep themselves safe from violent crimnals running rampant; they think they are voting to keep out the flood of strange outsiders coming to take their jobs and eat their family pets. But in reality they're voting for -- and getting -- something quite different.
> That would be true if We The People were reliably informed when we showed up to cast our votes.
Weren't the democrats criticised for campaigning on the message that voting for Trump was a significant risk to due process and democracy? I feel like every voter was aware of what happened on Jan 6th and still voted for him with some level of knowledge about that.
> I feel like every voter was aware of what happened on Jan 6th and still voted for him with some level of knowledge about that.
What a particular voter was “aware of” regarding Jan 6th and the events that caused it very much depended on where that person got their news. For example, one prominent network was found in court depositions to have knowingly reported complete BS about what Jan 6 was all about: “During pre-trial discovery, Fox News' internal communications were released, indicating that prominent hosts and top executives were aware the network was reporting false statements but continued doing so to retain viewers for financial reasons.”
That his vice president confirmed the result still should tell these people everything they needed to know. That at the very least the story peddled by sources like Fox was dubious and they should seek to corroborate that source with others. NPR is a reasonable source that all Americans know about, so I don't think its a reasonable excuse.
Do you believe that there is a large share of people who get their news from Fox News and also trust NPR? And vice versa?
More than ever before, people now live in news silos where they get only the news that engages their prior beliefs. And people who are in the Fox News silo have been told, repeatedly, that NPR is fake news from “far-left lunatic” Democrats. Do you remember all the air time Fox News gave to people arguing for the defunding of NPR? How much do you think a Fox News viewer is likely to trust NPR?
Think about it. If you are like the vast majority of people, almost everything you know about what is happening in the world, especially about the highest levels of government, is something you have been told from a source you trust. You are not a part of government policy decisions. You do not speak to people who are primary sources in those decisions. You know only what has been reported to you by third parties. Now imagine that you are getting those reports only from third parties that tell you something that is not true. How would you know that you are being misled?
I agree. People had already experienced one round of Trump before, and had every opportunity to see what he was planning for this term. There is no reasonable conclusion other than that they indeed wanted exactly what we got.
The US has very low voter turnout. Winning is mainly getting your voters to turn up, but usually apathy wins. Of course the media plays a huge part in this, but voter suppression is the US is fine art.
Personally I feel that non voters effectively voted for Trump, and they should own that as much as die hard MAGA types.
Don't disagree with you in principle but 2024 saw a very, very, very large turnout for US standards - the biggest one... Kamala's 75m+ votes basically are good enough (by very wide margin) to win any previous election (slimmer margin in 2020 than others but you get my point...)
thanks for the correction, I keep forgetting just how awful 2016-2020 years were that 81 million people came out to vote for a senile grandpa (exactly the point I was making, you need strong against case much more than anything else)
> 81 million people came out to vote for a senile grandpa
Yeah, people were getting fed up with the chaos. Biden owes his presidency to Donald Trump, for sure. He tried several times in years prior and could not win on the merits.
Weird, and why didn’t those people show up to vote for Kamala? How did Biden get more votes than Obama, but Trump won the popular vote four years later?
> why didn’t those people show up to vote for Kamala?
Enthusiasm gap. And not during COVID. 2020 was an interesting time as you may recall.
> How did Biden get more votes than Obama, but Trump won the popular vote four years later?
You will be less likely to fall prey to grifters if you look past absolute numbers and realize that the voting age population tends to increase about 10 million every four years. And with turnout generally abysmal, under 60% most times, there is a lot of room for variation.
His whole schtick seems to be getting voters to show up at the polls who otherwise don't bother to put forth the effort. I've heard it said that this was also Mamdani's trick in NYC (heck, maybe that explains why Trump is so smitten with Mamdani).
So GOP politicians do significantly better any time Trump is sharing the ballot with them. I won't be surprised if the 2026 midterms go very poorly for the GOP. And given that Trump won't ever be on a ballot again, I won't be surprised if his control over congressional GOP members starts to noticeably erode even before the midterms. They definitely know how the game works, and they are going to start looking for ways to keep their jobs.
Running against a President (especially one that is not on the ballot) is much easier than people think, all you have to do is pitch that while I may be terrible, your alternative is much, much, much worse which is exactly what the Trump campaign was all about.
It worked because a lot of people bought that story (and many continue to buy it evidenced by DJT's approval ratings among the GOP voters). The whole campaign basically had no platform other than your cookie-cutter "migrant crime", "economy bad" ...
It worked because as bad as the GOP platform was, the dems' strategy was just awful, and their tactical decision making was abysmal.
* focus on abortion, which is an important issue ... mostly to evangelicals
* focus on threats to democracy, which sounded shrill and got blown off
* no real message on the economy, which was widely perceived as floundering under Biden, and was very important to a lot of swing voters
On top of that, Trump's approval ratings on the economy were pretty good when he left office. People remembered that and thought he'd do better.
Then of course there's the whole "hey, let's not tell the senile old man that he basically promised to be a one-hit-wonder, and wait until the last moment to switch to his running mate instead".
In a way, it's impressive that the dems didn't lose by larger margins. Trump wasn't that popular, the dems were just that incompetent. I hope they pull their head out of their ass for 2028. But I'm not counting on it.
I don't disagree but I don't believe there was any way Democrats would have kept power in 2024. They were unable to sell any positive news about the economy (DJT does not seem to have learned this lesson and is doing same stupid thing as Dems did in 2024). The no real message on the economy was real but economy was doing great in post-COVID world especially compared to the rest of the world and there wasn't a reputable financial outlet that did not agree with this (Economist, FT, WSJ, Bloomberg...).
While I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said I do not believe there was a way for Democrats to beat DJT. His machine was just too good and no matter the candidate and no matter the message I don't believe it would have mattered.
There's no mechanism for pressing politicians except threatening not to vote for them again, and politicians are exceptionally cowardly and avoid picking up hot potatoes that could incur criticism. I'm in a district with one of the safest seats in the country, and getting my representative to state a position on many issues is like getting blood out of a stone.
There's no formal mechanism of accountability for members of Congress. Representatives hold a few town halls a year where they might be subject to social shaming by their constituents, but there's no legal obligation to do so and even when they're publicly embarrassed they often dismiss public opposition as 'a few paid agitators' or the like.
This is doubly and triply true for complex policy issues which require a lot of explaining, making it virtually impossible to build grassroots support. So you just end up with a nonprofit industrial complex that needs to constantly raise funds for lobbying and publishes slates of endorsements at election time that relatively few people have the time or inclination to read.
I wonder how the dynamic between members of Congress and their constituents would change if we had a larger Congress. Instead of the ~786k people per representative, having ~107k like the UK. Would it be feasible? Probably not. But Congress is way too small and it results in some poor incentives.
It also doesn't help that in situations like this, both major parties are moving in lock step. You cannot vote against something that both party stand for.
Terrance McKenna once said that the worst president was the one in power, regardless of when it is. It is because for the most part, they just keep building on the existing frame work, standing on the shoulders of those before them.
Now one could argue that Trump is doing the opposite this term, but depending on were you stand, this might not have been a great out come.
The answer is to vote in the primaries. That's how you unseat a 'safe' seat. I'm not going to say its a good answer, because the primary system and the two party system in general are terrible, but its the best choice you have besides running yourself.
Nobody ever voted for mass surveillance. There's no party you can vote for in the US that doesn't advocate for total mass surveillance by the federal government. Don't pretend this is a red/blue thing. The military-industrial complex is fully integrated with both parties in the US.
Maybe if the US had a sane voting system, but they don't. I'm of the opinion that their flawed voting system is a huge factor in why the US government is the way it is.
While this is true, very often that is the impact of a third party vote in a federal election. See the election of one George W. Bush and the impact of Mr. Nader.
Unfortunately that is how it works. A vote for the green party is simply a vote not cast for D and favors R; and a vote for a libertarian is a vote not for R, so it benefits D.
A solution is Ranked Choice Voting where you can say, "Green, and if they don't win, D (or whatever)."
Fwiw, I vote my conscience, not to win. Not the best for my political positions maybe, but I hope to send a signal to others that maybe something other than R/D is one day possible. But, yeah, RCV would help with that conundrum.
Trump recently posted a diatribe about ranked choice voting in Alaska (calling it "disastrous, and very fraudulent").
Do you know why the modern GOP hates ranked choice voting? Because they rely upon getting clown votes wasted on the Tulsi Gabbard, Jill Stein's and Kanye West's of the world as a way to get elected. They just need to entice just enough fool-vote drawers, knowing the cult will not sway an iota.
Congress gave them the power. They are federal law enforcement who actions were mainly restrained by desire of their leadership (US President) to keep their actions curtailed.
The answer to this is that Google gave ICE this power by complying instead of fighting the subpoena or notifying the subject of the subpoena, both of which they can do according to the ACLU [1].
Willing, optional compliance with the administration is the core problem here.
a) The kids in cages garnered significant press, public sympathy, and protest
b) I also lived in Austin during that time, and the scale and militarization of current ICE action is on another level to what it was in the early 10's
idk, i live in oakcliff in Dallas. Per google 20% of people in the area are undocumented. Elementary schools are around 50% undocumented and the area high schools around 30% if not higher. My son is in the second most selective magnet HS in DISD and half of his friend group is undocumented.
I haven't seen a single ICE raid in the 10 years i've lived in the area. I did see DHS do a raid on a house once but i've yet to even see ICE. I'm not saying they're not around but they certainly don't make their presence known in an area overflowing with undocumented immigrants. I keep waiting for the jack boots and armored vehicles to roll through and wholesale round everyone up like i read about but it seems business as usual all day every day in Oakcliff.
edit: Honestly, i think no one really cares about oakcliff anymore. Dallas PD does nothing about the constant gunfire at night or street racing. So it makes sense ICE is never alerted, i think the people who would alert ICE just don't bother. I'm not sure if that's good or bad.
c) despite appearances and the current state of fear, Trump's second-term ICE has deported merely a fraction (0.6m) achieved under Obama's ICE (3m+), so if it's on a different level, it's clearly a lower one. Movement vs action, perhaps.
Is this the same stat where turning a person away at the border counted as a deportation during the Obama years? I’ve found the changing methodology to make comparisons troublesome
I think what's weird is comparing them based on the zeitgeist, photos, video, and sensationalism instead of whatever numbers are at hand. The fear and the danger are rarely the same.
Whether you think we should look at per-year numbers or the overall numbers, I'd say that most people count total progress of a thing moreso than the velocity, or the prices of things instead of the spot inflation rate.
I always feel like I'm taking crazy pills when people say no one complained under Obama since I distinctly remember people complaining at the time (maybe it just didn't make it to less left-wing circles?). It's also pretty trivial to find contemporaneous ACLU articles on it with specific complaints.
The liberal media did an absolutely bang-up job covering up Obama's tyranny, and the conservative media wasn't about to start punishing Obama for threatening them with a good time. So nobody in the media talked about it, even though left-wing activists were shouting from the rooftops about the Deporter-in-Chief.
Obama might have even campaigned on some of these issues, but DNC insiders are experts at making big promises up front and walking them back[0]. Hell, I'm pretty sure Obama deported more people more often than Trump did, at least in his first term. And when people were suing ICE over COVID-era border closures, Biden staffers were privately wishing the activists on their side would lose.
Keep in mind, open borders is a libertarian policy, not a left-wing one. American lefties tend to also skew libertarian, but the "liberals" running the DNC are basically just Republicans with a liberal accent. The uniparty is real.
[0] I'm already seeing this with Mamdani and Queenslink. He is, at the very least, letting the shitty Queensway "let's cover this old railway up with politically untouchable greenspace to make the car-owning NIMBYs happy by stopping Queenslink" plan continue forward.
So firstly: no significant group in the US is advocating for "open borders", that term is just a strawman as used in modern politics.
Secondly: "open borders is a libertarian policy, not a left-wing one" doesn't really make sense. Saying a particular policy is inherently part of only a single ideology just isn't how ideologies work. Also, if you're looking for anti-statists who view people from all countries as equal and are for people being able to choose which government to be under then the ideology that best fits that is "anarchism". If you're using a definition where "anarchism" and "libertarianism" are essentially the same then you're using a definition where "libertarian" isn't particularly right wing (which makes contrasting it to "left wing" not make sense).
If someone does something to nth degree, it's bad. If someone does something to (n*10)th degree, are the sheeple really at fault for reacting? Do you not behave the same way in your own life?
Probably Stephen Miller. Correct, he doesn't have the authority, correct, this is outside the scope of the org. Neither the republican controlled congress nor the republican controlled SCOTUS are interested in exercising their checks and balances though.
Which immigration laws are they enforcing in this case? And are you also going to suggest that the Constitution does not protect foreign nationals inside the US?
The Constitution uses the following in regard to protest in the first amendment
Congress shall make no law ... abridging ... the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
It uses this same "right of the people" in the second amendment
... the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
In both cases, the right is restricted to "the people." Note in the first amendment, only the final bit about protests is restricted to "the people" the rest is generally protected whether it is "the people" or not.
Note in Heller and elsewhere it was determined "the people" are those who belong to the political class (which is a bit vague, refer to next sentence, but not same as voting class). Generally this is not those on non-immigrant visas or illegal aliens (though circuits are split on this). If you don't have the right to bear arms, clearly you are not "the people" since people by definition have the right to bear arms, which means you wouldn't have the right of "the people" to protest either, no? So it appears since they are not people, they don't have the right to assemble in protest, though they may have other first amendment rights since it's protest specifically that was narrowed to "the people" rather than many of the other parts of the first amendment which are worded without that narrowing.
For instance, speech without assembly isn't narrowed to just "the people." Perhaps this was done intentionally since allowing non-people to stage protests was seen as less desirable than merely allowing them to otherwise speak freely.
Note: Personally I do think non-immigrants are people, but trying to apply the same "people" two different ways with the exact same wording makes no sense. If they can't bear arms they necessarily are not "the people" and thus are not afforded the right to "assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
USA was founded well after the Pilgrims. I don't think anyone in 1776, or even in the Pilgrim days, was thinking a foreigner should have the right to vote for instance.
Most people in the US did not choose to become citizens until the mid 19th century. The process was much easier than naturalization today, though, presuming you were white and in some cases might be required to own property.
US also didn't have Jus soli citizenship until the whole civil war and slavery debacle. You had to go into a local court and show you lived in the US for a couple years, who would swear you in as a citizen. But most people didn't care about voting or holding office enough to bother.
> US also didn't have Jus soli citizenship until the whole civil war and slavery debacle.
Actually, my understanding is that the US did largely follow jus soli. What it wasn't was unconditional jus soli, but the principle was birth in the bounds of the US conferred citizenship except if positive law existed not conferring citizenship.
What are you saying, the US Constitution is bogus because people were racist in 1776? It's undergone amendments and clarifications by the Judicial branch. It's been consistently obvious that foreigners don't have the same rights as citizens here, and tourism or immigration law wouldn't really work otherwise.
You didn't answer my question, but here's what I'm saying:
> If you have to work your way round to "they are not people" for the law to be consistent, consider that it might be a bad law.
I disagree that the law (which has been changed, amended and clarified) has been 'consistently obvious', and I still maintain that the conclusion of 'immigrants aren't people' invalidates the law.
"Peaceably" is important. If you think the pro-Palestinian protests on campus are peaceful, try wearing a yarmulke and walking anywhere near them. Or anywhere on many campuses, on any day, protest on-going or not.
You could make this argument, but the Supreme Court does not seem to agree, they have consistently said that "the people" is basically everyone here. Even those unlawfully here.
That said, the second amendment does have some interpretation that allows for restrictions on temporary visa holders like the student that is the topic of this discussion. But it also has rulings that support it applying to illegal immigrants.
> they have consistently said that "the people" is basically everyone here.
This is absolutely false. DC v Heller cites that "the people" refers to members of the "political community."[] Not "basically everyone here." The interpretation of what "political community" means has been split in the circuits. One court in Illinois found it might include illegal immigrants (who have settled as immigrants) or non-immigrant visa holders that were illegally settling here. This is anomalous. Generally they've found the political community to be something approximating those with immigrant type visas, permanent residency, or citizenship -- barring some exceptions from those like felons.
Even if you dig up the most generous case in illinois (I've forgotten the name) which claims some illegal immigrants are "the people", which it has been awhile since I read it -- even they narrow the political community refered to by "the people" to people actually settling as part of the community and not just basically anyone inside the US in a way that would suggest it applies to tourists or student visa holders using their visa in the legal manner.
What is more, in all six other provisions of the Constitution that mention “the people,” the term unambiguously refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset. As we said in United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U. S. 259, 265 (1990):
> And are you also going to suggest that the Constitution does not protect foreign nationals inside the US?
