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Comment by softwaredoug | Hacker News Reader

Basically they are issuing (administrative) subpoenas. When they go to court (at the expense of the account holder) they back down so they don't get ruled against / told to stop issuing these subpoenas.

Noted in the article, when this happened in 2017 twitter denied the governments request. Now Meta, etc are rolling over for the government.

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I hope courts find a way and the spine to tell them they're not valid. The government usually has a strong presumption of regularity but more and more courts are recognizing they're no longer a fair participant and will abuse the courts to get their way and are dropping that presumption.

> I hope courts find a way and the spine to tell them they're not valid.

I hope courts go further and find them in contempt, or engaging in something akin to barratry, or otherwise abusing the legal system.

I mean more is better here for sure.

Good faith by the federal government can no longer be assumed.

Donald Trump's real legacy is not any single action, but a complete inversion of trust of the US government by its citizens.

And the world.

When Europeans wonder why the U.S. is so backwards and barbaric about not implementing a National ID scheme. Look no further, ladies and gents, because at least once every 200 years, the population has a day of supreme brain off and puts someone like Trump in office. Once that happens, you too will appreciate why it should be hard for the government to do things.

I'm American. I'm not against national ID.

The issue is with the US is that ID is not free. I just had to pay 50 bucks to renew my driver's license. renewing a passport was 150 dollars the last time I checked (which was 2021). So any more costs just to function in society is a major impact to quite a few rights. The most hot topic being voter eligibility.

this is foreign to EU because, to my knowledge, getting an ID is free.

Sadly, a National ID scheme is by far not the only way the U.S. is backwards and barbaric.

europeans are well versed in the consequences of autocratic takeover of their governments, why they pretend to not know even recent history of the 20th century, I'll never understand.

> Now Meta, etc are rolling over for the government.

It is, after all, currently the best way to improve the bottom line.

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