Bluementhals letter about ICE memo justifying entry into homes without warrant [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Bluementhals letter about ICE memo justifying entry into homes without warrant [pdf]

hsgac.senate.gov

70 pointsrawgabbit20 comments

It is completely unsurprising that this is happening.

It will be completely unsurprising that despite a "strongly worded letter" it will continue to happen and there will be no consequences despite the unconstitutionality.

The US Government and the very idea of a rule of law here are hopelessly broken and there is no obvious peaceful path to ever fixing it.

The problem is that either a majority, or a large enough minority that due to how the U.S. constitution distributes power, of voters are absolutely fine with this.

That is one of the major problems, yes.

Other problems include:

too many Americans just don't vote or pay attention to politics at all

the 3 branch system of government used in the US never foresaw or planned for a situation in which two of the branches would just simply abdicate their own power

20+ years ago it was torture memo. Similar principle of responsibility laundering - some government lawyer writes a memo that it is ok do to that thing (even when it is an obviously illegal thing), and the government agents go full speed ahead, and nobody held responsible after that.

It wasnt just some rando totally unknown gov lawyer

He was south Korean and proud to sign it for bush and said so in multiple interviews he would do it all over again

John yoo

>proud to sign it for bush and said so in multiple interviews he would do it all over again

why not if you can't be held responsible.

Morals, ethics, empathy, humanity, …

well, we see time and time again what's left of "Morals, ethics, empathy, humanity, …" once the threat of consequences is removed.

Yep, the "Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley." (perhaps ironically given the reputation of Berkeley).

From a tech perspective, I do find myself occasionally having interesting discussions with co-founders about what it means to be operating our business in a legal environment where the rule of law is diminished. Startups have often had to contend with variance in enforcement and interpretation.

Some of my favorite historical examples of startups who had to worry about uncertain rule of law are:

- Aereo[0]: Who tried their very best to follow the law diligently but got slapped down anyways.

- Uber[1]: Who blatantly broke the law so callously that they relied on gaps in the rule of law to enable their business model.

- Kim Dotcom[2]: A German-born citizen who had never set foot inside USA's jurisdiction found himself arrested by the FBI in helicopters storming his home in New Zealand. This emphasized that any founder needs to follow US law, no matter where they are operating.

In each case, it seemed that whoever had more money tended to win, rather than who had the letter of the law on their side.

0: https://archive.md/PJHhD

1: https://archive.md/tqk3W

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom

I agree with your overall point, but for Kim's case, it seems it was actually NZ police who arrested him, no? NZ just decided to enforce US law because of mutual treaties.

Ah, you’re right. The reporting[0] at the time seemed to imply that a handful of FBI agents were present among the NZ officers during what was reported to be a "US-led raid". FBI agents evidently[1] left the country with physical evidence from the raid that NZ was supposed to keep custody of.

0: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/96384/fbi-agents-continu...

1: https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/fbi-committed-illegal-ac...

So it was NZ choosing to violate it's own laws under pressure, just not quite as dramatically as reported?

Doesn't NZ have laws about not having a death penalty, and therefore it is impossible to extradite anyone that has 0.01% chance to get the death penalty?

To clarify, Kim Dotcom was arrested by NZ police and is making his way through the NZ court system. It wasn't a Maduro situation. I'm not sure he's even been extradited yet (though that's the most likely outcome).

Kim was operating a large amount of servers in the US at Equinix in Ashburn, VA. Apparently he had a presence in multiple countries that had legal relationships with the USA. Perhaps he could have chosen hosting in countries that do not cooperate with the USA but I don't know which those would have been for that scale of operation.

Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46712279

What/who is bluementhals?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Blumenthal

The letter linked by this post is signed by the U.S. Senator.

> Richard Blumenthal

> Ranking Member

> Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations

This is 2026 in a nutshell

"Uggh chat gpt can you get these illegal kkk badge wearing nazis out of my house wtf man "

Myself assumes they're point is that their should be some apostrophe's.

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