I thought it was settled constitutional law that it doesn't? Moreover, during the war on terror, it was established that the president can freely order the murder of non Americans outside the US.
The courts, all the way to the top, have consistently interpreted the Constitution as a document that circumscribes the behavior of the government, not as a document that grants privileges to "the people" or a subset of that (e.g. citizens only).
Apparently they have the power to murder and kidnap American citizens too, or violate their rights if they happen to freely speak or assemble in ways they don't like.
You're making a mistaken thinking power is given. Quite often in the US government organizations 'just do', and it's the power of the executive, judicial, or legislative to stop them.
Unfortunately Trump is doing whatever he wants at this point and ignoring anyone that says otherwise.
> While ICE “requested” that Google not notify Thomas Johnson, the request was not enforceable or mandated by a court
Sounds like Google stopped caring.
But... Why on earth do the people filing an administrative subpoena not have to notify the interested parties too? Why is it Google's responsibility? If they didn't tell you, would you ever find out?
> But... Why on earth do the people filing an administrative subpoena not have to notify the interested parties too?
Generally they do - with some notable exceptions being if you're a non-citizen and you're no longer in the US, and it's either a criminal investigation or related to intelligence or national security.
> In September 2024, Amandla Thomas-Johnson was a Ph.D. candidate studying in the U.S. on a student visa when he briefly attended a pro-Palestinian protest.
> Weeks later, in Geneva, Switzerland
It is obviously not criminal, but I guess that you don't need much to qualify something as related to intelligence and national security, attending a pro-Palestinian protest may be enough.
Google's lawyer responded by claiming they do follow that policy normally except when their lawyers nearly miss the "artificial deadline set by the government" and sometimes send it out same day.
I'm curious if this was a common issue or Google's legal team was flooded with subpoenas during the first months of the administration during their deportation surge (they did around 100k removals around that time). Homeland sent the request to Google a month prior to when they released the data and notified him, so they had time to notify, but it clearly isn't an automated thing.
How was Amandla even identified? Stingray at the protest? Then how was the phone number linked to Google? Facial recognition at the protest? I guess his details are on file under terms of the visa? So then the government simply asks Google for all details on the individual by name? Either is pretty disturbing.
What about the find-my-phone BLE database, for which I just learned modern phones broadcast even when off? Is that controlled by the OS (Google, Apple) and not the carrier?
For supported devices, which include Pixel 8, Pixel 9, and Pixel 10 series, the Find Hub network can locate your phone for several hours even if the battery runs out or the device is powered off.
"""
To be honest, it's that plus the fact that this article omits things we already know. It wasn't just that he "attended a pro-Palestine protest at Cornell University," they shut down a jobs fair. I went to a liberal college too, I know that a lot of these "peaceful" protests are actually quite forceful and infringe on others' rights more than anyone ever reports.
My bias is in the other direction if anything. The author was protesting the US involvement with Israel, and even if he did something wrong, I believe he was targeted for this reason only. If you ask me, Israel has way too much control over US politics and other institutions. AIPAC and ADL ought to be classified as foreign entities because they de facto represent Israel's govt here, and there are some people in those orgs I consider outright traitors to the USA because they're making us pay taxes to a small country overseas. We need like a Tea Party 3.0 (unfortunately 2.0 already happened).
> because they're making us pay taxes to a small country overseas.
I read recently that 80% of the money the US commits to Israel has to be spent in the United States. Similar to the US funding Ukraine it is largely just buying from domestic US manufacturers or old stockpiles. It's a sort of stimulus program that funds the US military industrial complex and prop up allies. There was law passed that 100% of foreign military financing has to be spent in the US in 2028.
Israel gets $3b/yr, Egypt $1.3B/yr, Jordan $1.4B/yr, Taiwan etc. Lebanon recently started getting financing. Pakistan used to be a big beneficiary.
Think of it as us giving them weapons for free, either way we're paying for it so their taxes don't have to. Egypt and Jordan's aid are for Israel's protection too. The only thing that has ever rivaled this was Ukraine aid, which wasn't bipartisan as we've seen.
Guy seems to have earned himself a ban from entering Cornell’s premises[1]. They seem to be letting him finish [2], which tracks—they’re pretty chill IME. Something might’ve went down…
This disruption, according to a University statement, involved shoving police officers, making guests of the University feel threatened and denying students the opportunity to experience the career fair.
Sun reporters on the scene did not observe any physical violence towards law enforcement but did note distress among recruiters, students and administration involved in the career fair.[1]
The laws closed that loophole a long time ago. You have to either present a photo ID to buy in a brick and mortar store or sign for the package when delivering to an address.
> BTW, the J6 protesters were all tracked and identified by their cell phone data.
Many of the insurrectionists were also caught on camera in congress after they broke down the doors and stormed the building. Some even took selfies in the offices of various senators and house reps.
It's all part of this administration's strategy to set the stage for next time. By pardoning violent criminals, they make it clear that they endorse political violence. Now, when he incites a mob to interrupt the elections next time he loses - in 2026 or 2028 - everyone in the next mob will know that their actions will be pardoned.
We keep failing to learn over and over that "Cloud is just someone else's computer." If you wouldn't send a particular bit of data to some random person's computer, then don't send it to a cloud service, either. This includes Gmail, iCloud, AWS, Facebook, WhatsApp, iMessage, everything.
But we don't want totalitarianism. It is like assuming every person on a train is an undercover spy, so you don't say anything bad about the government ever.
So much of this was backed up by Snowden, not just in the machinations of each of the CODENAMEX operations but also in the attitude that the TLAs felt entitled to implement them in the first place.
There’s been some pushback since then, but nothing to give any confidence that CODENAMEY, CODENAMEZ, and many others have have sprung up.
This is (mostly, but not entirely) true - but it's also a completely useless statement. It doesn't help anyone change their behavior with regards to seeking privacy day to day, and it doesn't help anyone know what to do to change the state of affairs. It's smug and defeatist, and seems to imply that there's nothing that can be done to change it.
There are many things everyday people can do to insulate themselves from these choices. Encrypted DNS, VPNs, avoiding cloud services, educating friends on why Gmail is really Fedmail, etc. It's not so over-and-done with as you seem to make it out to be.
Meanwhile it took them 4+ years to find the barely functional autistic pipe bomber in his parents basement. And IIRC, a large part of the FBI at one point assigned to it.
It was omitted because it is irrelevant. It doesn't matter which ally the US sells weapons to. If the Gazans attacked Luxembourg, Luxembourgers have the right to defend themselves (and win) too.
Yes. If you're a guest in a country and don't follow the law you should be deported. You don't need waste money putting them on trial (except for murder/rape/etc), just deport.
> In September 2024, Amandla Thomas-Johnson was a Ph.D. candidate studying in the U.S. on a student visa when he briefly attended a pro-Palestinian protest.
Why would you go to a country for study purposes - where you explicitly tell the visa officers you're on US soil ONLY for study purposes - which is what the student visa explicitly grants you to do and then participate in a protest against the very country that granted you the study visa and then get mad that you are under investigation and would have been kicked out for violating the said visa? That's so bizarre.
> where you explicitly tell the visa officers you're on US soil ONLY for study purposes
What in the world does “ONLY for study purposes” mean? 24 hours a day, every day of the week?
> participate in a protest against the very country that granted you the study visa and then get mad that you are under investigation and would have been kicked out for violating the said visa? That's so bizarre.
First, he briefly attended the protest. Not the same as participating. I doubt the data from Google indicated he was holding a sign, shouting slogans, or speaking on stage. And it doesn’t sound like there was any marching or sit-in involved. (And if so, for 5 minutes?)
Second, why are you willfully equating a pro-Palestinian protest with being an anti-US protesT? Was the purpose of the protest to raise charitable funds, encourage more open discussion about the war on campus, provide moral support to Palestinian classmates, and/or any of a myriad of other purposes?
Finally, even if the purpose of the protest was politically motivated —- to push US policy on Israel and Palestine to change, how is that bizarre? In your mind is any protest that seeks to change a government’s policy at that moment an assault on that government, or on that nation? Someone who protests the death penalty, protests for stronger/weaker abortion laws, stronger/weaker gun laws, etc?
This is the USA we’re talking about. Despite all our faults (and they are legion), it is the bedrock of our founding and our core principles that democracy is a participatory process. Not just on Election Day. Throughout history we have advanced as a people and a nation because individuals have stepped up and spoken up. That has always been what has pushed us forward.
That's not a meaningful comparison. Eating a pizza isn't the same as violating the terms of your visa - which is an explicit contract between you and the country you're entering which you sign before you enter the said country.
Privacy, technology and actual freedom overlap massively. Stories like this making it to HN are important since many of the people working at Google that had interactions with this, either by creating the tech or being aware of internal policy changes, read HN. Additionally many founders and decision makers in companies read these stories because it hit HN. Knowing that Google will do this changes your legal calculations. Should I trust them to store my company's data? Will they honor their BAA requirements if they are ditching other promises they made?
People may be tired of seeing stories like this appear on HN, but getting this story exposure to this group is exactly why they need to hit the homepage.
There is no architectural design where some covert team in Google can't exist to leak out data. After all the system needs to be able to let the user see their data. Unless they go open source, e2e encrypted, user managed keys and key backups, and user verification of client code. Which also means ad free.
I don't think you understand how silo'd the workers are at a place like Google. Their physical plant security, as well. They do security like any other federal defense contractor would.
When you call in to Support at Google, you'll get someone who is a specialist in a certain thing, and they have access to only the tools and data necessary to do their particular job with your account. They rely on your disclosure of stuff to them. I often find myself uploading files to Drive, or images to Photos, and sharing them Public so that the Googler can follow a link.
As an anecdotal example, I've visited Waymo depots a couple of times. (Not actually Google, but a sister company under Alphabet.) The depot is completely nondescript, and I wouldn't have identified it if I didn't know what it was. There are a few Visitor parking spaces up front. And the front entrance leads to a Security Desk. The waiting room has about 4 chairs and a table of interesting design. The Security Guard will see you know. And there's a door beyond.
I was there to pick up "Lost & Found" items. You basically get the impression that security is tight as a drum. The guards can be kind of informal; there are employees circulating in and out; but ain't nobody going to exfiltrate a bunch of data, if they appreciate their freedom and civil rights.
> People may be tired of seeing stories like this appear on HN
I am not tired of that at all. But you have people be tired of tons of things, on reddit too. That should not distract discussions. If technology is involved I think it perfectly fits HN and in this regard, the state uses technology to sniff after people - without a real legal, objective cause. It's almost as if the current administration attempts to inflate court cases to weaken the system, e. g. until judges say "no, that's too much work, I just auto-convict via this AI tool the government gave me".
The number of HNers who were earnestly arguing that this was the party of free speech indicates that this absolutely needs to be on the HN front page.
> the administration’s rhetoric about cracking down on students protesting what we saw as genocide forced me into hiding for three months. Federal agents came to my home looking for me. A friend was detained at an airport in Tampa and interrogated about my whereabouts.
On a side note, it was interesting after Trump was elected where some of my co-workers wanted to use old pronouns after some laws changed _in meetings_ and I realized the only thing stopping them was the awkwardness it would have been for _them_ in that situation
In the Before Times, I thought that asking Americans to mind pronouns would never work -- not because they were mean, but because it would require the average American to learn what a "pronoun" was.
Of course, it turned out that the average American had no problem learning what a pronoun was if it gave them the opportunity to be mean. Sigh.
Which industry? Tech? Surveillance? Government? I know my father in law is a MAGA racist who believes whatever makes it easy to justify his own beliefs. I’m not sure you can ever reliably judge someone’s true motives in a professional setting.
I'm seeing it in a lot of younger tech people. We had a NASA presentation at work about air quality and that forest fires are one of our biggest problems in CA. TWO separate people (from maybe 20-25 attending) brought up "do you think that if we managed our forests better, this could help?" (clearly talking about the crazy "raking the forests" Trump rhetoric). It blows my mind how "intelligent" people can be this stupid.
Is that really what you're concerned about that somebody would ask a soft ball question about proposed solutions? Why is questioning the buildup of brush a crazy idea? It's been a mainstream concern for years. I really don't think it's healthy for any inquiry to propose a particular mindset and shut down alternative thinking. It doesn't seem very scientific or intelligent to me.
The issue is that the rhetorical game being played is that by saying the risk is all due to the buildup of combustible materials, it shifts the blame to California's Democratic politicians and away from Republican fossil fuel donors. Clearly in a good faith discussion we'd suggest better forest management, as well as doing everything possible to combat fossil fuel emissions. The problem is that it's not a good faith discussion.
Am I dumb to think that the main worry from fossil fuels right now is CO2, not air quality? (at least while environmental regulations are still mostly intact) It seems reasonable to me to ask about forest management for air quality.
Maybe there was some other sign they didn't ask in good faith? But I have no idea what dumb thing trump said you're even talking about.
Notice how pro-free speech = pro-clearing brush buildup?
It's so weird how people join these partisan factions that have a full package of beliefs that you have to be evil not to share. Woe to your job if you say that you think brush buildup should be cleared; you're obviously racist.
> "do you think that if we managed our forests better, this could help?" (clearly talking about the crazy "raking the forests" Trump rhetoric)
Were they clearly actually talking about that? If that was their question, word-for-word, it's a good question! We are not managing our forests all that well. No, we shouldn't be doing Trump's dumbass raking "idea", but we should be doing controlled burns, at minimum.
>clearly talking about the crazy "raking the forests" Trump rhetoric
Are you sure about that? I've been hearing for at least a decade that the solution to CA's forest fire problem is something along the lines of reducing the amount of potential fuel that is allowed to build up by either allowing smaller fires to run their course without intervention or alternatively aggressively executing controlled burns on a regular schedule.
Not sure how viable that is as a solution but I do know the idea didn't originate with Trump because it predates his entire political career.
I remember hearing about forest mismanagement long before Trump's presidential runs. It's curious how many people complaining about right wing talking points associate it solely with Trump.
While Trump's "raking the forest" take is clearly uninformed and unintelligent, there's a substantial kernel of truth to longstanding forest management policies making some of these wildfires worse than what they could have been. We've been artificially suppressing fires far too long in a lot of these places, for example.
Not that this is the only factor in play here on a lot of these fires, and once again I do agree Trump's take is idiotic and ultimately he's not helping but pouring gasoline on the issue. Just pointing out, we definitely aren't managing our forests well for a multitude of reasons.
The federal vs state conflict over prescribed burns doesn't help much either. In states with a much lower % of national forest or blm land or whatever, you get a much larger amount of prescribed burns.
In the west coast, the state vs federal friction reduces how much of that happens, and there's more uncontrolled growth happening. And there's not always a lot that e.g. CA government can do about it if it's federal land.
For example, Minnesota (intentionally) burns like 50% more acreage than California on an annual basis, despite being like half the size. But CA also is like half federal land, MN is like 5% or something.
I totally agree with you there. I'm in no way trying to suggest it was specifically a failure of certain states or individual administrations; its a mixed bag of failures at a lot of different levels with the federal government having a lot of the blame across a wide range of administrations that did nothing to really address the growing problems.
>The number of HNers who were earnestly arguing that this was the party of free speech indicates that this absolutely needs to be on the HN front page.
The number of HNers (and people at large) who think that both corporate parties don't vehemently oppose free speech and privacy is disturbing. Right now, today, a massive number of Democrats who have spent years decrying Trump (and Republicans as a whole) as fascists are lining up to support a "clean" reauthorization of section 702 of FISA, which allows (despite the phony claims of its supporters) the warrantless and unconstituional surveillance of US citizens (and others). If our government was controlled fascists, why would anyone give them the power to spy on anyone without a warrant? Because it's all kabuki theater and everyone in DC is part of the same team, and you ain't on it.
I don't think "both sides" works very well when one side has been supporting the murder of citizens for exercising their free speech, calling for denaturalization of citizens for expressing the wrong opinions or being from the wrong community, openly suppressing criticism by threatening to revoke broadcast licenses and barring reporters from DoD briefings for not taking sufficiently flattering photos.
I don't think anyone posting here thinks that Democrats are pro-free speech and pro-privacy, and it would be great if we could have politicians that truly support free speech and privacy rights. But of the options currently available, one is much less bad than the other.
>I don't think "both sides" works very well when one side has been supporting the murder of citizens for exercising their free speech
Obama was murdering US citizens for exercising their free speech, and their children, more than a decade ago.
>But of the options currently available, one is much less bad than the other.
If one person says they are going to stab 99 people and the other person says they are going to stab 100 people, you could argue that the guy who stabs 99 people isn't as bad, but I won't ever support either one of them or consider them worthwhile no matter how many others do.
Well, the "worst" side has currently returned to power, the other hasn't. There's no reason to belive that the other side wouldn't become worse in its own way to further solidify its power. Before you talk about priors, remember that Trump's 1st turn also wasn't as unhinged as this.
