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Comment by chrisjj | Hacker News Reader

Let's see her sued for leaking PII. Here in Europe, she'd be mincemeat.

The US administration is, at present, regularly violating the law and ignoring court orders. Indeed, these very releases are patently in violation of multiple federal laws -- they're simultaneously insufficiently-responsive to meet the requirements of the law requiring the release of the files and fall afoul of CSAM laws by being incompletely redacted.

The challenge, as we're all experiencing together, is that the law is not inherently self-enforcing.

Can you provide a couple examples of the laws they're violating?

There's more than enough credible reports of CSAM in the Epstein Files dump - more than enough for me to not go and download even a single file of them myself, simply because German law does not care about why you are in the possession of CSAM, even if you took the picture yourself.

The legal situation regarding CSAM is very strict no matter which country, and I better hope no one here will actually be dumb enough to provide actual links.

Use encryption

> even if you took the picture yourself.

I'd hope the punishment is more severe in that case!

It's a tricky issue. In many countries it's not illegal and quite common for children to run around naked in public, during the summer on beaches for example, and so millions of people have holiday photos that are technically CSAM in their possession that they don't even know they have.

CSAM must be for sexual gratification usually. A medical anatomy textbook isn't CSAM.

And now you're in court strenuously arguing that you weren't sexually gratified by the photo of your kid in the tub.

Obviously most people are sensible most of the time but sometimes they are not.

More than that. CSAM is evidence of abuse. Hence the "A".

And nudity is not required.

CSAM has a meaning identical to child porn but doesn't make that meaning explicit. Drawn or generated depictions of child nudity can be considered CSAM in some jurisdictions.

Yep. Germany is very very strict for example. Even textual descriptions fall under that law.

"CSAM isn’t pornography—it’s evidence of criminal exploitation of kids."

That's from RAINN, the US's largest anti-sexual violence organisation.

> I'd hope the punishment is more severe in that case!

I'm talking about kids making photos of themselves. Which has been an issue multiple times in the past.

If those reports are true then what we have is not just an effective deterrent for download and distribution of the set, but legally prosecutable malware targetting anyone who does, empowered by the Interpol CSAM database to which the DOJ should probably already released the offending material.

That might be intentional tbh, to make the database toxic to limit the spread.

As noted above:

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-119publ38/pdf/PLAW-... : the Attorney General was to have produced the entirety of the Epstein files, with very narrowly-enumerated redactions, in December. She has not done so.

Furthermore, there are numerous allegations that the documents that have been released contain CSAM, which (referencing the PDF above) may fall afoul of 18 U.S.C. 2252–2252A.

In addition, one need only glance at the action in US courts to see egregious violations of the Constitution and valid court orders playing out daily.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26513988-trorder0128...

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.230...

Allegations aren't evidence. Has the Administration actually been found guilty of violating the law - if that is even possible.

Yes, the Abrego Garcia and Öztürk detentions are two very newsworthy cases that have actually reached the point of a final judgement in the district courts, as opposed to "merely" preliminary injunctions against the government.

(It's also worth noting that almost none of the government's appeals to their losses in preliminary injunctions have been on the merits as to whether or not their actions were legal, but rather on the grounds of "no one should be allowed to challenge our actions," which has also been a fairly losing argument for everybody except SCOTUS.)

Evidence is evidence - of which there are enormous amounts of.

Are you expecting the administration to prosecute itself?

That's why there is separation of powers or ought to be.

>if that is even possible

yes.... any administration can be found guilty of violating law, and should be dealt with accordingly.

> Has the Administration actually been found guilty of violating the law - if that is even possible.

Obviously administrations can violate the law. Otherwise this is just an autocracy with term limits.

>Allegations aren't evidence

Allegations are literally evidence. "He attacked me" is an allegation of a crime and is evidence that would be used in conjunction with other evidence to prosecute said crime.

How about court orders?

https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/ice-violations-judge-...

> ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence," Schiltz said, adding that he counted 96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/frustrations-from-judge-prosecu...

They illegally fired the IGs responsible for whistleblowers and fraud in every department; https://www.nycbar.org/press-releases/firings-of-inspectors-...

They illegally withheld funds (impoundment) from congressionally authorized/mandated expenditures and relied on pocket rescissions to defund programs they didn't like: https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/pocket-rescissi...

They keep illegally appointing unqualified hacks as US attorney in defiance of the mandate they're approved by the Senate (Essayli, Habba, Halligan, Sarcone, Chattah) - judges have found at least five of the appointments illegal. As one example: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/28/judge-los-angeles-t...

They've repeatedly violated court orders to either return immigrant detainees or release them. "This is one of dozens of court orders with which respondents have failed to comply in recent weeks.": https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/27/politics/patrick-schiltz-judg...

The EPA illegally convened a secret panel of climate deniers to issue a sham report in order to repeal the endangerment finding: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/climate/energy-department...

His targeting and shakedowns of Universities, law firms, and media companies is transparently illegal jawboning.

Everything about the tariffs is obviously illegal which he confirms every time he opens his mouth since he's relying on 'national security' justifications to issue them without Congress and he keeps insisting they're punishment for some random perceived slight.

His illegal firing of Federal workers without the notice required: https://www.npr.org/2025/09/25/nx-s1-5544317/federal-probati...

Some sillier things like renaming the Kennedy Center -- the law that established it literally said that it couldn't be renamed without Congress -- so Trump firing everyone on the board and then appointing a bunch of his flunkees to vote for the name change doesn't cut it.. https://beatty.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/beatty.house.gov...

It's a literal onslaught of illegality so I can't tell if you haven't read a news article since 2025 or if you're trolling.

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