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Comment by ethin | Hacker News Reader

As a citizen of the US I hate how SCOTUS has ground the fourth amendment down to practically nothing. It's absurd how people want the constitution to only apply to citizens, when IMO what makes the US unique is that it's constitution and the rights it grants are assumed to already exist for everyone, and all it does is acknowledge and respect them and order the government to do likewise. I very much doubt this will change anytime soon. At this point I'd be all for just abolishing the DHS and everything under it -- I don't think the DHS has, since it's inception, actually done anything that protects the homeland in any capacity. I could be wrong, but if it has actually done something, it's so inconsequential that nobody talks about it.

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The DHS is an umbrella organization with a huge number of parts under it, including stuff like FEMA (emergency management), customs, the coast guard, the secret service, monitoring of agricultural pathogens (formerly part of USDA), infrastructure protection (formerly part of FBI), federal law enforcement training, etc.

Abolishing "everything under" the DHS would do incredible damage. The various agencies lumped under the DHS could plausibly be re-organized again, though I'm not sure it would serve much purpose.

The biggest problem is that voters keep putting incompetent ideologues in charge of the federal government.

>Abolishing "everything under" the DHS would do incredible damage.

As we're seeing with cuts to anything other than programs enabling masked, jackbooted thugs to beat/harass/disappear brown people.

Okay, but again, the problem causing the jackbooted thugs is poor voter choices in the recent presidential election, ongoing citizen apathy, a Supreme Court enabling it, and a GOP which is thoroughly corrupted from top to bottom, not Customs inspections, FEMA disaster assistance, or Coast Guard rescues.

The fix to this is to swap out the nation's leaders, not to throw away every governmental institution with any relation to public safety.

>Okay, but again, the problem causing the jackbooted thugs is poor voter choices in the recent presidential election, ongoing citizen apathy, a Supreme Court enabling it, and a GOP which is thoroughly corrupted from top to bottom, not Customs inspections, FEMA disaster assistance, or Coast Guard rescues.

Right, and funding for customs inspections, FEMA disaster assistance and the Coast Guard are all already being cut in favor of jackbooted thugs.

>The fix to this is to swap out the nation's leaders, not to throw away every governmental institution with any relation to public safety.

I never suggested that DHS should be abolished. That was someone else[0].

You might take that up with them instead.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44963940

It's funny to me that the government was so intent on implementing a bunch of policies in the name of "efficiency" when DHS is a prime example of an inefficient agency. Why should we have an entire department dedicated to all the things it does when we could simply devolve many of the parts back to their original departments (INS back to DOJ, TSA back to DOT, etc), leaving a much more slimmed down entity (or perhaps none at all)?

Pretty much the basis for the DHS was 9/11 and terrorism, but terrorism exists in the first place due to US support for Israel and unnecessary interference in the Middle East. I don't particularly like the Islamic nations one bit, but even I see the connection of pointless US foreign policies to terrorism. Moreover, Israel is in large part militarily capable of defending itself. As such, the argument for DHS was all very circular. If you take away the circles, there's nothing left.

A country that so hates its own constitutional democracy cannot possibly support the democracy of other nations.

This. I will continue maintaining the opinion that the US needs to just stop supporting Israel. Seriously. Israel can fight it's own religious wars and I see no reason for us to be backing that when our very constitution says "Hey, no endorsing any religion!" If I remember right, Israel has only been able to do half the things it's done with respect to wars because we've just kept giving them weapons and supplies in the first place.

> terrorism exists in the first place due to US support for Israel and unnecessary interference in the Middle East.

I'm no fan of being Israel's sugar daddy but that's a gross mis-characterization of the situation.

The terrorism landscape of the 80s through 2010s has to do with the cold war, the post-colonial governments of the middle east, etc, etc. It's not a simple problem.

But yeah we should def stop supporting Israel. Not our sandbox, not our problem.

From my memory of our history class in Canadian high school: Russia invaded Afghanistan -> U.S. armed Islamic fighters -> radical networks formed seemed to be the genesis?

That's half of the picture. The radical networks didn't target the US just randomly or for nothing. It is specifically because of the US interference in the Middle East and its avid and persistent support for Israel that the US was targeted by Al-Qaeda.

I think that's true although I'm not an expert, my point was kinda just the straight line to Osama bin Laden who was a fighter during that earlier period and 9/11 but your additional context is appreciated. :)

You don't get to the "radical islamists wage jihad on US dime" step without the "corrupt post-colonial governments leave citizens dissatisfied, citizens turn to religion" step.