While it is okay, perhaps advisable, to temporarily support the current less worse side, try to not build house for people that would gladly step on you once your usefulness runs out. As OP said: it's a small club, and you ain't in it.
Yes, the point is to keep picking the option that's better on the things important to you. Blind loyalty is why the current guys are acting with such impunity.
Not that far off from the truth. A number of college students who were protesting for Palestine had their college enrollment suspended, and lost their visas, effectively being deported. Which, yes, the university made that decision, but it didn't come without influence from the government.
Democrats have so far not been led by the nose into bombing Iran and fucking up the global economy so I’m not sure how one can keep saying that with a straight face.
Both sides of Congress passed emergency weapons funding for Israel at the start of this war. Even if some Democrats are scoring political points complaining about it since it's during Trump's term and the war has become a stalemate, they're on board at the end of the day, like they were with Iraq (as some forget) before things unraveled. And during Biden's term, it was Gaza instead.
It totally is. Democrats got led into Israel's wars too. Interestingly the support was different, like Trump got money from the Adelsons and Biden from pro-Israel lobbies.
The US was involved in Gaza? The United States was actively spending billions dropping munitions there? When? Under which administration was the US directly involved in bombing Gaza?
Can you further clarify how the US was involved in the war in Gaza, and how that was the Democrats getting involved? And do you really feel that involvement was anywhere near what is happening or comparable with Iran at the moment?
Its not US servicemembers pulling the trigger, its not US commanders deciding on targets, its not the POTUS starting the war. Pretty radically different things in my book.
How many US servicemembers were injured or killed in the US's apparent major war with Gaza?
We've spent ~$20B in grants for weapons procurement on Israel's behalf over several years, with a lot of that being defensive missile systems. I'm not a fan of us spending so much of our money on another country's military, especially when we hear over and over how we can't afford to feed kids or provide transportation to our people. But, we've spent over double than that so far in Iran in less than two months, and that's ignoring the many billions it'll cost to fix things that were destroyed so far. We're looking at the actual US cost of this war potentially reaching one trillion dollars.
Its a scale that's so radically different. And also, one was in support of a country who we have defense agreements with who was attacked, and another was us deciding to go bomb a country seemingly unprovoked.
I don't know if this is a failure of the bandwidth level of an internet forum message or a nuance thing, but like, you can both wish democrats sent less money to israel (for a whole bunch of reasons) while also acknowledging that this behaviour is preferable to the demonstrated alternative of republican presidents constantly trying to invade middle eastern countries.
Like, if you want less american money (and lives) being spent bombing the middle east, the most rational approach is to vote for a democrat majority/president and then primary anyone who still tries to buy bombs or whatever.
The alternative approach of letting a republican get elected is demonstrably worse.
Parent comment isn't a whataboutism, if anything my comment could be seen as that. My point isn't to defend Trump's actions, only to call out that this is a scarier problem than it gets credit for when someone just blames MAGA. We're dealing with a two-front assault here, and they want you to think it's just the other party you don't like.
I'm all ears if you've got someone that we can put in power that won't rat fuck us when it comes to privacy or civil liberties. Bonus points if they aren't just slightly less bad than the other guy.
Chase Oliver was the only non-writein person on my ticket that even bothered to put up much pretenses of running on a privacy and civil liberties ticket.
I do get that. Both parties are clearly bad. But one in particular is and was yelling from the rooftops about how they were going to destroy civil liberties of certain groups, and are now doing exactly what they promised.
Everyone must simultaneously fight for a better system and choose the least-worst option when it comes time for an election.
The one that forced people into their homes, required proof of medical operation to shop at stores, and tries to abolish my second amendment rights? Or the one that god forbid is deporting people that shouldn't be here in the first place.
also how do you reconcile your belief in second amendment rights with alex pretti's death at the hands of ice, an organization empowered by the current admin?
Uhhh that was wrong, duh??? But sometime bad things happen? I would much rather ice be empowered and we deport the people who should be deported. Its like how some people died from the vaccine.
That's what they said about Obama, but he got Iran to give up their stockpile of enriched Uranium, give up enrichment beyond 4%, and submit to a severe inspection program. All for unfreezing less money than Trump has spent so far on the Iran War, let alone the $200B that he wants, let alone the economic damage from the Hormuz shutdown, let alone the $5T that happened last time a Republican asked to spend $200B on a quick little war.
At the time, the Republicans whined incessantly about how soft Obama was. But they sure enjoyed dropping those Obama Bombs last year that he commissioned as a Plan B. Obama spoke softly, carried a big stick, and hammered out a brilliant deal. Trump bragged loudly, tore up the deal, swung the stick he inherited, missed, and fell in the oil. Sad.
At the time, Israel whined incessantly about how Iran was going to secretly enrich anyway. But their own intelligence from compromising the enrichment program shows in hindsight that this was not the case and Iran was behaving themselves.
That's why I base my expectations on track records, not on Republican whining.
You're right about a lot above. I would clarify though that Obama's deal was made by paying $150B+ to Iran (releasing frozen assets), which was immediately used to fund terrorists and conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Iraq etc.
US withdrew from JCPOA under Trump (which led to a certain chain of events), but Biden was not able to revive it during his term. Not clear why we think a different president would be able to, and under what terms/concessions.
It was $100B more like $50B once you subtract the obligations which unfroze with the assets. We are quarreling over a pittance compared to what we will spend at the pumps and on the war, though.
I wonder what wonderful things all the Russian and Iranian (!) oil that Trump lifted sanctions on will fund! We will find out in time.
Kamala had a better shot at reviving the deal for the same reason Trump thought he had a chance at regime change: Iran's situation has been deteriorating. I'm quite sure that if she had hammered out a deal comparable to the JCPOA, Republicans would be running around yapping about how Trump would have achieved peace in the middle east by just having the stones to bomb Iran. Lol.
> Obama spoke softly, carried a big stick, and hammered out a brilliant deal. Trump bragged loudly, tore up the deal, swung the stick he inherited, missed, and fell in the oil.
This is probably the best and most succinct -- and pithy -- take I've read as of yet.
Iran's regime sucked (still sucks), to be sure. This was frankly not all that much of an issue for the US. It was a big issue for other Arab nations in the area (not to mention for Israel), but I'm not sure why we should be doing their dirty work.
If the end result of all this is a large weakening in Iran's regime, a reduction in Iran's influence in the region, and (otherwise) a return to the status quo, I guess that's something of a victory. But it's far from clear that we'll even come out that well, and meanwhile we've murdered civilians, and spent American lives and war materiel. Not great. We should have left well enough alone.
"Iran's regime sucked" because they kicked out our western puppet? or is it because Iran is a a democracy, unlike "other Arab nations" (by the way iranian are as much arabs than you) or Israel ? (Note that I'm not fan of Iran culture, but I'm not fan of ingroup cultures either).
> because Iran is a a democracy, unlike "other Arab nations"
Iran isn't a democracy, it's an authoritarian theocracy that spreads terrorism throughout the Middle East, and that brutally oppresses it's own people[0]. The only objective of the regime is to stay in power, regardless of the costs imposed to Iran and other countries, and the only language they understand is violence.
I'm not sure if you're joking and this is a backhanded compliment to Harris, or you're sincere in your belief that what Trump will negotiate is going to be better than the Obama deal he ditched in the first term.
If it helps you feel better, I voted for free speech and feel that the administration did not hold up their end of the deal. The FTC’s recent “debanking” letter to the payment processors is just theater until something changes. I’ll leave it at that.
You voted against free speech. The sooner you can admit to that the better.
Trump has been very clearly against free speech well before 2015. He's been anti-American and anti-constituion well before he came down that escalator.
It doesn't make me feel better that you're still pretending otherwise.
I don't really think he's even gotten that much crazier than his admittedly high 2016 baseline. He has gotten a lot better at execution of said craziness, especially after realizing consequences would be slow and few.
Knowing that Google will do what changes your calculation? Abide by the law? I would be surprised if Google's so-Called promise to notify the subject of the inquiry was not couched in terms of being subject to legal requirements. Companies are not activists, and they shouldn't be expected to act like activists.
Google is acting like an activist here. They went after this guy willingly.
They were also very eager to supply weapon tech to Israel when the Gaza war started, far more eager than they ever were to supply it to our own country. Leadership was letting employees push back, then all of a sudden in ~2023 they told everyone to shut up and physically gated off the HQ. Then told everyone to shut up even more after some people broke into Thomas Kurian's office.
Maybe the founders have personal reasons. Sergey Brin called the UN antisemitic for calling out genocide in Gaza.
He was banned from the Cornell Campus for participating in a violent demonstration, inciting violence against Jews.
It's very much not clear whether he is in a legal right or not. And no other country besides Western liberal democracies would allow anything like this. Certainly many Muslim countries do not allow it.
As an aside, a pro-Palestinian African is a laugh. Do you think Palestinians give the slightest damn about black African's plight?
They dropped that a long time ago, at least a decade ago. Which is really an odd thing to do, what company would think that not being evil was holding it back but Google clearly did.
While this is a common quip that I find pretty funny, it's not really true. What actually happened was that while updating their code of conduct[0], Google changed it to only say "don't be evil" in one place instead of multiple[1].
Google was also sued by former employees who claim they were fired because they tried to prevent Google from doing evil[2], in accordance with the code of conduct they agreed to. Sadly that lawsuit ended with a secret settlement, so we'll never know what a jury thinks. Since "don't be evil" is still in there I suppose it could come up again.
"Don't be evil" was dropped after the DoubleClick acquisition completed their internal takeover of the old "Don't be evil" Google (Google purportedly purchased DoubleClick, in reality they 'did' purchase them, but then the old DoubleClick advertisers slowly took over old Google from the inside out).
What is called "Google" today is actually the old, fully evil, advertising firm "DoubleClick" pretending to be "Google" to make use of the goodwill the "Google" brand name used to have attached to it.
Couldn't be more simplistic. Of course a three trillion dollar Google would behave differently than a 2008 Google with or without DoubleClick.
Even today, I would argue an average sample of Googlers will likely think slightly differently about these things than an average sample of Facebook employees; but of course both will have to respond to influence from the external world: i.e. customer, society, govt.
These days Google fails at even the much simpler "Don't be fscking creepy."
That plus aggressive avoidance of anything resembling customer service and what sounds like an internal environment that may be moving towards cage matches makes it worth avoiding for anything important.
I do think they earnestly tried to swim against the current, but yeah, they always knew where it was taking them. Removing the yellow background behind paid results was the turning point IMO.
> The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users.
- Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, 1998
Such a wise observation from a paper published in the now-defunct journal "Computer Networks and ISDN Systems" after being rejected for the SIGIR conference...
...then BackRub turned Gogool mis-spelled, and the rest is history.
Idk what they've even done that was not profit-motivated. They loss-led newer products in the 2000s just like everyone else, then 2010s started tightening up, then 2020s went to maximizing profit and paying out. That's ok in a way really, they're a corporation after all. But nobody ever took that "don't be evil" slogan seriously unless maybe they were Google employees.
Ok idk if anyone cares but wanted to fix it, 2020s they went to maximizing profit on some things, but are still aggressively spending and growing on other things.
Promises are broken, policies are changed and political regimes vary. You need to make sure that you consider the future and not just now. And that means NEVER handing your data over in the first place.
That's easier said than done. Even if you don't directly use Google services, chances are that Big Data is still watching you on every website you go to. And if you have a mobile data plan, your service provider knows exactly where you are 24/7.
It's insane to trust a company in the way you trust a person. Companies can change their terms of service, their policies, or even their entire ownership or leadership at any time. We have seen over and over again that companies are seldom held accountable for even explicit breaches of prior agreements unless there's either collective action or someone very powerful affected. The only way to trust a company not to leak your data is for them not to have it. The only way to trust a company not to break their product or exploit you with it is for this not to be possible.
Every time this happens the debate goes the same way — trust Google or don't, switch to Proton, self-host everything. But the real issue I believe isn't whether we trust Google. It's that the data existed somewhere it could be taken from in the first place.
I've been thinking about this a lot while working on a side project. I ended up making it work entirely offline — no server, no account, no network calls. Not out of paranoia, just because I couldn't come up with a good reason to ask users to trust me with their data. Turns out the best privacy policy is just not having anyone's data.
No monetization plan — it's all local, no server, near-zero cost to run. Free and open source. I believe good tools should be accessible to everyone. Open source first, monetization will figure itself out down the road.
Outstanding, and ethical too. So tell us, did you forgo monetization forever, or do you have a plan for revenue? Perhaps it’s not an issue for you, but knowing what you have up might help others conceive of a shift of the Overton window such that it’s no longer a given that that must be harvested.
What exactly did the request for information say from DHS? What exactly was the reason for them to look for you specifically (certainly there are many others protesting)? Following up on that, how do others avoid something like this? What red flags should be avoided and how?
There may or may not be a solid answer for any of this. But this article feels like it's made for awareness, when it could also be made for action, with the right details included.
We could and should have better privacy laws, though foreigners will always be subject to less protection.
That said, a lot of this comes down to a failure in education around privacy and the cultural norm around folks thinking they have nothing to hide. The intuition most people have around privacy, and security, is incredibly poor.
One thing to note when talking about "foreigners" is that many rights in the constitution specify "persons". So citizens and non-citizens theoretically have equal rights from that standpoint. So I agree in general but it's worth noting that he was supposed to have constitutional rights to speech and against unreasonable searches.
I think the issue is deeper than that. In the US, data about you belongs to the company that owns the hardware that the data is stored on. In the EU, data about you belongs to you.
It's definitely important to fight all the key battles including against companies like Google, but the root of the problem is the government. I would suggest that it 's worse than any particular government. At a fundamental international level, we don't truly have a civil society. Things operate on a strategic and often criminal basis. And there is a strangely prevalent pervasiveness of ethnic hatred and tribalism. And a fundamental lack of respect for human life.
When visiting other countries never take part in protests. Avoid areas where protests are likely to occur, travel advisories sometimes explicitly point out areas. It is probably best to avoid anything political.
"In September 2024, Amandla Thomas-Johnson was a Ph.D. candidate studying in the U.S. on a student visa when he briefly attended a pro-Palestinian protest."
> ...he briefly attended a pro-Palestinian protest. In April 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent Google an administrative subpoena requesting his data.
Personally, I would not trust anyone (e.g. ProtonMail) more than Google.
If you have sensitive things in your emails, host your own mail, use GPG encryption or a one-time pad, or even avoid electronic networked machines altogether (depending on the level of security that you require).
Switzerland-hosted services are no safer than others, recall that Crypto AG, who promised to sell secure encryption machines, were just a cover by foreign intelligence services (jointly US/DE-owned/operated by the CIA & BND).
This is such a myopic view of the situation. Are you going to only exchange emails with people you host as well? Otherwise, anyone you exchange emails with will go through other email providers.
I cannot find any promises in that document nor would I expect to find any. It's a policy not an agreement
At best, the policy contains "representations"
The author might claim he was deceived by misrepresentations, and this deception had consequences for him, amounting to measurable harm
But proving these statements about Google's internal operations are false is difficult. Proving Google's intent in making them is even more difficult
It's incorrect to interpret a "policy" comprising statements about what Google allegedly does internally as an agreement to do anything in the future
Promises can be enforced through the legal process. Generally, Silicon Valley's so-called "tech" companies do not make "promises" to users that can be enforced. Imagine what would happen if they did
"Google promises that it will notify users before their data is handed over in response to legal processes, including administrative subpoenas."
Where?
The policy does not contain the word "will" and makes no reference to what Google will (cf. "may") do in the future
The policy is comprised of statements about what Google has done in the past
The claims here are for deceptive trade practices, not breach of agreement (enforceable promise)
Google could agree, i.e., promise, to notify. It does not. Readers should ask themselves why
Instead Google states it typically notifies, i.e., has notified in the past, or may notify under certain circumstances
No doubt Google can show the statements in the policy are true at least some of the time. It is just disclosing what it has sometimes done in the past. Nothing in these statements binds it to doing something in the future. It could decide to change its procedures and update the policy at any time. It can also make justifiable exceptions at any time for any reason, irrespective of whatever it has done in the past
The "Guest author" of this EFF page should not be surprised when he/she is ignored by the Attorneys General contacted
> That notice is meant to provide a chance to challenge the request.
That's the author's interpretation. The promise doesn't indicate anything of the sort (as of this writing). And users cannot challenge these requests -- users don't own the data (in the US). The promise is very clear that Google will provide the data, if the request is compliant.
Now the text of the notification was past tense, that the information was provided, whereas the promise is crystal clear that Google will notify before providing the info, but to me that could amount to a simplification of "we have verified that the request is legally compliant and will be providing the info to them in 250 ms".
