>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.
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subpoenas in court after receiving notice, and the Department of Homeland Security has withdrawn those subpoenas before reaching a court decision.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.”
> 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.
I agree, but the purpose of these kind of lawsuits and journalism is to push the activism narrative. All one has to do is read their policy. There is no basis for going after Google that's obvious.
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.
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.
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.
agreed, the cloud convenience trap is real. everyones data online is excessive at this point but fragmented among titans. its a slippery slope and easy for corruption/mutual benefits to connect the dots and lead to a dystopia
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 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 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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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?
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.
> 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, attended a pro-Palestinian protest may be enough.
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.
"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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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?
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?
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).
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> ...he briefly attended a pro-Palestinian protest. In April 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent Google an administrative subpoena requesting his data.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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!
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
The linked Google policy states:
>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.
EFF's letter offers more details and says that the subpoena did not contain a gag order: https://www.eff.org/files/2026/04/13/eff_letter_re_google_no...
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.
Cited elsewhere in this thread. [1]
> 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...
The article pointed this out as well, but notably did not state that Google had in fact received an administrative subpoena.
From the article
> In April 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent Google an administrative subpoena requesting his data.
fta
> 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.
According to the ACLU [1]:
> 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...
I agree, but the purpose of these kind of lawsuits and journalism is to push the activism narrative. All one has to do is read their policy. There is no basis for going after Google that's obvious.
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.
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.
If the data is encrypted, it can go on the cloud, though.
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.
https://thblegal.com/news/can-i-be-prosecuted-for-failing-to...
Exactly. People aren't taking SNDL seriously enough.
agreed, the cloud convenience trap is real. everyones data online is excessive at this point but fragmented among titans. its a slippery slope and easy for corruption/mutual benefits to connect the dots and lead to a dystopia
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 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 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.
Fwiw that post states:
> 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.
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).
(OK, OK - I do use Android).
What will the world be like in 2046?
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUHBPuHS-7s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPIC_2014
That doesn't matter.
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.
The same :-)
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.
Digital gulag of whitelisted opinions and actions you are allowed to think/perform/express
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.
What part of the feature set in particular has been lacking in competitors?
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.
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.
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.
Are there good hosted options that will not respond to non-judicial data requests?
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 iirc. You can even get documents and photos synced. Not sure how well it works for photos.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
I use Fastmail and the main difference I notice is less effective spam filtering — it’s good but not as great as Gmail was.
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.
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.
It's not just you. I experience the same thing. It is thoroughly maddening.
I get maybe one genuine spam not marked as such and maybe one false positive per month.
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.
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).
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.
Wasn't even a warrant, right? They did this willingly.
Google leak ALL the time without warrant, Apple as well.
When have they done this before?
500k time a year: https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview
Those are supposedly ones where they legally had to comply. This case was different.
No, they do it also for any sort of administrative, without warrant.
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.
When did you find out about this? The timeline of this actually pushing you to do all that seems a bit unbelievable and difficult to take seriously.
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]
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/05/palest...
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.
Maybe they read one of the articles written about this incident months ago.
It's this account's only comment and was only created right before posting. It has no credibility.
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
> For me, most threads get their own account.
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."
It's also futile because you generate a signature that can be traced across aliases, sites, etc.
`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.
That puts some responsibility on you to provide more context for your comments as extra signals of authenticity.
No it doesn't. I don't care how many HN comments you have.
An extensive comment history signals alignment with the community.
What does it mean to be aligned with HN? Cause pretty sure I'm not that
All communities have rules of behavior.
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.
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.
They could just be very concerned with privacy.
Apple and Microsoft are also subject to US laws. It's not like any company can get around this.
Administrative warrants do not carry the weight of law. It's merely a term of art for a request for information.
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.
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.
There elections every two years, it's not too late. But only if people actually want that enough to vote and press politicians.
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.
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.
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.
That desire is gone so they are going all out.
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.
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.
[1]: https://www.acluofnorthcarolina.org/app/uploads/drupal/sites...
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.
Democratic backsliding occurs through the gradual erosion of norms and safeguards. One small step at a time...
Trump (with indirect support from the Republicans in Congress), and Trump (with indirect support from the Republicans in Congress), respectively.