Who installed the corrupt post-colonial governments? Who destabilized middle eastern countries to create an opening for those governments to take power? Who funded the groups who ended up taking power?

It's the same folks who invented the word for the phenomenon we're currently discussing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowback_(intelligence)

>Who installed the corrupt post-colonial governments?

Ugh, mostly the British and the French though I supposed Ike got conned into helping the Brits with one of them.

>Who destabilized middle eastern countries to create an opening for those governments to take power?

rofl, everyone, but mostly their neighbors

>Who funded the groups who ended up taking power?

Same answer as above.

But I get it, reality is complex and "murka bad" is simple. If you want that narrative stick to latin america.

> But I get it, reality is complex and "murka bad" is simple.

You just agreed that the Western world is largely behind the blowback, so why are you still dismissing it? Yeah, it's complex and largely predicated on the interests of the West, to the detriment of the citizens of the ME. Do you have something to add?

Edit: I see you're editing your response to address the points in this post. I'll wait till you're done to respond again.

> If you want that narrative stick to latin america.

You're again agreeing with me but trying to make it seem like you're not? Yeah agreed, the history of Western intervention in Latin America is horrific. You should see what they've been doing in the Middle East!

I'm not agreeing with you any more than a middle-ish politician that gets endorsed by some hate group is agreeing with them.

Your opinion here is overly broad and reductive to the point of being stupid and wrong. The nations of the middle east have fucked with each other more than anyone has fucked with them in the past 50yr, though of course they all seek and sometimes get outside aid when doing so.

Bin Laden had a famous quote that translates to "the americans are bad and the shia are worse". I think that sums a typical local attitude up pretty well.

Don't do personal attacks on HN, calling things stupid and wrong in this context is mean spirited. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> I'm not agreeing with you any more than a middle-ish politician that gets endorsed by some hate group is agreeing with them.

Ok, then you should adopt a position contrary to mine.

Again, I agree that the ME is complex, but I'm not sure how that disputes the fact that the Western world has meddled in their affairs and destabilized ME countries to the point that they can no longer function independently and fall to authoritarian governments (or have one installed).

> The nations of the middle east have fucked with each other more than anyone has fucked with them in the past 50yr

Yes, their neighbors have "fucked with them," but the West has "fucked with them" more and caused more lasting damage.

For example, in the past 50 years, the US has overthrown the government of Iran, materially supported both belligerents in the Iran-Iraq war, trained and funded and provided material support to militias in Syria and Yemen (including non-stop drone strikes for literally years), supported Israel apartheid unconditionally, invaded Iraq twice, not to mention the 20 year wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which have completely gutted those countries ability to self-govern. Even internal conflicts in the Middle East are stoked and backed by Western powers.

Also funny that you mention bin Laden, he's a good example of blowback resulting from US intervention.

Countries back radical groups all the time. The "reasons" for Al Qaeda turning back on the US were:

1) support for the existence of Israel: just the idea of it, not necessarily the finer points, like whether it should coexist with an Arab Palestinian state. Zionism, whether it meant only taking up part of what was Mandatory Palestine, or all of it, flew directly in the face of the idea of pan-Arabism and Islamic theocratic chauvinism.

2) the Saudi royal family's request that the US-led coalition defend Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War - that was something that Usama bin Laden really hated, as he thought that it should be on the Saudis themselves and Islam as a whole to defend its birthplace, not some Western power.

> A country that so hates its own constitutional democracy cannot possibly support the democracy of other nations.

The whole "support democracy" thing has been a ruse for a while now. Democracy has become a synonym for "human rights", and that's always been for sale. Not just in the US, either. The last 35 years have been characterized by exporting economic infrastructure from the US (and West at large) to a place that specifically does not support democracy because, hey, it's cheaper to make stuff there, and line need go up.

Hell, touching on the Middle East, the only reason the region has a seat at the international table at all is because we're willing to look past the abysmal human rights record so long as the oil stays cheap. Otherwise it's a bunch of arid land with very strict rules. Not exactly the kind of place progress and development flock to.

This isn't just an American thing, but it's certainly applicable here.

You've got to be kidding me. If anything, the synonym would be "allows US business interests to pillage their resources." Every time a foreign nation attempts to nationalize a resource, we come in and destabilize their government, install a western friendly autocrat, and install our global businesses to extract their resources.

If we were as venomous as you seem to charge, China wouldn't look anything like it does today, but otherwise, you're saying much the same thing as I am.