Don't get me wrong, I'm not on Google's side. I'm a huge privacy nut. But the fix is to not give your info to Google, not trust that they will abide by any policy. Especially in a case like this where your freedom is at risk. Most people are completely unaware and unthinking but this guy seems that he was fully aware and placed his trust in Google.
This is the key detail everyone is glossing over. NSLs and subpoenas with non-disclosure orders are extremely common in these cases - Google literally cannot notify you without being in contempt. The EFF article frames this as Google "breaking a promise" but if there was a gag order attached, they had no legal choice.
This EFF article does not announce any legal action they are taking as a result of Google complying with the government's request. I'm not really sure what the purpose of the article is. If you object to the NSL non-disclosure requirements, sue the US Government. Google is probably blameless here.
This is a good reminder that you should assume there's no privacy on the internet whatsoever, unless you really go to extensive lengths to cover your tracks. And even then, you have to be really careful.
It's not just ICE that can abuse subpoena to get your data-- scammers and other fraudsters can file a federal lawsuit against a bunch of John Does and then run around issuing subponea for records to attempt to uncover their identities.
There appears to be no defense against this beyond not allowing companies access to your data in the first place.
Obama set the record for deportation. I wonder if ICE used similar methods when he was president. There might be a roadmap for digital invasion of privacy going back that far.
The fact that they complied with an administrative subpoena makes it so much worse. "Administrative" anything essentially has about as much value as toilet paper unless it goes to court and the judge agrees with whatever agency wrote it.
There isn't much further to go down the slippery slope it seems, if he only did what he claims: attending a pro-Palestine / anti-genocide protest at a university for five minutes.
The stats are per half a year, so even more than that.
And we don't even know what the guy is really wanted for. I think EFF was just waiting for this to happen to make a political statement. That's what they do, if course, but how the hell can they be sure they're aren't vouching for a criminal?
"You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain" - Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt - chanting to each other after a round of ayahuasca.
Unfortunately, "Google let the government have my private data" is right up there with "President Trump said one thing yesterday, and now he's saying the exact opposite" in the what-did-you-expect hall-of-fame.
I've long maintained that anyone who has a personal email address ending in @gmail.com is clueless, both about digital privacy/security, but also about society, history, and geopolitical events.
It was a decade+ ago that Snowden explained to us, with receipts, that the USG has warrantless access to everything stored in Apple (iCloud Photos and iCloud Backup are unencrypted and contain a copy of everything on your device), Google, Microsoft, Amazon, et al. You have to be an ostrich with your head in the sand to not be well aware of this at this late juncture.
You'd have to be a moron to let the feds read all of your mail without a warrant by default - any country's feds.
It must really really suck to be a data-holder, that every single government out there views as some piggy bank, sitting there waiting to smash & grab.
It's certainly been quite the turn recently. But being between the people and the governments that seemingly inevitably will turn into arch fascist pricks & go to war against the citizens is not an enviable position. Hopefully many jurisdictions start enacting laws that insist companies build unbreakable backdoorless crypto. Hopefully we see legislation that is the exact opposite of chat control mandatory backdoors. It's clear the legal firewalls are ephemeral, can crumble, given circumstances and time. We need a more resolute force to protect the people: we need the mathematicians/cryptographers!
President Trump pressured House Republicans on Wednesday to extend a high-profile warrantless surveillance law without changes, declaring on social media: “I am willing to risk the giving up of my Rights and Privileges as a Citizen for our Great Military and Country!”
Mr. Trump urged the G.O.P. to “unify” behind Speaker Mike Johnson for a critical procedural vote that had been scheduled for late Wednesday night. The vote would clear the way for House approval of a bill extending a major section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. The law is set to expire on April 20.
The statute, known as Section 702, permits the government to collect the messages of foreigners abroad without a warrant from American companies like Google — even if the targets are communicating with Americans.
One of the attractions of a country for scientists and scholars, and visitors generally, is an atmosphere of freedom. The right to protest is a constitutionally protected right. He was well within his rights. The current administration is purposefully curtailing freedoms to intimidate ordinary people to keep quiet as they plunder the country. Google is now going along with it. Your advice is to just study and enjoy the experience, which is what most people do. Luckily there are others who can be loud for those who can no longer speak, their cities bombed and families killed; with the hope that the world will eventually notice and listen. Civic engagement, and a free press is one of the most important tools at our disposal to fight those who seek to exploit the weak - that is why every wanna-be dictator and corrupt politician is so keen to curtail these rights.
If you are invited to visit someone's home, and you go, and say nasty things to the homeowner, you'll be tossed out despite your right to free speech.
If you're a guest in another country, act like a guest.
When I was living on a military base in Germany, I and my family were required to behave as a guest of the Germans. The military was quite strict about that.
I didn't have any issue with that. When I travel to another country, I behave as if I was their guest, which I was.
A couple times there were protests in a country I was visiting, and I stayed well away from them.
A country is not a house. Conflating the legal framework of a nation-state with the etiquette of a private living room is a category error. As John Locke demonstrated when refuting the patriarchal theory of government, political power is fundamentally distinct from household authority. A private home is governed by the unilateral property rights of an owner; a republic operates via constitutional law and public rights.
Pretending the rules of a private domicile apply to a jurisdiction by analogy is a sleight of hand. It operates like arguing that because memory safety is a strict requirement in system architecture, we must ensure human memories remain uncorrupted. The domains function under entirely different mechanics. A non-citizen in a public space is constrained by statutory law (and our statutory law is based on our understanding of inherent freedoms), not the etiquette of a houseguest.
The point remains, however. If you're here on a visa, the visa can be revoked, and you can be ejected. Revoking a visa is not a criminal sanction and not a violation of your rights, as there is no right to a visa. Your citizenship cannot be revoked.
The maxim, "a government of laws, not of men" means state power should be exercised according to consistent principles and policy even beyond the letter of the law, not at the whim of bureaucrats or even leadership. Because it's generally impossible to draft laws to enumerate every possible scenario, contingency, and condition, statutes tend to nominally grant powers broader than for the purposes intended, even when there's no intent for them to be applied beyond the original purpose. For practical and procedural reasons courts typically only safeguard this principle by looking to whether the law nominally grants a power to do something, rather than if the power is rightfully exercised under a more wholistic and detailed interpretation of the laws, but the principle is still enshrined in US organic law, and in jurisprudence generally. Courts often do scrutinize exercises of state power to determine whether they violate this principle, but which applications are scrutinized tend to be a function of contemporary political debates and a courts ideological makeup.
These deportations are an interesting study in how this plays out, because historically immigration and, especially, deportations is an area of law where the usual rule pertains. But free speech is the complete opposite, where for the past 100 years courts are much more scrutinizing; indeed, precedent in free speech case law requires explicit, deliberate, and fine-grained application of varying levels of scrutiny in each, individual case, a process which is quite exceptional even in cases involving constitutional powers and rights.
It's worth pointing out that prior to the modern legal era, free speech law was quite different, both nationally and at the state level. Regulations and applications of regulations that incidentally impinged upon speech, but which otherwise clearly derived from legitimate state powers, received very light of any scrutiny. Regulation of commercial activity, for example, usually would not be considered to violate free speech rights even if it prohibited certain speech outright, so long as enforcement was nominally directed at commercial activity per se.
I don't pretend to be a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that revoking a visa is not a criminal sanction, and the Dept of State has broad discretion wrt visas.
The person who wrote the article was at a protest. I presume he was identified as being there via his cell phone. Then, being a visa holder, he was investigated for being a security risk. He evidently was not deemed to be one, his visa was not revoked, and he was not charged with anything.
BTW, I'd be spooked, too, if federal agents arrived at my door to question me.
> I don't pretend to be a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that revoking a visa is not a criminal sanction, and the Dept of State has broad discretion wrt visas.
Their 1st sentence said clearly bureaucrats or even leadership should not have broad discretion I thought. And they did not say criminal sanction. What did you think implied it?
Different rules apply to members of the military stationed on a treaty-based foreign military base.
However, as a thought experiment, let's go with your flawed analogy: Even then, this person was acting like a guest -- it is a long-cherished American tradition to exercise our constitutionally-protected right to free speech, assemble, and yes, protest. Nothing's more American than speaking against Government oppression and overreach.
The government is not your owner. The government is not your father. You are a participant in the affairs of your country, and take responsibility in its direction. Civic engagement and right to protest are important tools to make our government accountable. These are fundamental American values. And you're welcome to bring friends. It's legal.
> Different rules apply to members of the military stationed on a treaty-based foreign military base.
Members of the military and their families stationed in a foreign country are required to behave as guests of the host country. This is not a joke and is not taken lightly by the command. Also, an officer who cannot control the behavior of his family is not fit to be an officer.
Maybe things have changed since I was a boy, but I hope not.
I agree with you - I was saying that members of the military & their families have treaty-defined standards of being in the country & thus required to behave a certain way, whereas a regular visitor or student visa comes with a different set of rules and not regulated by a military cooperation treaty.
And in this case, the people gave the state department broad authority to remove people on visas. Why would you want someone to travel to this country to protest? Would we want Putin sending people over to protest against our involvement in the Ukraine war? Would you want China sending over protesters to reduce tariffs?
A core of democracy is a finite pool of voters, and infinite immigration and foreign protests are a direct threat to our democracy in a way that removing someone on visa isn't.
I think this is common sense advice rather than a philosophical stance about free speech, said advice being generalized as "When in a foreign country, avoid trouble." As an example, if you visit China and start FA about Tibet, you will FO pretty soon, no matter how right you are about free speech.
Yes, this case is a travesty, but that does not change the soundness of the advice.
I find the idea of a non citizen protesting and causing social unrest diabolical. Most international students, (whether studying in the US or Europe or Australia or Malaysia or indeed anywhere else) understand that their visa does not grant them the same substantive rights that citizens of a country get. That’s as it should be.
I couldn’t care less about a non citizen’s non existent free speech rights, nor would I expect to be provided rights exclusively afforded to citizens of a country in which I was visiting. Some of you guys have clearly never travelled outside your home countries.
That’s correct. I’m a Visa holder. I have the right to free speech, but I don’t have the right to be in the USA. And when I’m outside of the USA, the government really doesn’t care about my freedom of speech one way or the other.
I applied for a visa and crossed borders enough times to remember this: visas can be refused and revoked for any reason at all. And a border guard is within rights to deny you entry for any reason whatsoever.
Understanding these things made my life much easier.
The US Constitution limits the legislature's ability to pass laws restricting speech. The Executive revoking a noncitizen's student visa does not breach that Constitutional protection.
I could imagine someone arriving after independence and advocating against the new government, insisting that they return to King George, would indeed Find Out.
There was an administrative subpoena, which was not signed off by a judge, but does carry significant legal weight.
The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and Stored Communications Act (SCA) requires service providers to disclose certain types of data (IP addresses, physical address, other identifiers, and session times and durations) in response to an administrative subpoena. The actual content of communications is excluded.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/02/open-letter-tech-compa... disagrees that there was any legal weight here, but honestly I'm no expert and am curious if that's wrong. (I saw that link a while back, couldn't find it til now but should've just dug it up originally)
> the idea of attending public protests/riots, particularly any directed against the governments that issued me my student visas, sounds like possibly the stupidest move
You'd get a real kick out some of the protests in Canada then.
"""When we receive a request from a government agency, we send an email to the user account before disclosing information. If the account is managed by an organization, we’ll give notice to the account administrator.
We won’t give notice when legally prohibited under the terms of the request. We’ll provide notice after a legal prohibition is lifted, such as when a statutory or court-ordered gag period has expired.
We might not give notice if the account has been disabled or hijacked. And we might not give notice in the case of emergencies, such as threats to a child’s safety or threats to someone’s life, in which case we’ll provide notice if we learn that the emergency has passed."""
Agree. Google can't go against the all-mighty state. Just look at what Anthropic did and the effect of that action. There are billions of dollars at stake on government contracts that they can't afford to lose. Reminds me of Mullvad's ad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPzvUW8qaWY
Google is a multi-trillion dollar company that brings in $50b+ a year from Youtube alone, its government contracts are a pittance and it could absolutely do without them. There is no defense for complying in advance with a wannabe-fascist regime, especially when said regime is operating illegally.
The whole notion that Google (or Apple or anyone else) should ignore and flaunt the state is insane by itself.
I don't want megacorps to ignore our EU laws just like I don't want them to ignore US laws. They're not people, they don't get the right to disobedience.
It is the US administration that is flaunting the law, not Google. Nobody is actually asking Google to break the law, they are in fact asking it to follow the law by not complying with illegal requests.
Which requests in this case were illegal? And isn't legality established by the person suing the government in this case and not megacorp playing the lawyer?
ICE's use of "administrative subpoenas" and other executive tactics are in violation of the 4th Amendment of the Constitution. To operate legally, their request would need to be approved by a judge. That's not even a high bar, given the judiciary rubber-stamps the vast majority of warrants, but they can't even be bothered with that. The article points out that Google used to notify users of exactly this kind of request specifically so that the victim of the crime had time to challenge the subpoena in court, where it would be tossed out without giving away their private information, but now people are no longer being given a chance to defend themselves from abuse by Google's complicity.
I think Trump and his ICE stormtroopers, aside from having already killed several people, are in violation of the US constitution. In particular warrantless search and seizure. Probably some more.
What is the constitution worth if it is not or only selectively enforced?
It's like an overthrow of a democracy and total inaction against it
That is 100% it. If the people do not revolt against this (general strike), nothing will stop it. Democracy needs to be actively protected.
Start actively divesting of Google where possible. There are a lot of 'Switching to 100% European cloud' stories hitting HN lately. The more things like this happen the more stories like that will be there. Google and US tech are becoming toxic at many levels and an appropriate response is to mitigate risk by going to other providers.
Realistically? Treating visiting or studying the USA as visiting or studying in North Korea. Would you stand in Kim Jong square and protest their foreign policy? If you would I salute you. If something terrible happens, I will not blame you, the victim. But if you surprise pikachu at the results, you are a moron. Foreigners will end up making a choice -- study or protest -- but don't expect they'll be able to manage both.
The powers that be in the USA have signalled they won't tolerate foreigners protesting state department policy on their soil. This is obviously unconstitutional. But it won't be changed through lawfare.
I feel bad for both sides in this. Google can be put under so much pressure by the government, they are basically forced to do what they says; yes they can fight it, but if the government wants something badly, they will get it, they have powers (especially under the very broad definition of 'national security') to just get automatic compliance, using the same powers they can silence the companies from publishing anything about it too.
I of course feel bad for the student here too, he should not be targeted for exercising his rights to peaceful protest.
But Google is not the enemy here, I would bet good money their hand is forced to comply and their mouth is silenced. The enermy here is the overreaching government and ICE
I do not feel bad for Google here and they are at fault. If they are in a tight bind now it is only because they have eroded the privacy safety buffer so thin over the past few decades that they are finally having a hard time walking the line. If they had been fighting for strong, clear, boundaries then this wouldn't be an issue. Instead they have pushed automatic TOS changes that let them do what they want when they want and ignoring privacy settings and selling info to anyone with no consequences. Yes, they are likely in a 'tight bind' right now but it is one that they set up for themselves.
I feel bad for both sides in this. Google can be put under so much pressure by the government, they are basically forced to do what they says; yes they can fight it, but if the government wants something badly, they will get it, they have powers
Or they could implement end-to-end encryption for many of their products and they wouldn't be able to give the government the data, even if they wanted to. But that would hamper them to analyze data for ad targeting.
How does one feel bad for a corporation, especially of this size? Double so for one that quite literally removed "Don't be Evil" as its motto and from its code of conduct.
The corporation has no feelings and I don't imagine the board members or shareholders are feeling bad about this.
Google's sin here is not in obeying a warrant, it's by pressuring a strategy of extreme concentration of power and intermediation. Google wants to know who you talk to, where you are, where you work, how much money you make, what kind of jobs you are interested in, whether or not you've searched for recipes to make controlled substances, etc. etc. We can be happy that they failed, or at least are only weakly succeeding. They almost completely dominate email services, which were supposed to be distributed and run by whomever. This is hugely anticompetitive practice, right in the middle of our relatively new ubiquitous information infrastructure. One side effect of this is that they are one-stop shop for governments to get extremely detailed profiles of..to be honest, almost of all of us. But that's just one of the unfortunate side effects.
> Google can be put under so much pressure by the government, they are basically forced to do what they says
This is true, but only because Google is a horrific monopoly and is allowed to continue to be (and to grow) only by the grace of government. If they don't do what they're told, they won't be allowed to steal in the way that they are accustomed to doing.
I don't think that anybody who controls Google misses a moment of sleep over it, though. They're being "forced" to do it like a kid is being "forced" not to do their homework if you offer them candy. It's easy and lucrative to be passive.