I would call passing a bill to fund it, pretty direct support from Republicans in Congress/Senate.
It's Stephen Miller, enabled by Trump.
Believe it or not, immigration authorities (like the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency) have the power to enforce immigration laws.
The author isn't American.
Edit - wait until y'all find out other countries also have borders and laws...
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
It uses this same "right of the people" in the second amendment 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."
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.
It's not that they aren't people, they aren't the people that the Constitution refers to. There are many rights that visitors don't have.
That is one possible (specious and self-serving) interpretation of a document that pre-dates the concepts and laws it's being used to prop up.
How many of the Pilgrims had a valid modern visa?
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.
After the Revolutionary War, most US citizens couldn't vote. I don't think we should be using that time period for comparison.
Who else didn't they think should have the right to vote in 1776, and was that the right call in your opinion?
As I said above, a law you have to tie yourself in knots to justify might be a bad law.
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.
> 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).
Not even remotely. Citizens may be granted additional protections from some things, but the Constitution applies to all persons inside the US.
Might apply to people outside of US too, given that Maduro is being tried in NY for drug and firearm charges while never having set foot in US before.
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.
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.
Cell carriers sell geofenced data about cell phones in an area at a given time to anyone. There's zero privacy.
KYC laws mean that his carrier has his name and email address and the feds probably got that without anyone informing the customer.
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?
Or there may be more to the story than he's telling.
Is there a specific reason for suspicion?
The fact that we're only hearing one side is suspicious enough
ICE is free to speak. I don't think they have interest to explain why they hunt someone.
Nor, I assume, do they have any interest to explain how they hunt someone.
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…
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/05/palest...
[2]: https://panthernow.com/2026/03/03/international-students-sel...
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]
[1] https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2024/09/pro-palestine-pro...
Tracfone burners for any protests?
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.
> 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.
Which is that case here:
> 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, attended a pro-Palestinian protest may be enough.
What do you mean? Eventually notifying him seems like the one thing Google did right here.
On a scale of 1-10, Yeah, I'd give them a 1-2 for notifying him after the fact.
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...
You give Google credit for holding someone's head above the icy lake after they pushed them into lake themselves at the request of the piranhas.
"Don't be evil" they used to say.
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.
"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.
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.
[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...
this is a fun story, but... its a story.
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!"
And we all ought to have dropped them, then. (Most of us, myself included, did not.)
No other big american company says "don't be evil", if you aren't dropping Apple and Microsoft then you it doesn't make sense to drop Google.
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.
Honestly this slogan was always a joke. Obviously an evil company would say that.
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
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> The number of HNers who were earnestly arguing that this was the party of free speech
Do you think any of them were sincere?
I work in this industry. I sample the same distribution in person. I don't think they were, I know they were.
What they meant is "freedom to say slurs", not "freedom of LGBT books in school libraries"
Being trans, I feel this so much.
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.
> It blows my mind how "intelligent" people can be this stupid.
Intelligent people don't post condescending, shallow dismissals.
Or maybe they're 20-25, aren't experts in forestry, and are asking generic questions b/c that's what you're told to do as a young scientist?
> "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.
https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/12/12/twenty-year-study-confi...
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.
Yes. A particular interest is that of freely insulting people they don't like.
Allowing people they don't like to insult them? Not much of a priority.
I was definitely one of those useful idiots, not on here though
>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.
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.
Democratic party is owned by Israel just as much, if not more.
So they were weaponizing immigration law to deport pro-pali students? Care to back your feelings up with some facts?
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.
Which universities?
With such a small sample size, you have a whole lot of confidence saying "well, the Dems encouraged them".
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's pretty pathetic when the best argument you can make is a whataboutism that isn't even equivalent.
If "led by the nose into bombing Iran" isn't being "owned by Israel," what is?
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.
> Democrats got led into Israel's wars too.
Which ones?
Obama's drone campaigns, although that's less a war and more just global terrorism.
Syria, Gaza, and even Iran.
Have people already forgot about Gaza?
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?
What facts would you point to, to argue that the Democratic party is "owned by Israel" more than the Republican party?
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary?cycle=All&ind... is one
Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences of that speech
It does if those consequences are imposed by the government.
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.
You should have been "all ears" during the election...