I couldn't tell if you meant human rights sarcastically or not. It's hard to tell these days.

Disclaimer: not an american, but I too am a citizen of a country with borders.

As far as I understand, there's 3 categories here, citizens, non-citizen residents, and non-citizens non-residents.

The greatest spikes in constitutional and legal rights and guarantees come from being a resident. Being a citizen gives you political rights like voting and participating in the three branches sure, but for the average man it's nothing compared to the rights bestowed by simply walking down a street freely and engaging in free commerce.

This might be one of those restrictions of freedom that allow for greater freedoms to be guaranteed down the line.

Once a non citizen goes through the border, they enjoy a huge spike in rights and guarantees, if you losen the border, you dilute the rights of the residents and citizens, and you add costs (especially if you let aliens in that don't even pay taxes, enjoying only rights but no responsibility)

Ironically, if you value your freedoms as a resident, you should value restricting freedoms at the border.

Similar to how GPL briefly restricts user rights by requiring them to share the source code.

> Ironically, if you value your freedoms as a resident, you should value restricting freedoms at the border.

Can you clarify this? This doesn't make any sense to me. Freedoms like those granted in the US bill of rights are specifically designed to be universally applied regardless of citizenship status as long as you are within the geographical boundaries of the US or otherwise subject to it's jurisdiction, from my understanding.

Correct, we are in agreement. As a resident or citizen you get most consitutional rights. Before they cross the border they don't have those rights, the moment they cross the border, non-citizens enjoy those rights (looks possible to reverse or deny resident rights by deporting).

So just by crossing the line into the US a person would enjoy almost all of the rights of a citizen. But critically, they don't have these rights BEFORE crossing the border, the border control is the point at which those rights are granted.

IANAL

>Before they cross the border they don't have those rights, the moment they cross the border, non-citizens enjoy those rights (looks possible to reverse or deny resident rights by deporting).

And all persons in the United States, regardless of status have essentially had their civil liberties significantly curtailed/removed within 100 miles of a border crossing[0].

You might think, "well we need to catch those folks who illegally cross the border, so we need a buffer zone to do so." But the wording (and more importantly the implementation) of these "border zones" include all points of entry like airports. Which means that civil liberties are negated/limited within 100 miles of airports where international flights land.

Which creates reduced civil rights zones around the majority of the US population. Meaning that if I'm within 100 miles of Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International airport (which is many hundreds of miles away from any land border, as are most International airports), civil rights for all persons, citizen, resident or otherwise, are curtailed -- permanently and without recourse.

[0] https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone

I'm not aware of these 100mile regulations, but it makes sense in modern times, borders (and transport in general) have ceased to be euclidean, the borders of a country are no longer the geometric perimiter, but include airports. And naturally a border must have a "thickness" (even if 100 miles might be on the thick side) and there must be a grey area where border officials have jurisdiction of, but entrants are not yet considered admitted.

In the same manner that you shouldn't expect to conduct everyday business near the border of a country or near military operations or near power plant facilities, maybe we will start treating airports with such a respect. Yes sir, no sir, don't say "bomb" as a joke, etc...

Sure, you can fight for your rights against government oppression, but I think that resisting control just provides an alibi for illegal actors, and on the converse, cooperating reduces the need for excessive measures by making it easy to identify adversarial actors that do not cooperate.

It's a matter of subjective values, what do you think is more dangerous, an overzealous government or power plant disasters? I think we should be more concerned about power plant disasters, so I will not go exercise my rights near a power plant. Similarly, what do I think is more important, fighting drug trade and tax evasion? Or hiding my porn purchases from my banker? I think fighting drug trade and tax evasion are more important, so I try not to use cryptocurrency for porn purchases. Similarly, I think terrorism and illegal immigration are more important than border officers looking at my personal messages. And no you cannot have it both ways, you either cooperate and help one side, or you refuse to cooperate and provide alibies for enemies of the state.

We have not discussed at this point what your values are, I do not know whether you think drug trading or theft or tax evasion, or terrorism are ok, or child pornography, I presume not, it is more likely you are an individual concerned about personal privacy, but consider that I have no way to distinguish whether you support any of the above, and when you speak with people who support your right to privacy, or more so, individuals that try to convince you that your privacy is of utmost importance, consider whether they themselves are guilty of one of these crimes? Think of which side you are on, whether by being guilty of one crime, you are associating with a coalition of slightly guilty citizens, or whether a couple of your pseudonymous friends are actually massively criminal and your behaviour pooling protects them.