I don't! For one thing, Google is not a person and has no feelings. Individuals within Google decided to comply. And none of those individuals would face any significant consequences for not complying. The US government, even now, has an extremely good track record of treating companies separate from their employees.
The US is not in a full blown authoritarian regime. Big companies aren't failing to resist because they fear dire consequences. They're doing it because they don't care. If they think caving to the administration will result in $1 in additional profit compared to fighting it, that's what they'll do.
Big corporations are paperclip maximizers but for money. Treat them like you'd treat an AI that's single-mindedly focused on making number go up.
Utter nonsense. All it would take is for all of these trillion dollar companies to stand up to fascism. Yes, corporations don't have a conscience, but this would be good for their bottom line. They chose not to.
Recently in SF, the police have been very open about their use of drones to follow thieves (completely violating their privacy). It is like China where there are posters telling you drone surveillance is in effect.
I think we need to expand CCPA so that the government cannot simply spy on you by claiming that “criminals” are near you. Even criminals should have their privacy protected or else they will just label everyone criminals.
Don't know the specifics of what the OP is referencing, but some police departments are experimenting with some wild tech. Check out the Baltimore "Spy Plane", for instance. It used high-altitude Cessna airplanes (rather than drones) equipped with a massive array of cameras, that recorded everything.
It allowed analysts to:
- Watch and record a 30-square-mile area of the city simultaneously, in real-time.
- If a crime occurred, they could "go back in time" to see where a suspect came from. Ie. track a vehicle from its destination back to its source.
- Or they could follow a vehicle "forward" in time to see where it parked,
identifying potential hideouts or residences.
Of course, it was recording everyone, not just criminals.
If you're being followed/tracked by a drone, you are clearly not in a place where you expect privacy. How are we confusing being out in public and expectation of privacy issues?
Such are the times that he feels he must say that he only attended the protest "for all of five minutes" and that he was protesting "what we saw as genocide".
He is almost ashamed of his views because of the current climate but he didn't do anything wrong, apparently.
Honestly, I think the author is expecting too much from companies that are under jurisdiction of the US Government, especially in the situation as of 2026. It is telling that when they say "federal government" in the article, they implicitly mean the US Federal Government and not those of the UK or Trinidad and Tobago.
The author (in my opinion) needs to raise this with their own governments (UK is probably the one where they can get better action) to push for data sovereignty laws so that it's at least UK or Trinidad and Tobago that are the governments involved in investigating their data, via appropriate international warrants.
Expecting a company to hold its own promise (of notifying the user before it happens) sounds like a pretty minimal expectation, hard for me to imagine it being "too much".
Furthermore, how would data sovereignty affect whether Google holds its promise on notifying users?
My opinion doesn't match the article. I do think the user has a legitimate grievance; I am merely suggesting a different avenue for fixing it.
> Expecting a company to hold its own promise (of notifying the user before it happens) sounds like a pretty minimal expectation, hard for me to imagine it being "too much".
I am saying that this expectation is unrealistic for a British/Trinbagonian citizen, given the political situation in the US right now. For a US citizen having the same issue (Google gave their data to the government without a safeguard), it would be realistic.
> Furthermore, how would data sovereignty affect whether Google holds its promise on notifying users?
The user could file a lawsuit in the UK about Google handing over their data without notification and proper jurisdiction. If Google UK employees were involved in handing over this data, they could be prosecuted and fined by the UK government.
Overall what I am hinting at is that this would incentivize Google to put in proper safeguards for non-US citizens. Currently they seem to be treated as a separate, non-protected category.
You're essentially saying "Don't trust Google at all and ask your local government to put pressure on Google" and I agree with that but you frame it in a needlessly apologist way. If a company makes a promise and breaks it, that should always be a reason for concern, and the article is right for pointing that out.
Yeah, I'm sorry for coming off as a Google apologist. That wasn't my intention.
I'm merely saying that I'm skeptical that calling them out for breaking a promise is a useful path to go down. The alternate path (often proven to have been effective) is to pressure your non-US regulators into regulating them more. What I foresee is that this will either make Google follow more safeguards for everyone, or incentivize them to get out of non-US jurisdictions altogether.
It's not anything close to minimal. Expecting a company to hold their promise against an authoritarian government is an extremely strong expectation.
It's even harder than people doing the same, because at the end of the day companies are a bunch of stuff that can be taken over and controlled by other people.
Weird to assume that anyone is more upset with Google than ICE about this when nobody said anything to that effect.
Weird to decide that you have to choose to be mad at one party or the other, and that getting mad at one party somehow indicates that you are less mad at the other party.
Weird to make this comment in response to perfectly valid criticism of Google by the EFF.
In the US, “not my president” is a mindset many seem to believe in. That not agreeing with the actions is somehow enough to wash one’s hands of responsibility for their country’s actions.
I believe there are many US citzens discussing here. I always wanted you to ask: do you ever wonder why there are retaliations related to pro-Palestinian protesters in your country? Do you think sometimes why your mainstream media name them always this way while they actually are anti-Israel protests? Are you aware about anti-boycott regulations which you have since many years?
I think this is much more important than what big-tech do.
I’m generally receptive to point the finger at Google’s intentions but in their defense, administrative subpoenas frequently include non disclosure orders. Google’s own transparency policies have always carved out (industry standard) exceptions for cases where they’re legally prohibited from notifying.
[0] https://evrimagaci.org/gpt/judge-rebukes-trump-over-student-...
The person in question said he was in Geneva when he received the email from Google. Therefore is a non-US citizen residing outside the country entitled to 1A protections for something they said or did while in the US? I'm not expressing an opinion but I wouldn't take that statement as legal advice.
Whether the government waits for him to leave the country to violate his rights feels like a small detail in this issue.
Also, if you intend to claim that us foreigners are free targets for any abhorent behaviour of your government, maybe you should rename your bill of rights a bill of privileges.
What we do know is that the US, like all other countries, has wide legal latitude on not allowing foreigners into the country. You can be denied entry for no more than a Facebook like of the wrong post.
Senior ICE officials have testified under oath in federal court that analysts were moved from counterterrorism, global trade, and cybercrime work to this group focused specifically on writing reports about people involved in student protests.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/09/politics/ice-homeland-securit...
https://time.com/7272060/international-students-targeted-tru...
https://www.wbur.org/news/2025/07/10/ice-lawsuit-deportation...
Also, since google complied without giving him the ability to challenge the request, we will never have another version. In that context, it feels fair to accept the only version we have.
The events he was likely targeted for happened on a campus in the US.
The previous comment makes it clear that this situation cannot be operationalized without having lists of people who attended events.
Now sure how you comment a continuation of the conversation?
But you are conflating seeking entry with being present inside the country. That’s the legal line, and the Supreme Court has stated it clearly. “once an alien enters the country, the legal circumstance changes, for the Due Process Clause applies to all ‘persons’ within the United States, including aliens, whether their presence here is lawful, unlawful, temporary, or permanent.” [0]
As for the First Amendment specifically the Supreme court has reversed the deportation order of an Australian labor activist due to alleged Communist Party affiliation, concluding that “freedom of speech and of the press is accorded aliens residing in this country” [1]
The Geneva detail doesn’t apply. He was on US soil as a lawful visa holder when he attended the protest. It’s a question of where he was when the government action targeted his protected expression not where he was when Google emailed him.
His departure doesn’t retroactively strip the constitutional protections that applied when the conduct occurred.
[0] https://law.onecle.com/ussc/533/533us693.html
[1] Bridges v. Wixon https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/aliens/
At least in terms of being "at the border", United States v. Martinez-Fuerte would appear to disagree.
That legal line you mention is both figuratively and literally not at the border; protections are weakened up to 100 miles away.
Which Google definitely knows are not enforceable.
I agree: this is exactly what the administration is doing.
> I’m generally receptive to point the finger at Google’s intentions but in their defense, administrative subpoenas frequently include non disclosure orders.
Except immigration aren't allowed to put gag orders on administrative subpoenas [1]:
> First, any gag order in these subpoenas has no legal effect; you are free to publicize them and inform the target of the subpoena.
and
> The agency’s administrative subpoena power is limited, but ICE often uses the subpoenas to obtain more assistance than is legally required
This is the key problem. Companies like Google aren't making government agencies go to court to get a subpoena, they're not resisting that subpoena, they're not informing targets when they're legally allowed to and they're giving agencies more assistance than is legally required.
I don't think it's asking a lot to expect any platform to only provide the minimum legally required cooperation.
[1]: https://www.acluofnorthcarolina.org/app/uploads/drupal/sites...
There seems to be broad discretion that the government has in revoking visas.
What is the punishment though? According to the article (written by the same person whose data was subpoenaed) they are still around, alive, safe and sound in geneva, not even formally accused of anything.
So far there is only evidence of an investigation.
And pro-pal movements arr usually pro-terrorism, so it make sense to investigate.
https://statements.cornell.edu/2024/20241019-career-fair-dis...
I’m a First Amendment absolutist and AFAIK foreign students can protest, but this video shows to me it probably crosses the line into something else. Exactly what, I have no opinion.
Your framing had me expecting a degree of mayhem and violence that was absent here.
You have a First Amendment right to "peacefully" hurl the most awful insults you can think of at a police officer.
If that police officer feels "antagonized"--or even if your goal was to hurt their feelings--that does not permit them to abuse the special power of their workplace to attack you. If they try anyway, now that's a real crime.
>We won’t give notice when legally prohibited under the terms of the request.
The post states that his lawyer has reviewed the subpoena, but doesn't mention whether or not it contained a non-disclosure order. That's an important detail to address if the claim is that Google acted against its own policy.
1. Does that mean the same thing in the ToS?
2. How valid are these requests?
> On November 20, 2025, Google, through outside counsel, explained to the undersigned why Google did not give Thomas-Johnson advanced notice as promised. Google’s explanation shows the problem is systematic: Sometimes when Google does not fulfill a subpoena by the government’s artificial deadline, Google fulfills the subpoena and provides notice to a user on the same day to minimize delay for an overdue production. Google calls this “simultaneous notice.” But this kind of simultaneous notice strips users of their ability to challenge the validity of the subpoena before it is fulfilled.
What if this were a bogus subpoena for a lawyer’s privileged conversations with a client? A doctor’s communications about reproductive health with a patient? A political consultant working for the democrats?
Google knows users care about their privacy, and it made the promise in its terms precisely for that reason. People pay attention to this stuff, as the popularity of this story shows.
Therefore, it's generally not going to be in Google's interest to break its own terms.
So what's going on? Did a Google employee simply mess up? Is the reporting not accurate or missing key details, e.g. Google truly is legally prohibited? Or is there some evidence that the Trump administration was putting pressure on Google, e.g. threatening to withhold some contract if this particular person were notified, or if Google continued notifying users belonging to some particular category of subpoenas?
Because Google isn't breaking its own terms just for funsies. There's more to this story, but unfortunately it's not clear what.
It is also not in Google’s interest to resist this administration. I would not be surprised if they decided to kiss the ring and be by internal policy more cooperative than what the law strictly says.
I guess we’ll get a better idea if more cases show up.
But yeah no matter the amount they lose in courts, it's inconsequential compared to angering this federal administration even a little bit
Do Google users care about their privacy? I'd expect not, given that Google is (and hasn't been shy about telling us about it) reading all their emails in order to provide more targeted advertisements.
And, as I mentioned, Google hasn't been shy about saying that's exactly what they do (prioritizing their ad revenue over their users' privacy), so I have to assume that Google users don't care about their privacy.
If they did care about their privacy, they'd self-host their email on hardware they physically control.
That's orthogonal to Google giving up data to the government, with or without notifying the user(s) in question, except that the above makes clear what we already know: Google doesn't respect the privacy of their users.
Does it know? And do users really care? Popularity on HN isn't popularity everywhere.
I'd wager most people don't care enough to move away from Gmail.
But even if they did, unfortunately this isn't the only variable a business is solving for. Corporations will generally just pick between the least unprofitable of two evils, not the lesser of.
> First, numerous other individuals have challenged recent administrative subpoenas in court after receiving notice, and the Department of Homeland Security has withdrawn those subpoenas before reaching a court decision.
They don't want a ruling against them.
> [The subpoena would have been quashed because] there are facial deficiencies in the subpoena, including that the subpoena is missing a “Title of Proceeding.”
[1]: https://www.eff.org/files/2026/04/13/eff_letter_re_google_no...
Congress needs to retroactively eliminate the presidential pardon, or (more realistically) states need to pass laws allowing them to prosecute members of the federal government (the federal government already did this to the states; the result would be symmetric, and likely survive legal challenges.)
> In April 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent Google an administrative subpoena requesting his data.
> In September 2024, Amandla Thomas-Johnson was a Ph.D. candidate studying in the U.S. on a student visa when he briefly attended a pro-Palestinian protest. In April 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent Google an administrative subpoena requesting his data.
> This document explains two key ways that recipients can resist immigration administrative subpoenas: First, any gag order in these subpoenas has no legal effect; you are free to publicize them and inform the target of the subpoena. Second, you do not have to comply with the subpoena at all, unless ICE goes to court—where you can raise a number of possible objections—and the court orders compliance.
[1]: https://www.acluofnorthcarolina.org/app/uploads/drupal/sites...
Even if you're in the right, defending yourself in a legal proceeding is expensive. You need a checkbook that can back up your confidence in what they're telling you. And sure, Google has that money, but they're also fighting off half of congress trying to break up their business.
It's in their best interests to do whatever the DoJ asks of them.
I don’t know what you mean by “activism narrative” but the EFF has been fighting for your digital rights for many, many years. It reads like you consider their work disingenuous, but I can tell you from firsthand experience it is not. They deserve less skepticism than you’re giving them.
You might think I am being prejudiced, but she already dropped EFF Twitter/X account, the one with more views per post than any other social media, claiming it didn’t had enough impact.
This is like saying the real solution to bad practices of food companies is to exclusively grow your own food, or the answer to anti-repair practices is to only build your own devices, vehicles, etc. Contractors cut corners? Don't try to regulate, just learn carpentry, plumbing, and HVAC plus codes!
Even if it's fun as a hobby, I don't want to be on call for my own basic online services.
That said, I also don't think selfhosting is a realistic solution for most people.
It's not an apples to apples comparison because an administrative warrant served to Google is much different from raiding your home but if they wanted to they could.
At this point, acting as if America (and many parts of the world for that matter) aren't living under an authoritarian government is futile. We still have freedoms but they're trying really hard to take them away from us.
This is where encryption comes in.
https://thblegal.com/news/can-i-be-prosecuted-for-failing-to...
> It has been pointed out to us that since we have our servers in the US, we are under US jurisdiction. We do not believe this to be the case. We do not have a legal presence in the US, no company incorporated in the US, no staff in the US, and no one in the US with login access to any servers located in the US. Even if a US court were to serve us with a court order, subpoena or other instruction to hand over user data, Australian communications and privacy law explicitly forbids us from doing so.
Under TIA Act provisions (such as s180), an authorised officer of a criminal law‑enforcement agency can authorise access to prospective telecommunications data [metadata only; not whole messages] if satisfied it is reasonably necessary for investigating an offence punishable by at least three years’ imprisonment. (In other words, ~any time they want)
Example: the data‑retention regime’s records were being accessed over 350,000 times a year by at least 87 different agencies, including non‑traditional bodies such as local councils and the RSPCA [pet cruelty nonprofit].
Given Australia's population is only 28M, that means roughly 1 in every 80 people gets communications metadata pulled by their own government annually.
The only way to win the game is to not play.
It was a real eye opener to experience how challenging it was to move my data from one Google account to another. Takeout is nice in theory, but there is no equivalent "Takein" service that accepts the data form import to another Google account in the format produced by Takeout! I naively assumed "Export Google calendar from here, import same files to there" but nope, that did not work at all. Maps data was even worse.
EDIT: asking because I've been working on an alternative of sorts. I used GV a lot before I figured I could go without it/Google.
And, possibly most importantly to me right now, my current phone has only a data connection and I make and receive calls using the Voice app. I think SIP eats too much battery and data and doesn't work well for wifi<->lte switching, but it's been a long time since I used it much.
I previously looked at jmp.chat but they didn't really inspire confidence on the security front.
Never used Gmail other than as a throwaway account.
Went many years before I had a Youtube account. Finally made one to upload some videos. I am normally not logged in.
(OK, OK - I was more concerned with them suddenly charging for a "free" service, as well as selling data to commercial enterprises than with them giving to the government).
(OK, OK - I do use Android).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUHBPuHS-7s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPIC_2014
Edit: People are not understanding the humor in the question. I implied I predicted this reality 20 years ago, and he's asking for another prediction 20 years out.
The question is, who do you trust with your private data forever? To me and the parent, the answer is obvious: no one except yourself.
Mozilla backed it with a grant but that was a few years ago.