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?
lmao who was in office in 2020?
The ones who started the covid mandates were mainly democrat governors. Not sure why some people only pay attention to the president lol.
trump claimed ownership of vaccine development, deployment, and mandates when they were successful. i remember you guys booing him about that
Kamala was a lot less bad than Trump. It wasn't close.
Kamala would have 100% failed to confront the Iranian problem head on.
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.
I wish people would reply with rebuttals rather than downvoting you.
Good, there was nothing that needed confronting.
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).
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.
I hope you're joking!
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.
Ok but why? They did not campaign on freedom of speech or expression, they actively campaigned against both...
IMO there are no surprises from this admin, they are doing what they promised.
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.
You found that after the first administration, in the end, he had earned your vote for Free Speech?
Some people weren't paying much attention to "politics" until Dumpty started going full crazy. Still unclear exactly when that started.
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.
> the administration did not hold up their end of the deal
Trump? Not holding up his end of the deal? Who could have seen that coming!
The Art of the Deal!
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.
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.
I simply assume that everything that travels out of my home through a wire gets tracked and stored by the government.
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.
> 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.
And now they're being let off and called "heroes" by the United States Government.
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.
If it's not your computer, it's not your data.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Some of them were identified by DNA left in the shit they took on Pelosi’s desk.
Protestors huh? That’s quite the revisionist take on recent history.
I would love more information.
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.
> ...he briefly attended a pro-Palestinian protest. In April 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent Google an administrative subpoena requesting his data.
incredible.
Weird to be more upset at Google about this than ICE or the other parties involved.
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.
Fair, but we all have a limited outrage budget. Getting mad at Google for not disclosing when they may not have legally been able to is not for me.
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.
Yeah, in this case, the cell carriers did a lot of the work.
What’s your project by the way. Would be curious to know more, if you’re up for sharing now. Later is fine too.
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.
It's called Hodor — prompt launcher for macOS.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, sorry, by foreigner I mean non-citizen.
Others do have constitutional rights, but the legislative and executive hold plenary powers in the realm of national security and immigration.
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.
I used to joke that by using Google products, the NSA backups my data, but I’m not sure I like ICE having access to my YouTube history.
Just get a friend overseas to email you and it kicks off the backup. Best UX of any Google product.
This is why E2E encryption is important
Has Apple done this? Trying to figure out a safe place to store photos in the cloud without having to self host.
He disrupted a career fair because it had defense contractors.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/05/palest...
Not simply because it had defense contractors…
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.
Should he be harassed and deported for this?
Does anyone remember when western nations were freaking out that Huawei would handle everybody personal data to the Chinese government?
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)
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).
> host your own mail
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.
American companies give data to the U.S.
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.
In that case, the US was worried about espionage, not violation of civil liberties.
None of those countries are interested in free speech, not even this particular kind of speech, especially Germany.
They don't sack you from the street and put you in a Camp. At least not anymore.
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.
It's worse in Germany. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwachkopf-Aff%C3%A4re
Germany will literally fine you for viewpoints, including criticism of Israel. What happens if you don't pay?
Also you can't insult anyone especially politicians (which Americans like to do ) in Germany as it is a crime . https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwachkopf-Aff%C3%A4re
You just get a gestapo raid if you call out the German regime for its lies.
rare google W
"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.
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.
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.
I don't see how your opinion matches the article.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
The author not say whether the subpoena prevented advance notification.
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.
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.
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.
Stop using google, ffs.
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.
Huh, I don't think anyone expect Google to maintain privacy for them, Google deliberately leak 500K user info to various governments, every year [1].
https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview
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?
an apropos bit from the NYT today:
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.
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!
This is so wrong. What's the solution? Google class action lawsuit?
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.
>Switching to 100% European cloud'
Yea, they are even worse. They would sell out in a sec once goverment is going after them.
What is the basis for this claim?
The law of their respective country most likely.
You're going to sue Google for following the law of the land they're incorporated in? And demand that they - as a mega corporation - just ignore laws?
How about making sure that your laws don't authorize ICE data requests? How about that?
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.
> removed "Don't be Evil" as its motto and from its code of conduct
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
how does using a drone to follow thieves violate anyone's privacy? how is it any different than police pursuit in a marked car?
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.
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.