We can also acknowledge that there exists a conflict and a tradeoff between personal liberties and crime countermeasures. And that tradeoff is everchanging, post-911 lots of people would have agreed that some personal liberties needed to be sacrificed, and many would agree that eventually we overcorrected and needed to dial it back. We had a period of peace in the middle where some crimes were mostly used as a symbol for "criminals", but nowadays we have a lot of war going on, how sure are you that your peers in crypto exchanges are not involved with war trade? I don't think drone trade is being done with fiat trade at all. International drug trade probably uses crypto exchanges, offshore accounts, and undoubtedly smugglers cross borders as well.

Have you ever considered how your role in drug trade, child abuse, and war? I'm making no claims that exercising your constitutional rights "helps" or "fights" crime (I find it reasonable that if I make such moral objections, you might be forced to exercise the rights to protect them), but provided that those rights are recognized and guaranteed, consider whether they must always be exercised to the extreme? If you were able to forfeit some of your rights and help fight crime, wouldn't you do it? It is one of the most extreme forms of liberties to sacrifice it, to always instinctively exhert your rights in any opportunity possible is actually a sign that the right is in trouble, and therefore I would claim that since I can occasionally forfeit my right to not being searched, I have a stronger form of freedom (in that sense, you may have more freedom in others).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z6vsYELcjw

Here's a scene from Mad Men that I like on the subject. The main character (very right wing traditional) is in the middle of a pot smoking beatnik party. The beatniks are exercising their right to not be searched in their private domicile, and they are partaking in a somewhat harmless illegal activity, but in doing so the police outside of their building becomes the enemy, instead of an ally that is investigating a crime. Not only is the Beatnik placed on the same 'side' as a night-time gunfighter, but also their exercise of their liberty to smoke weed interferes with their liberty to just go outside of their apartment. The main character smoking the legal herb I think cements the bipartisan political divide and their relationship with the law.

Data and logic are great and all, but I wouldn't sleep on art as a means to think.

>We have not discussed at this point what your values are, I do not know whether you think drug trading or theft or tax evasion, or terrorism are ok, or child pornography,

No we haven't. You know why? Because it ain't any of your business, that's why.

And it ain't the government's business either.

What I think and/or believe is my business. Who and how I choose to share that with is also my business and anything else you or I have to say is irrelevant.

As for what I do, that's a different discussion. It's also none of your business, except as those actions impact or influence you.

in contrast, the government sometimes (often?) does have an interest and, potentially, a role in what people, myself included, do.

If you come into my country, it is my business. I support customs requesting to search your phone, if you do not want to, you are free to refuse, but you can stay in your country, or go back to your country.

> if you loosen the border, you dilute the rights of the residents

Strip searching tourists, interrogating them about which social media jokes they shared, or locking them up for weeks without charges and then deporting them based on nothing more than their political views does not strengthen the rights of residents.

> especially if you let aliens in that don't even pay taxes, enjoying only rights but no responsibility

If you are talking about people working in the US without visas, this is a serious misconception. The large majority of undocumented people working in the US pay the same taxes as anyone else, including income and payroll taxes (sometimes under a borrowed social security number, but sometimes with an ITIN, "individual taxpayer ID no."; the IRS is happy to take the money without worrying about immigration status), but don't reap the benefits of those. So it's rather the opposite: all the responsibilities but dramatically fewer rights. In aggregate, undocumented immigrants pay on the order of $100 billion of US taxes every year.

The context of my post was phone searches at the US border, inmigration is a wide scope, strip searching tourists and interrogating about jokes is really out of context and not was was the topic of the article shared.

Searching phones is not really related to reviewing social media is it? You don't need to search a phone to access a public profile. No, searching a phone searches for private messages, maybe you talked with an employer on the US and you are on a tourist visa? Maybe there's talks about drug use or money laundering? or worse?

>If you are talking about people working in the US without visas, this is a serious misconception.

You talk as if there were some sort of authorative objective dataset, but by nature, how can you measure unreported income?

You can search for FUTON sources all you want, but I've worked with immigrants that don't report income on my country. And just because something "doesn't happen" would be a terribe reason not to protect against it.

Would you leave your port 22 open without password just because "it is a misconception" that russians are brute forcing into systems? No, you would simply protect against it, you don't need evidence to implement security mesaures.

Where are your numbers? You're claiming that immigrants steal public services and don't pay taxes, but haven't provided proof except for anecdotes and conjecture.