My initial motivation for this was the "account 89% full" notice, so I wanted to delete all the old junk to free up some space. But after reviewing what's in there (and I've had that account since ~2004) the opposite sentiment arose: delete everything important, unique, personal. Leave them with the junkyard of various subscriptions, newsletters, just the digital flotsam that's both ambiguous and meaningless -- perfect for appearing both legitimate and irrelevant.
Someone is going to say self hosted is better and I don't disagree, but there's limits to how much time I can spend on self hosted stuff.
Protonmail also has gone on record stating that they will comply with legal orders from the Swiss government to spy on and turn over the private data of their users.
https://proton.me/blog/climate-activist-arrest
Swiss law has recently gotten significantly more aggressive in recent years, especially wrt to prosecuting climate activists. Criminal damages for drawing with chalk on pavement, for example...
Look up the "Secret Files Scandal" of 1989 and decide for yourself how comfortable you are with Swiss law.
There has been no evidence of this, stop spreading misinformation. They're clear on what they can and can't hand over and what you can do to reduce the information that they can hand over like billing info. For some inexplicable reason people expect a corporation to disregard legal government warrants and subpoenas. Thinking any company would do this is next level delusion. Even if you self-hosted, you wouldn't be able to escape this because it would just end up with you in jail.
The only protection against that is end to end encryption. And to this day Proton has handed over zero data that falls under their E2EE umbrella.
At best, even if you assumed that they were collecting incoming/outgoing emails before encryption it would be nonsensical to think that this wasn't happening to other providers, it's just the nature of email. Nobody who cares about absolute privacy should be using it as a means of critical communication regardless.
The notion that Proton capitulates and somehow hands over your emails or other encrypted data is false and completely unsubstantiated. Unlike Google on the other hand, who will hand over your entire inbox unencrypted with zero issue to DHS/the FBI merely for writing a letter to an attorney:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/02/03/hom...
https://archive.is/kmWHG
https://redact.dev/blog/proton-mail-journalist-suspensions-c...
https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1nd07w0/comment/nd...
First I signed up with Proton Mail and added my own domain, they fit the bill for me, YMMV.
Then I did a search in my password manager and went through those accounts.
Then I just let the old account sit there for a year. Each time I got an email from something I cared about I'd log in and change mail.
It's been a year now, and I'm about to terminate the old account. All I get there now is occasional spam.
I really dreaded this, but all in all quite painless. And next time it should be easier since I now own the email domain.
edit: Forgot to mention I use Thunderbird, so old email I archived to local folders. That's part if why I ended with Proton, their IMAP bridge allows me to keep using Thunderbird.
I’ve also had some bad experiences with rates being raised on domains. That still ends up feeling like a risk to me, as the problem of domain squatters has not been solved, and the “solution” being employed seems to be continued rate hikes and exorbitant pricing for “premium” domains. It makes buying a domain for email not seem worth it… or at least not without its own long-term risks.
My current project has been trying to reduce my footprint, by deleting old and unused accounts, so any future migrations will be easier. I’ve found with many sites, this is easier said than done. For example, I deleted my Venmo account at least 2 months ago, yet I just got an email from them yesterday about reviewing privacy settings. Did they delete my account? They sure didn’t delete all my data if I continue to get emails. I’m betting they just set a ‘delete’ flag in the database. The lack of accountability and transparency on these things is really bad.
I've actually split the accounts. I have a Gmail which I use for "throwaway" accounts, like shopping sites where I don't care if I lose access. But it's probably better to exercise some account hygiene and do some spring cleaning every now and then.
There are a million services that assume that if you have access to the email content you are the account holder. Google claims they don't recycle email addresses, but if you lose your domain, the next owner has access to all emails from that point forward.
If something happens and you're unable to renew your domain, are your next of kin out of luck?
I'd say "don't do that". I had a friend pass which I knew had a custom domain for email, I told the relatives they had to be on the ball regarding renewal.
At least my registrar will keep sending invoices for a few months without letting go cough cough, so should be enough time to get the certificate of probate. With that the heirs should be able to get the invoice so they can pay.
For general security, I also use a yubikey for all services that support it, froze credit with all agencies, and added phone support passwords to all my financial institutions.
The failure modes of that are fire/natural disaster, and thieves. Do that, but also have a geographically redundant backup scheme. Either encrypted eg Backblaze or a relatives house in another state.
Overall it’s been an acceptable trade off and I’m glad years ago I switched to a custom domain for email so I can have portability.
I honestly assumed that everyone had a rotten time with Gmail spam filtering but I guess it’s just a me problem. I suppose that means I’m up for an interesting time dealing with it as I move to a custom domain somewhere else.
Anyone have any recommendations for providers that have exceptionally good spam filtering? Hell I’d even just settle for ones that honor “mark as spam,” because Gmail absolutely does not.
I'm getting a lot of emails and between 10-20 spams a day, but that's years of the very careful messages reporting and categorisation.
Similarly with important and "normal" emails - i only get one-two important per week, and marked as such for the same reasons; no false negatives.
Fair point. However...the parent's comment is also fair because the article does a poor job of raising this material fact. You have to click through a sub-article.
It's almost like this article should be tagged (2025) because it's basically a replay of the author's account from 2025.[0]
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/05/palest...
I didn't mention it in op but I also moved to graphene os which tbh feels much better than android has recently.
The request came in April 2025, and the user was notified the following month. That's next to a year for them to hear about it internally and then quit and setup self-hosting prior to today.
For all I know this could be somebody's OpenClaw spouting bullshit. The default credibility of all throwaways is zero and that was even true before 2023.
If you let it influence your opinion in any way you're a fool.
The account is from 2013 but given that profile, I can't give it any credibility. After all, it could be somebody's OpenClaw having been granted control of the account.
Luckily for HN, I actually have a post history. You can use my post history, textual analysis and statistics to make an informed decision about whether I'm a bot or not. Whether I'm being consistent or spouting any random bs.
The account I was responding to doesn't have anything.
> The account is from 2013 but given that profile, I can't give it any credibility.
What's in my profile is a statistical fact. It's there as a reminder, to me, not to expect everyone to see the world the same way that I do. To be comfortable with strong disagreement.
Just a hair shy of half the population is below average intelligence. Roughly 1 in 4 people has a cognitive impairment. This is of any age but trends upwards with age, reaching 2 in 3 by age 70. 1 in 4 Americans take psychiatric medication. 1 in 4 participates in illegal drug use. We haven't even touched on alcohol abuse.
My profile statement is just objective reality, whether you're comfortable with being stated openly or not.
This is a violation of the guidelines: "Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to."
This just proves my point to discount what you say. You're basically admitting to being a pest.
You don't have to dox yourself, but people have to be able to at least call you out on consistency. There needs to be some indication that you're not _just_ a sockpuppet.
Otherwise I don't have any justification to engage with your expressions seriously.
On a more practical level, forcing them to go to court might not be much better. If this went to a FISA court, those are essentially rubber stamps and give nearly 100% approval.
Did you not understand it at the time? Did you not see the news stories? This isn't rhetoric, I'm genuinely curious. It's been public knowledge for a long long time that Google hands data over to the USG without a warrant (likely without even Google eyes on the request, via automated means).
What changed that this story was the one that made you react?
A reasonable approach might be to use an iPhone with a privacy respecting email provider.
Also remember, that when you exchange email with people who use GMail, then they've got you again.
You can try to find a way to keep things private, and many of the people on HN likely have the capability to do so. But hiding from your government because they are weaponizing your information against you seems to be the wrong approach. I just don't understand the American people just rolling over and letting their country / rights / freedoms just be obliterated.
For reference, Obama was pretty big on deportations, but I don't recall this kind of outrage.
and anyway, almost certainly the answer is yes; it is not hard to believe that a person's stance is that systematically deporting people for disagreeing with the government is wrong. "Trump bad" is very often on the basis of principles which trump is violating, not just because it's Trump. Surely you realize that people are mad at him a lot because of the thing he does?
Only on the darkest timeline is a picture more offensive than the threat of genocide.
Gives a good insight into the psyche of power in the US (and probably the psyche of power in general).
That would be true if We The People were reliably informed when we showed up to cast our votes. However, in recent years, we have become detached from reality. "News media" companies pivoted away from keeping their audiences informed about things that mattered and instead focused on capturing audiences and keeping those audiences maximally engaged so that they could be sold to advertisers and otherwise exploited.
Now when people show up to the polls, they think they're voting to keep themselves safe from violent crimnals running rampant; they think they are voting to keep out the flood of strange outsiders coming to take their jobs and eat their family pets. But in reality they're voting for -- and getting -- something quite different.
Weren't the democrats criticised for campaigning on the message that voting for Trump was a significant risk to due process and democracy? I feel like every voter was aware of what happened on Jan 6th and still voted for him with some level of knowledge about that.
What a particular voter was “aware of” regarding Jan 6th and the events that caused it very much depended on where that person got their news. For example, one prominent network was found in court depositions to have knowingly reported complete BS about what Jan 6 was all about: “During pre-trial discovery, Fox News' internal communications were released, indicating that prominent hosts and top executives were aware the network was reporting false statements but continued doing so to retain viewers for financial reasons.”
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Voting_Systems_v._Fox....
More than ever before, people now live in news silos where they get only the news that engages their prior beliefs. And people who are in the Fox News silo have been told, repeatedly, that NPR is fake news from “far-left lunatic” Democrats. Do you remember all the air time Fox News gave to people arguing for the defunding of NPR? How much do you think a Fox News viewer is likely to trust NPR?
Think about it. If you are like the vast majority of people, almost everything you know about what is happening in the world, especially about the highest levels of government, is something you have been told from a source you trust. You are not a part of government policy decisions. You do not speak to people who are primary sources in those decisions. You know only what has been reported to you by third parties. Now imagine that you are getting those reports only from third parties that tell you something that is not true. How would you know that you are being misled?
Personally I feel that non voters effectively voted for Trump, and they should own that as much as die hard MAGA types.
Don't disagree with you in principle but 2024 saw a very, very, very large turnout for US standards - the biggest one... Kamala's 75m+ votes basically are good enough (by very wide margin) to win any previous election (slimmer margin in 2020 than others but you get my point...)
2020 had about 4 million more votes cast.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/voter-turnou...
Yeah, people were getting fed up with the chaos. Biden owes his presidency to Donald Trump, for sure. He tried several times in years prior and could not win on the merits.
Enthusiasm gap. And not during COVID. 2020 was an interesting time as you may recall.
> How did Biden get more votes than Obama, but Trump won the popular vote four years later?
You will be less likely to fall prey to grifters if you look past absolute numbers and realize that the voting age population tends to increase about 10 million every four years. And with turnout generally abysmal, under 60% most times, there is a lot of room for variation.
Lots of people don't vote in mid terms, that's what Trump is aiming for.
His whole schtick seems to be getting voters to show up at the polls who otherwise don't bother to put forth the effort. I've heard it said that this was also Mamdani's trick in NYC (heck, maybe that explains why Trump is so smitten with Mamdani).
So GOP politicians do significantly better any time Trump is sharing the ballot with them. I won't be surprised if the 2026 midterms go very poorly for the GOP. And given that Trump won't ever be on a ballot again, I won't be surprised if his control over congressional GOP members starts to noticeably erode even before the midterms. They definitely know how the game works, and they are going to start looking for ways to keep their jobs.
It worked because a lot of people bought that story (and many continue to buy it evidenced by DJT's approval ratings among the GOP voters). The whole campaign basically had no platform other than your cookie-cutter "migrant crime", "economy bad" ...
Then of course there's the whole "hey, let's not tell the senile old man that he basically promised to be a one-hit-wonder, and wait until the last moment to switch to his running mate instead".
In a way, it's impressive that the dems didn't lose by larger margins. Trump wasn't that popular, the dems were just that incompetent. I hope they pull their head out of their ass for 2028. But I'm not counting on it.
While I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said I do not believe there was a way for Democrats to beat DJT. His machine was just too good and no matter the candidate and no matter the message I don't believe it would have mattered.
There's no formal mechanism of accountability for members of Congress. Representatives hold a few town halls a year where they might be subject to social shaming by their constituents, but there's no legal obligation to do so and even when they're publicly embarrassed they often dismiss public opposition as 'a few paid agitators' or the like.
This is doubly and triply true for complex policy issues which require a lot of explaining, making it virtually impossible to build grassroots support. So you just end up with a nonprofit industrial complex that needs to constantly raise funds for lobbying and publishes slates of endorsements at election time that relatively few people have the time or inclination to read.
Terrance McKenna once said that the worst president was the one in power, regardless of when it is. It is because for the most part, they just keep building on the existing frame work, standing on the shoulders of those before them.
Now one could argue that Trump is doing the opposite this term, but depending on were you stand, this might not have been a great out come.
A solution is Ranked Choice Voting where you can say, "Green, and if they don't win, D (or whatever)."
Fwiw, I vote my conscience, not to win. Not the best for my political positions maybe, but I hope to send a signal to others that maybe something other than R/D is one day possible. But, yeah, RCV would help with that conundrum.
Trump recently posted a diatribe about ranked choice voting in Alaska (calling it "disastrous, and very fraudulent").
Do you know why the modern GOP hates ranked choice voting? Because they rely upon getting clown votes wasted on the Tulsi Gabbard, Jill Stein's and Kanye West's of the world as a way to get elected. They just need to entice just enough fool-vote drawers, knowing the cult will not sway an iota.
That desire is gone so they are going all out.
Willing, optional compliance with the administration is the core problem here.
[1]: https://www.acluofnorthcarolina.org/app/uploads/drupal/sites...
b) I also lived in Austin during that time, and the scale and militarization of current ICE action is on another level to what it was in the early 10's
I haven't seen a single ICE raid in the 10 years i've lived in the area. I did see DHS do a raid on a house once but i've yet to even see ICE. I'm not saying they're not around but they certainly don't make their presence known in an area overflowing with undocumented immigrants. I keep waiting for the jack boots and armored vehicles to roll through and wholesale round everyone up like i read about but it seems business as usual all day every day in Oakcliff.
edit: Honestly, i think no one really cares about oakcliff anymore. Dallas PD does nothing about the constant gunfire at night or street racing. So it makes sense ICE is never alerted, i think the people who would alert ICE just don't bother. I'm not sure if that's good or bad.
https://www.wlrn.org/immigration/2026-01-23/politifact-fl-im...
https://tracreports.org/tracatwork/detail/A6019.html
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO00/20200109/110349/HHRG...
Whether you think we should look at per-year numbers or the overall numbers, I'd say that most people count total progress of a thing moreso than the velocity, or the prices of things instead of the spot inflation rate.
I rememebr friends doing migrant support in San Antonio in 2012 and similar actions.
I bet it feels nice to pretend that it's other folks who are hypocrites.
But don't forget that you're just pretending.
https://www.aclu.org/news/human-rights/ones-obama-left-behin...
https://www.aclu.org/news/human-rights/ones-obama-left-behin...
Obama might have even campaigned on some of these issues, but DNC insiders are experts at making big promises up front and walking them back[0]. Hell, I'm pretty sure Obama deported more people more often than Trump did, at least in his first term. And when people were suing ICE over COVID-era border closures, Biden staffers were privately wishing the activists on their side would lose.
Keep in mind, open borders is a libertarian policy, not a left-wing one. American lefties tend to also skew libertarian, but the "liberals" running the DNC are basically just Republicans with a liberal accent. The uniparty is real.
[0] I'm already seeing this with Mamdani and Queenslink. He is, at the very least, letting the shitty Queensway "let's cover this old railway up with politically untouchable greenspace to make the car-owning NIMBYs happy by stopping Queenslink" plan continue forward.
Secondly: "open borders is a libertarian policy, not a left-wing one" doesn't really make sense. Saying a particular policy is inherently part of only a single ideology just isn't how ideologies work. Also, if you're looking for anti-statists who view people from all countries as equal and are for people being able to choose which government to be under then the ideology that best fits that is "anarchism". If you're using a definition where "anarchism" and "libertarianism" are essentially the same then you're using a definition where "libertarian" isn't particularly right wing (which makes contrasting it to "left wing" not make sense).
The author isn't American.
Edit - wait until y'all find out other countries also have borders and laws...
Note in Heller and elsewhere it was determined "the people" are those who belong to the political class (which is a bit vague, refer to next sentence, but not same as voting class). Generally this is not those on non-immigrant visas or illegal aliens (though circuits are split on this). If you don't have the right to bear arms, clearly you are not "the people" since people by definition have the right to bear arms, which means you wouldn't have the right of "the people" to protest either, no? So it appears since they are not people, they don't have the right to assemble in protest, though they may have other first amendment rights since it's protest specifically that was narrowed to "the people" rather than many of the other parts of the first amendment which are worded without that narrowing.