I have met one immigrant that didn't pay taxes, which is sufficient to develop and support measures to protect against immigrants. Also, you do not need evidence to claim that there is at least one immigrant who doesn't pay taxes, given the sheer numbers of our countries and the economic incentive to pay taxes, the burden of proof would be reversed if you claim that this doesn't happen.

Not everything needs a double-blind randomized longitudinal trial, sometimes you just need to act instead of being paralyzed by overanalysis of the obvious.

So you have no data and no evidence, and are willing to support sweeping policy changes which cause material harm because you feel correct.

No policy changes, the laws are in place, I just support the executive, the judicial and the armed forces that implement the law.

... so still supporting policies which cause material harm, based on your feelings.

> ... as if there were some sort of authorative objective dataset, but by nature, how can you measure unreported income?

Citizen also take cash jobs and don't report the income, yet they have more options and access to resources. Unlike undocumented persons. I'm guessing you feel the same about citizens dodging their tax responsibilities at least as strongly as you do undocumented workers. See the end for a solution, for the undocumented at least.

See [0] for a breakdown of taxes and contributions.$19.5B in Federal Income tax, $32.3B in Social Insurances taxes payed through automatic withholding from their paychecks in 2022. They are not getting jobs where they would owe at the end of the year. They pay the same sales and excise taxes on goods and services, property taxes on renting/owning etc. $96.7B total taxes paid in 2022.

Some use "borrowed" SSN (usually provided by the employer or employer referred source), they don't get to file for a refund; some use ITINs and are also likely forgo refunds thus pay more taxes than a similarly employed citizen while losing out on benefits they are supposedly "stealing". They have no way to access social security.

A 2006 study showed they contributed so much to Texas' GDP that Texas refuses to conduct further studies on their economic impact [1] A Texas economic analysis firm in 2016 estimated a contribution of $11.8B to the state after subtracting $3.1 B the state spent for their health, education, other public services.[2]

The simple solution is access to work authorization. They trade being exploited by employers to paying more taxes for that security. If citizens wanted the jobs they do we would not have a chronic shortage of workers in those positions, Notably hospice and construction.

[0] https://itep.org/undocumented-immigrants-taxes-2024/

[1] https://www.texastribune.org/2024/12/06/texas-undocumented-i...

[2] https://www.perrymangroup.com/media/uploads/report/perryman-...

> I'm guessing you feel the same about citizens dodging their tax responsibilities at least as strongly as you do undocumented workers

No, it's not the same. Immigrants can be deported, which is not the case for citizens by birthright. Additionally birthright citizens have not opted to be born in their country, however immigrants have made the choice to be in their country of destiny, so they are in a much weaker moral and legal position to justify tax evasion.

Not the same at all.

> Immigrants can be deported, which is not the case for citizens by birthright.

Have I got news for you...

Except citizens are free to renounce citizenship -- thus tax duty -- and leave of their own accord. The US makes this very easy, unlike other countries. I have no slack for tax dodgers, especially when they are given the resources to fulfill their financial duty to their country that is providing them the life they live. If immigrants can move to a new country and are even willing to pay more in taxes by using ID they can not get refunds for in order to be here, then citizens that don't want to pay their taxes and cry about it wasnt their choice to be here should leave such a hostile environment and make room for those that want to be here and are willing to pay their due.

Lucky for you there is a solution to your gripe, allow work authorization so immigrants can pay their taxes without fear of deportation to a 3rd country prison. Not much to do about my gripe with freeloading citizens who the rest of us end up paying more for. Even undocumented workers pay a higher percent of taxes than citizens in some 40 states, so I guess good thing they are here to help making up for those free loading citizens as well. See [0] above

> As far as I understand, there's 3 categories here, citizens, non-citizen residents, and non-citizens non-residents.

The US Constitution applies to persons within US jurisdiction.

The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. This protection extends to individuals' persons, houses, papers, and effects.

Right, so a "Phone search at the US border" would be conducted on an individual not yet in US jurisdiction, thus the 4th amendment wouldn't apply.

I am not a lawyer, but I think that's pretty undisputed and basic.

>I am not a lawyer, but I think that's pretty undisputed and basic.

I and a whole bunch of lawyers do dispute that claim[0].

[0] https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone

The cited article is about searching phones at port of entries before admission to the states, not within a 100 mile radius.

There may not be consensus on where the border is binary, or whether it's phased, whether it's 100 miles thick or 1 centimeter thick, whether it's here or there. But we have consensus that there exists a border and that you can people that have not yet entered do not have the constitutional rights of persons in the jursidiction yet.

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