For instance, speech without assembly isn't narrowed to just "the people." Perhaps this was done intentionally since allowing non-people to stage protests was seen as less desirable than merely allowing them to otherwise speak freely.
Note: Personally I do think non-immigrants are people, but trying to apply the same "people" two different ways with the exact same wording makes no sense. If they can't bear arms they necessarily are not "the people" and thus are not afforded the right to "assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
How many of the Pilgrims had a valid modern visa?
US also didn't have Jus soli citizenship until the whole civil war and slavery debacle. You had to go into a local court and show you lived in the US for a couple years, who would swear you in as a citizen. But most people didn't care about voting or holding office enough to bother.
Actually, my understanding is that the US did largely follow jus soli. What it wasn't was unconditional jus soli, but the principle was birth in the bounds of the US conferred citizenship except if positive law existed not conferring citizenship.
As I said above, a law you have to tie yourself in knots to justify might be a bad law.
> If you have to work your way round to "they are not people" for the law to be consistent, consider that it might be a bad law.
I disagree that the law (which has been changed, amended and clarified) has been 'consistently obvious', and I still maintain that the conclusion of 'immigrants aren't people' invalidates the law.
"Peaceably" is important. If you think the pro-Palestinian protests on campus are peaceful, try wearing a yarmulke and walking anywhere near them. Or anywhere on many campuses, on any day, protest on-going or not.
You could make this argument, but the Supreme Court does not seem to agree, they have consistently said that "the people" is basically everyone here. Even those unlawfully here.
That said, the second amendment does have some interpretation that allows for restrictions on temporary visa holders like the student that is the topic of this discussion. But it also has rulings that support it applying to illegal immigrants.
This is absolutely false. DC v Heller cites that "the people" refers to members of the "political community."[] Not "basically everyone here." The interpretation of what "political community" means has been split in the circuits. One court in Illinois found it might include illegal immigrants (who have settled as immigrants) or non-immigrant visa holders that were illegally settling here. This is anomalous. Generally they've found the political community to be something approximating those with immigrant type visas, permanent residency, or citizenship -- barring some exceptions from those like felons.
Even if you dig up the most generous case in illinois (I've forgotten the name) which claims some illegal immigrants are "the people", which it has been awhile since I read it -- even they narrow the political community refered to by "the people" to people actually settling as part of the community and not just basically anyone inside the US in a way that would suggest it applies to tourists or student visa holders using their visa in the legal manner.
[] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/554/570/I thought it was settled constitutional law that it doesn't? Moreover, during the war on terror, it was established that the president can freely order the murder of non Americans outside the US.
Unfortunately Trump is doing whatever he wants at this point and ignoring anyone that says otherwise.
Sounds like Google stopped caring.
But... Why on earth do the people filing an administrative subpoena not have to notify the interested parties too? Why is it Google's responsibility? If they didn't tell you, would you ever find out?
Generally they do - with some notable exceptions being if you're a non-citizen and you're no longer in the US, and it's either a criminal investigation or related to intelligence or national security.
> In September 2024, Amandla Thomas-Johnson was a Ph.D. candidate studying in the U.S. on a student visa when he briefly attended a pro-Palestinian protest.
> Weeks later, in Geneva, Switzerland
It is obviously not criminal, but I guess that you don't need much to qualify something as related to intelligence and national security, attending a pro-Palestinian protest may be enough.
The problem is they tell user that they'll inform you right away and give them a chance to challenge the subpoena.
A quick search shows that they've done in the past and people have been able to get the subpoena's withdrawn.
https://thefulcrum.us/rule-of-law/us-administrative-subpoena...
I'm curious if this was a common issue or Google's legal team was flooded with subpoenas during the first months of the administration during their deportation surge (they did around 100k removals around that time). Homeland sent the request to Google a month prior to when they released the data and notified him, so they had time to notify, but it clearly isn't an automated thing.
KYC laws mean that his carrier has his name and email address and the feds probably got that without anyone informing the customer.
For supported devices, which include Pixel 8, Pixel 9, and Pixel 10 series, the Find Hub network can locate your phone for several hours even if the battery runs out or the device is powered off. """
https://support.google.com/android/answer/3265955?hl=en#zipp...
Couldn't find any official documentation from Apple, but there's this:
https://www.howtogeek.com/805624/what-does-iphone-findable-a...
Do you apply that principle universally in your life?
C’mon, be honest about why you doubt the story.
To be honest, it's that plus the fact that this article omits things we already know. It wasn't just that he "attended a pro-Palestine protest at Cornell University," they shut down a jobs fair. I went to a liberal college too, I know that a lot of these "peaceful" protests are actually quite forceful and infringe on others' rights more than anyone ever reports.
My bias is in the other direction if anything. The author was protesting the US involvement with Israel, and even if he did something wrong, I believe he was targeted for this reason only. If you ask me, Israel has way too much control over US politics and other institutions. AIPAC and ADL ought to be classified as foreign entities because they de facto represent Israel's govt here, and there are some people in those orgs I consider outright traitors to the USA because they're making us pay taxes to a small country overseas. We need like a Tea Party 3.0 (unfortunately 2.0 already happened).
I read recently that 80% of the money the US commits to Israel has to be spent in the United States. Similar to the US funding Ukraine it is largely just buying from domestic US manufacturers or old stockpiles. It's a sort of stimulus program that funds the US military industrial complex and prop up allies. There was law passed that 100% of foreign military financing has to be spent in the US in 2028.
Israel gets $3b/yr, Egypt $1.3B/yr, Jordan $1.4B/yr, Taiwan etc. Lebanon recently started getting financing. Pakistan used to be a big beneficiary.
It’s a huge pet peeve of mine when people don’t say what they are actually thinking :)
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/05/palest...
[2]: https://panthernow.com/2026/03/03/international-students-sel...
Sun reporters on the scene did not observe any physical violence towards law enforcement but did note distress among recruiters, students and administration involved in the career fair.[1]
[1] https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2024/09/pro-palestine-pro...
Everywhere you go, if your phone is in your pocket, you are being tracked and stored, and available to the government.
Everywhere your car goes, is tracked and stored and available to the government.
BTW, the J6 protesters were all tracked and identified by their cell phone data.
Many of the insurrectionists were also caught on camera in congress after they broke down the doors and stormed the building. Some even took selfies in the offices of various senators and house reps.
If it's not your computer, it's not your data.
There’s been some pushback since then, but nothing to give any confidence that CODENAMEY, CODENAMEZ, and many others have have sprung up.
There are many things everyday people can do to insulate themselves from these choices. Encrypted DNS, VPNs, avoiding cloud services, educating friends on why Gmail is really Fedmail, etc. It's not so over-and-done with as you seem to make it out to be.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/05/palest...
You made an editorial choice to leave out the part about selling weapons to Israel to use against Gaza.
Once can agree or disagree with the action to disrupt the career.
Either way, I find your omission a bit glaring.
Why would you go to a country for study purposes - where you explicitly tell the visa officers you're on US soil ONLY for study purposes - which is what the student visa explicitly grants you to do and then participate in a protest against the very country that granted you the study visa and then get mad that you are under investigation and would have been kicked out for violating the said visa? That's so bizarre.
What in the world does “ONLY for study purposes” mean? 24 hours a day, every day of the week?
> participate in a protest against the very country that granted you the study visa and then get mad that you are under investigation and would have been kicked out for violating the said visa? That's so bizarre.
First, he briefly attended the protest. Not the same as participating. I doubt the data from Google indicated he was holding a sign, shouting slogans, or speaking on stage. And it doesn’t sound like there was any marching or sit-in involved. (And if so, for 5 minutes?)
Second, why are you willfully equating a pro-Palestinian protest with being an anti-US protesT? Was the purpose of the protest to raise charitable funds, encourage more open discussion about the war on campus, provide moral support to Palestinian classmates, and/or any of a myriad of other purposes?
Finally, even if the purpose of the protest was politically motivated —- to push US policy on Israel and Palestine to change, how is that bizarre? In your mind is any protest that seeks to change a government’s policy at that moment an assault on that government, or on that nation? Someone who protests the death penalty, protests for stronger/weaker abortion laws, stronger/weaker gun laws, etc?
This is the USA we’re talking about. Despite all our faults (and they are legion), it is the bedrock of our founding and our core principles that democracy is a participatory process. Not just on Election Day. Throughout history we have advanced as a people and a nation because individuals have stepped up and spoken up. That has always been what has pushed us forward.
Bizarre indeed.
People may be tired of seeing stories like this appear on HN, but getting this story exposure to this group is exactly why they need to hit the homepage.
When you call in to Support at Google, you'll get someone who is a specialist in a certain thing, and they have access to only the tools and data necessary to do their particular job with your account. They rely on your disclosure of stuff to them. I often find myself uploading files to Drive, or images to Photos, and sharing them Public so that the Googler can follow a link.
As an anecdotal example, I've visited Waymo depots a couple of times. (Not actually Google, but a sister company under Alphabet.) The depot is completely nondescript, and I wouldn't have identified it if I didn't know what it was. There are a few Visitor parking spaces up front. And the front entrance leads to a Security Desk. The waiting room has about 4 chairs and a table of interesting design. The Security Guard will see you know. And there's a door beyond.
I was there to pick up "Lost & Found" items. You basically get the impression that security is tight as a drum. The guards can be kind of informal; there are employees circulating in and out; but ain't nobody going to exfiltrate a bunch of data, if they appreciate their freedom and civil rights.
I am not tired of that at all. But you have people be tired of tons of things, on reddit too. That should not distract discussions. If technology is involved I think it perfectly fits HN and in this regard, the state uses technology to sniff after people - without a real legal, objective cause. It's almost as if the current administration attempts to inflate court cases to weaken the system, e. g. until judges say "no, that's too much work, I just auto-convict via this AI tool the government gave me".
> the administration’s rhetoric about cracking down on students protesting what we saw as genocide forced me into hiding for three months. Federal agents came to my home looking for me. A friend was detained at an airport in Tampa and interrogated about my whereabouts.
Do you think any of them were sincere?
On a side note, it was interesting after Trump was elected where some of my co-workers wanted to use old pronouns after some laws changed _in meetings_ and I realized the only thing stopping them was the awkwardness it would have been for _them_ in that situation
Of course, it turned out that the average American had no problem learning what a pronoun was if it gave them the opportunity to be mean. Sigh.
Maybe there was some other sign they didn't ask in good faith? But I have no idea what dumb thing trump said you're even talking about.
It's so weird how people join these partisan factions that have a full package of beliefs that you have to be evil not to share. Woe to your job if you say that you think brush buildup should be cleared; you're obviously racist.
Intelligent people don't post condescending, shallow dismissals.
Were they clearly actually talking about that? If that was their question, word-for-word, it's a good question! We are not managing our forests all that well. No, we shouldn't be doing Trump's dumbass raking "idea", but we should be doing controlled burns, at minimum.
Are you sure about that? I've been hearing for at least a decade that the solution to CA's forest fire problem is something along the lines of reducing the amount of potential fuel that is allowed to build up by either allowing smaller fires to run their course without intervention or alternatively aggressively executing controlled burns on a regular schedule.
Not sure how viable that is as a solution but I do know the idea didn't originate with Trump because it predates his entire political career.
Not that this is the only factor in play here on a lot of these fires, and once again I do agree Trump's take is idiotic and ultimately he's not helping but pouring gasoline on the issue. Just pointing out, we definitely aren't managing our forests well for a multitude of reasons.
https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/12/12/twenty-year-study-confi...
In the west coast, the state vs federal friction reduces how much of that happens, and there's more uncontrolled growth happening. And there's not always a lot that e.g. CA government can do about it if it's federal land.
For example, Minnesota (intentionally) burns like 50% more acreage than California on an annual basis, despite being like half the size. But CA also is like half federal land, MN is like 5% or something.
Allowing people they don't like to insult them? Not much of a priority.
The number of HNers (and people at large) who think that both corporate parties don't vehemently oppose free speech and privacy is disturbing. Right now, today, a massive number of Democrats who have spent years decrying Trump (and Republicans as a whole) as fascists are lining up to support a "clean" reauthorization of section 702 of FISA, which allows (despite the phony claims of its supporters) the warrantless and unconstituional surveillance of US citizens (and others). If our government was controlled fascists, why would anyone give them the power to spy on anyone without a warrant? Because it's all kabuki theater and everyone in DC is part of the same team, and you ain't on it.
I don't think anyone posting here thinks that Democrats are pro-free speech and pro-privacy, and it would be great if we could have politicians that truly support free speech and privacy rights. But of the options currently available, one is much less bad than the other.
Obama was murdering US citizens for exercising their free speech, and their children, more than a decade ago.
>But of the options currently available, one is much less bad than the other.
If one person says they are going to stab 99 people and the other person says they are going to stab 100 people, you could argue that the guy who stabs 99 people isn't as bad, but I won't ever support either one of them or consider them worthwhile no matter how many others do.
With such a small sample size, you have a whole lot of confidence saying "well, the Dems encouraged them".
Which ones?
Can you further clarify how the US was involved in the war in Gaza, and how that was the Democrats getting involved? And do you really feel that involvement was anywhere near what is happening or comparable with Iran at the moment?
How many US servicemembers were injured or killed in the US's apparent major war with Gaza?
We've spent ~$20B in grants for weapons procurement on Israel's behalf over several years, with a lot of that being defensive missile systems. I'm not a fan of us spending so much of our money on another country's military, especially when we hear over and over how we can't afford to feed kids or provide transportation to our people. But, we've spent over double than that so far in Iran in less than two months, and that's ignoring the many billions it'll cost to fix things that were destroyed so far. We're looking at the actual US cost of this war potentially reaching one trillion dollars.
Its a scale that's so radically different. And also, one was in support of a country who we have defense agreements with who was attacked, and another was us deciding to go bomb a country seemingly unprovoked.
Who is spreading whataboutism again?
Like, if you want less american money (and lives) being spent bombing the middle east, the most rational approach is to vote for a democrat majority/president and then primary anyone who still tries to buy bombs or whatever.
The alternative approach of letting a republican get elected is demonstrably worse.
I wish america would stop sending money to israel, for a bunch of reasons. That desire is most likely to be realized by a strong democrat majority.
Everyone must simultaneously fight for a better system and choose the least-worst option when it comes time for an election.
At the time, the Republicans whined incessantly about how soft Obama was. But they sure enjoyed dropping those Obama Bombs last year that he commissioned as a Plan B. Obama spoke softly, carried a big stick, and hammered out a brilliant deal. Trump bragged loudly, tore up the deal, swung the stick he inherited, missed, and fell in the oil. Sad.
At the time, Israel whined incessantly about how Iran was going to secretly enrich anyway. But their own intelligence from compromising the enrichment program shows in hindsight that this was not the case and Iran was behaving themselves.
That's why I base my expectations on track records, not on Republican whining.
US withdrew from JCPOA under Trump (which led to a certain chain of events), but Biden was not able to revive it during his term. Not clear why we think a different president would be able to, and under what terms/concessions.
I wonder what wonderful things all the Russian and Iranian (!) oil that Trump lifted sanctions on will fund! We will find out in time.
Kamala had a better shot at reviving the deal for the same reason Trump thought he had a chance at regime change: Iran's situation has been deteriorating. I'm quite sure that if she had hammered out a deal comparable to the JCPOA, Republicans would be running around yapping about how Trump would have achieved peace in the middle east by just having the stones to bomb Iran. Lol.
This is probably the best and most succinct -- and pithy -- take I've read as of yet.
Iran's regime sucked (still sucks), to be sure. This was frankly not all that much of an issue for the US. It was a big issue for other Arab nations in the area (not to mention for Israel), but I'm not sure why we should be doing their dirty work.
If the end result of all this is a large weakening in Iran's regime, a reduction in Iran's influence in the region, and (otherwise) a return to the status quo, I guess that's something of a victory. But it's far from clear that we'll even come out that well, and meanwhile we've murdered civilians, and spent American lives and war materiel. Not great. We should have left well enough alone.
Iran isn't a democracy, it's an authoritarian theocracy that spreads terrorism throughout the Middle East, and that brutally oppresses it's own people[0]. The only objective of the regime is to stay in power, regardless of the costs imposed to Iran and other countries, and the only language they understand is violence.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_massacres
I hope you're joking!
IMO there are no surprises from this admin, they are doing what they promised.
Trump has been very clearly against free speech well before 2015. He's been anti-American and anti-constituion well before he came down that escalator.
It doesn't make me feel better that you're still pretending otherwise.
Trump? Not holding up his end of the deal? Who could have seen that coming!
They were also very eager to supply weapon tech to Israel when the Gaza war started, far more eager than they ever were to supply it to our own country. Leadership was letting employees push back, then all of a sudden in ~2023 they told everyone to shut up and physically gated off the HQ. Then told everyone to shut up even more after some people broke into Thomas Kurian's office.
Maybe the founders have personal reasons. Sergey Brin called the UN antisemitic for calling out genocide in Gaza.
It's very much not clear whether he is in a legal right or not. And no other country besides Western liberal democracies would allow anything like this. Certainly many Muslim countries do not allow it.
As an aside, a pro-Palestinian African is a laugh. Do you think Palestinians give the slightest damn about black African's plight?
Google was also sued by former employees who claim they were fired because they tried to prevent Google from doing evil[2], in accordance with the code of conduct they agreed to. Sadly that lawsuit ended with a secret settlement, so we'll never know what a jury thinks. Since "don't be evil" is still in there I suppose it could come up again.
[0]: https://abc.xyz/investor/board-and-governance/google-code-of...
[1]: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-dont-be-evil/2540...
[2]: https://www.npr.org/2021/11/29/1059821677/google-dont-be-evi...
here is the google code of conduct: https://abc.xyz/investor/board-and-governance/google-code-of...
scroll down to the bottom, and you will see:
"And remember... don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!"
What is called "Google" today is actually the old, fully evil, advertising firm "DoubleClick" pretending to be "Google" to make use of the goodwill the "Google" brand name used to have attached to it.
Even today, I would argue an average sample of Googlers will likely think slightly differently about these things than an average sample of Facebook employees; but of course both will have to respond to influence from the external world: i.e. customer, society, govt.
That plus aggressive avoidance of anything resembling customer service and what sounds like an internal environment that may be moving towards cage matches makes it worth avoiding for anything important.
> The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users.
- Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, 1998
...then BackRub turned Gogool mis-spelled, and the rest is history.
I've been thinking about this a lot while working on a side project. I ended up making it work entirely offline — no server, no account, no network calls. Not out of paranoia, just because I couldn't come up with a good reason to ask users to trust me with their data. Turns out the best privacy policy is just not having anyone's data.
It's called Hodor — prompt launcher for macOS.
What exactly did the request for information say from DHS? What exactly was the reason for them to look for you specifically (certainly there are many others protesting)? Following up on that, how do others avoid something like this? What red flags should be avoided and how?
There may or may not be a solid answer for any of this. But this article feels like it's made for awareness, when it could also be made for action, with the right details included.
That said, a lot of this comes down to a failure in education around privacy and the cultural norm around folks thinking they have nothing to hide. The intuition most people have around privacy, and security, is incredibly poor.
Others do have constitutional rights, but the legislative and executive hold plenary powers in the realm of national security and immigration.
"In September 2024, Amandla Thomas-Johnson was a Ph.D. candidate studying in the U.S. on a student visa when he briefly attended a pro-Palestinian protest."
incredible.
Was that ever wrong?
Now, please tell me that American companies are better at privacy than the Chinese ones.
Btw, some alternative email providers in truly democratic countries:
* ProtonMail (Switzerland)
* TutaMail, Posteo, Mailbox.org and Eclipso (Germany)
* Runbox (Norway)
* Mailfence (Belgium)
If you have sensitive things in your emails, host your own mail, use GPG encryption or a one-time pad, or even avoid electronic networked machines altogether (depending on the level of security that you require).
Switzerland-hosted services are no safer than others, recall that Crypto AG, who promised to sell secure encryption machines, were just a cover by foreign intelligence services (jointly US/DE-owned/operated by the CIA & BND).
This is such a myopic view of the situation. Are you going to only exchange emails with people you host as well? Otherwise, anyone you exchange emails with will go through other email providers.
Chinese companies give data to China.
I don't trust either of them, but if I had to choose, I would use Chinese products in the U.S. and vice versa.
Say what you want about especially Germany, but there you don't get sued by the president for billions if he doesn't like your opinion.
https://policies.google.com/terms/information-requests?hl=en...
I cannot find any promises in that document nor would I expect to find any. It's a policy not an agreement
At best, the policy contains "representations"
The author might claim he was deceived by misrepresentations, and this deception had consequences for him, amounting to measurable harm
But proving these statements about Google's internal operations are false is difficult. Proving Google's intent in making them is even more difficult
It's incorrect to interpret a "policy" comprising statements about what Google allegedly does internally as an agreement to do anything in the future
Promises can be enforced through the legal process. Generally, Silicon Valley's so-called "tech" companies do not make "promises" to users that can be enforced. Imagine what would happen if they did
Where?
The policy does not contain the word "will" and makes no reference to what Google will (cf. "may") do in the future
The policy is comprised of statements about what Google has done in the past
The claims here are for deceptive trade practices, not breach of agreement (enforceable promise)
Google could agree, i.e., promise, to notify. It does not. Readers should ask themselves why
Instead Google states it typically notifies, i.e., has notified in the past, or may notify under certain circumstances
No doubt Google can show the statements in the policy are true at least some of the time. It is just disclosing what it has sometimes done in the past. Nothing in these statements binds it to doing something in the future. It could decide to change its procedures and update the policy at any time. It can also make justifiable exceptions at any time for any reason, irrespective of whatever it has done in the past
The "Guest author" of this EFF page should not be surprised when he/she is ignored by the Attorneys General contacted
That's the author's interpretation. The promise doesn't indicate anything of the sort (as of this writing). And users cannot challenge these requests -- users don't own the data (in the US). The promise is very clear that Google will provide the data, if the request is compliant.
Now the text of the notification was past tense, that the information was provided, whereas the promise is crystal clear that Google will notify before providing the info, but to me that could amount to a simplification of "we have verified that the request is legally compliant and will be providing the info to them in 250 ms".
Don't get me wrong, I'm not on Google's side. I'm a huge privacy nut. But the fix is to not give your info to Google, not trust that they will abide by any policy. Especially in a case like this where your freedom is at risk. Most people are completely unaware and unthinking but this guy seems that he was fully aware and placed his trust in Google.
The Google policy he linked to says:
> We won’t give notice when legally prohibited under the terms of the request. We’ll provide notice after a legal prohibition is lifted.
There appears to be no defense against this beyond not allowing companies access to your data in the first place.
Take this as a warning.
https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview
And we don't even know what the guy is really wanted for. I think EFF was just waiting for this to happen to make a political statement. That's what they do, if course, but how the hell can they be sure they're aren't vouching for a criminal?
It was a decade+ ago that Snowden explained to us, with receipts, that the USG has warrantless access to everything stored in Apple (iCloud Photos and iCloud Backup are unencrypted and contain a copy of everything on your device), Google, Microsoft, Amazon, et al. You have to be an ostrich with your head in the sand to not be well aware of this at this late juncture.
You'd have to be a moron to let the feds read all of your mail without a warrant by default - any country's feds.
It's certainly been quite the turn recently. But being between the people and the governments that seemingly inevitably will turn into arch fascist pricks & go to war against the citizens is not an enviable position. Hopefully many jurisdictions start enacting laws that insist companies build unbreakable backdoorless crypto. Hopefully we see legislation that is the exact opposite of chat control mandatory backdoors. It's clear the legal firewalls are ephemeral, can crumble, given circumstances and time. We need a more resolute force to protect the people: we need the mathematicians/cryptographers!
President Trump pressured House Republicans on Wednesday to extend a high-profile warrantless surveillance law without changes, declaring on social media: “I am willing to risk the giving up of my Rights and Privileges as a Citizen for our Great Military and Country!”
Mr. Trump urged the G.O.P. to “unify” behind Speaker Mike Johnson for a critical procedural vote that had been scheduled for late Wednesday night. The vote would clear the way for House approval of a bill extending a major section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. The law is set to expire on April 20.
The statute, known as Section 702, permits the government to collect the messages of foreigners abroad without a warrant from American companies like Google — even if the targets are communicating with Americans.
A brand new car.
Paying the price of your own choices.
This is embarrassing to admit, but I miss the halcyon days when folks were still nominally pretending to be free speech warriors.
If you're a guest in another country, act like a guest.
When I was living on a military base in Germany, I and my family were required to behave as a guest of the Germans. The military was quite strict about that.
I didn't have any issue with that. When I travel to another country, I behave as if I was their guest, which I was.
A couple times there were protests in a country I was visiting, and I stayed well away from them.
Pretending the rules of a private domicile apply to a jurisdiction by analogy is a sleight of hand. It operates like arguing that because memory safety is a strict requirement in system architecture, we must ensure human memories remain uncorrupted. The domains function under entirely different mechanics. A non-citizen in a public space is constrained by statutory law (and our statutory law is based on our understanding of inherent freedoms), not the etiquette of a houseguest.
The point remains, however. If you're here on a visa, the visa can be revoked, and you can be ejected. Revoking a visa is not a criminal sanction and not a violation of your rights, as there is no right to a visa. Your citizenship cannot be revoked.
These deportations are an interesting study in how this plays out, because historically immigration and, especially, deportations is an area of law where the usual rule pertains. But free speech is the complete opposite, where for the past 100 years courts are much more scrutinizing; indeed, precedent in free speech case law requires explicit, deliberate, and fine-grained application of varying levels of scrutiny in each, individual case, a process which is quite exceptional even in cases involving constitutional powers and rights.
It's worth pointing out that prior to the modern legal era, free speech law was quite different, both nationally and at the state level. Regulations and applications of regulations that incidentally impinged upon speech, but which otherwise clearly derived from legitimate state powers, received very light of any scrutiny. Regulation of commercial activity, for example, usually would not be considered to violate free speech rights even if it prohibited certain speech outright, so long as enforcement was nominally directed at commercial activity per se.
The person who wrote the article was at a protest. I presume he was identified as being there via his cell phone. Then, being a visa holder, he was investigated for being a security risk. He evidently was not deemed to be one, his visa was not revoked, and he was not charged with anything.
BTW, I'd be spooked, too, if federal agents arrived at my door to question me.
Their 1st sentence said clearly bureaucrats or even leadership should not have broad discretion I thought. And they did not say criminal sanction. What did you think implied it?
This was a fallacious excuse for a fallacious analogy.
> Revoking a visa is not a criminal sanction and not a violation of your rights, as there is no right to a visa.
They mentioned inherent freedoms. They believed rights and laws are different seemingly.
> Your citizenship cannot be revoked.
Your citizenship cannot be revoked possibly. Others can.[2]
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47537839
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denaturalization
However, as a thought experiment, let's go with your flawed analogy: Even then, this person was acting like a guest -- it is a long-cherished American tradition to exercise our constitutionally-protected right to free speech, assemble, and yes, protest. Nothing's more American than speaking against Government oppression and overreach.
The government is not your owner. The government is not your father. You are a participant in the affairs of your country, and take responsibility in its direction. Civic engagement and right to protest are important tools to make our government accountable. These are fundamental American values. And you're welcome to bring friends. It's legal.
Members of the military and their families stationed in a foreign country are required to behave as guests of the host country. This is not a joke and is not taken lightly by the command. Also, an officer who cannot control the behavior of his family is not fit to be an officer.
Maybe things have changed since I was a boy, but I hope not.
You can murder 20 people and not even go to jail if you are in the US army in an european base.
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidente_della_funivia_del_Ce...
Yes, I know it's widespread, but it should really apply to non-residents. People that live and work in a country should have the right to protest.
It's part of what makes it a democracy.
A core of democracy is a finite pool of voters, and infinite immigration and foreign protests are a direct threat to our democracy in a way that removing someone on visa isn't.
Yes, this case is a travesty, but that does not change the soundness of the advice.
When in Rome.
I couldn’t care less about a non citizen’s non existent free speech rights, nor would I expect to be provided rights exclusively afforded to citizens of a country in which I was visiting. Some of you guys have clearly never travelled outside your home countries.
Understanding these things made my life much easier.
The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and Stored Communications Act (SCA) requires service providers to disclose certain types of data (IP addresses, physical address, other identifiers, and session times and durations) in response to an administrative subpoena. The actual content of communications is excluded.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2703
You'd get a real kick out some of the protests in Canada then.
For example, there's https://policies.google.com/terms/information-requests?hl=en...
"""When we receive a request from a government agency, we send an email to the user account before disclosing information. If the account is managed by an organization, we’ll give notice to the account administrator.
We won’t give notice when legally prohibited under the terms of the request. We’ll provide notice after a legal prohibition is lifted, such as when a statutory or court-ordered gag period has expired.
We might not give notice if the account has been disabled or hijacked. And we might not give notice in the case of emergencies, such as threats to a child’s safety or threats to someone’s life, in which case we’ll provide notice if we learn that the emergency has passed."""
I don't want megacorps to ignore our EU laws just like I don't want them to ignore US laws. They're not people, they don't get the right to disobedience.
What is the constitution worth if it is not or only selectively enforced?
It's like an overthrow of a democracy and total inaction against it
That is 100% it. If the people do not revolt against this (general strike), nothing will stop it. Democracy needs to be actively protected.
Yea, they are even worse. They would sell out in a sec once goverment is going after them.
How about making sure that your laws don't authorize ICE data requests? How about that?
The powers that be in the USA have signalled they won't tolerate foreigners protesting state department policy on their soil. This is obviously unconstitutional. But it won't be changed through lawfare.
I of course feel bad for the student here too, he should not be targeted for exercising his rights to peaceful protest.
But Google is not the enemy here, I would bet good money their hand is forced to comply and their mouth is silenced. The enermy here is the overreaching government and ICE
Or they could implement end-to-end encryption for many of their products and they wouldn't be able to give the government the data, even if they wanted to. But that would hamper them to analyze data for ad targeting.
The corporation has no feelings and I don't imagine the board members or shareholders are feeling bad about this.
It's still in the code of conduct
https://abc.xyz/investor/board-and-governance/google-code-of...
And it still doesn't mean a damn thing.
This is true, but only because Google is a horrific monopoly and is allowed to continue to be (and to grow) only by the grace of government. If they don't do what they're told, they won't be allowed to steal in the way that they are accustomed to doing.
I don't think that anybody who controls Google misses a moment of sleep over it, though. They're being "forced" to do it like a kid is being "forced" not to do their homework if you offer them candy. It's easy and lucrative to be passive.
The US is not in a full blown authoritarian regime. Big companies aren't failing to resist because they fear dire consequences. They're doing it because they don't care. If they think caving to the administration will result in $1 in additional profit compared to fighting it, that's what they'll do.
Big corporations are paperclip maximizers but for money. Treat them like you'd treat an AI that's single-mindedly focused on making number go up.
I think we need to expand CCPA so that the government cannot simply spy on you by claiming that “criminals” are near you. Even criminals should have their privacy protected or else they will just label everyone criminals.
It allowed analysts to:
- Watch and record a 30-square-mile area of the city simultaneously, in real-time.
- If a crime occurred, they could "go back in time" to see where a suspect came from. Ie. track a vehicle from its destination back to its source.
- Or they could follow a vehicle "forward" in time to see where it parked, identifying potential hideouts or residences.
Of course, it was recording everyone, not just criminals.
He is almost ashamed of his views because of the current climate but he didn't do anything wrong, apparently.
The author (in my opinion) needs to raise this with their own governments (UK is probably the one where they can get better action) to push for data sovereignty laws so that it's at least UK or Trinidad and Tobago that are the governments involved in investigating their data, via appropriate international warrants.
Expecting a company to hold its own promise (of notifying the user before it happens) sounds like a pretty minimal expectation, hard for me to imagine it being "too much".
Furthermore, how would data sovereignty affect whether Google holds its promise on notifying users?
> Expecting a company to hold its own promise (of notifying the user before it happens) sounds like a pretty minimal expectation, hard for me to imagine it being "too much".
I am saying that this expectation is unrealistic for a British/Trinbagonian citizen, given the political situation in the US right now. For a US citizen having the same issue (Google gave their data to the government without a safeguard), it would be realistic.
> Furthermore, how would data sovereignty affect whether Google holds its promise on notifying users?
The user could file a lawsuit in the UK about Google handing over their data without notification and proper jurisdiction. If Google UK employees were involved in handing over this data, they could be prosecuted and fined by the UK government.
Overall what I am hinting at is that this would incentivize Google to put in proper safeguards for non-US citizens. Currently they seem to be treated as a separate, non-protected category.
I'm merely saying that I'm skeptical that calling them out for breaking a promise is a useful path to go down. The alternate path (often proven to have been effective) is to pressure your non-US regulators into regulating them more. What I foresee is that this will either make Google follow more safeguards for everyone, or incentivize them to get out of non-US jurisdictions altogether.
It's even harder than people doing the same, because at the end of the day companies are a bunch of stuff that can be taken over and controlled by other people.
Weird to decide that you have to choose to be mad at one party or the other, and that getting mad at one party somehow indicates that you are less mad at the other party.
Weird to make this comment in response to perfectly valid criticism of Google by the EFF.
Maybe you guys should read about what you are supporting first.
I think this is much more important than what big-tech do.