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Comment by charcircuit | Hacker News Reader

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I think you’re confused on the difference between these, and what an administrative warrant is in particular.

Trying to draw a distinction between the secret FISA court and administrative warrants from DHS is shaving the baloney a little thin.

Despite all its other warts, the FISA court is (A) an actual judicial-branch court (B) created by legislation and (C) the justices cannot be removed on direct Presidential whim.

In contrast, "administrative warrants" are more like an executive-branch manager writing a memo, where an unscrupulous President could get them removed in a day for not writing the "right" memos.

You think fisa is the good one? They're widely recognized as rubber-stamp courts.

Fisa doesn't have to be good for these phony sheet of paper warrants to be worse.

You’re comparing apples and oranges. These administrative warrants are very limited in scope. They are closer to the subpoenas that even ordinary civilian lawyers can send third parties in the course of litigation. They don’t give the government the power to bust into Google’s data center. The target has to respond or else challenge the warrant in court, but ordinary civilian subpoenas function the same way.

That's not at all what I've been hearing from reports of people getting these. They find that they're not at all targeted. They frequently don't even know who the target is. The officers get asked for a warrant and they might produce a bullshit piece of paper which is really just a memo.

Anyway, it's not "me" comparing these alleged apples and oranges, I am replying deep in a thread of other people making these comparisons.

That’s the same as the subpoena I could send you if you had information relevant to a litigation. And you have to give it to me or else go to court to quash the subpoena. But the key difference with judicial warrants is that judicial warrants can be enforced immediately while subpoenas and administrative warrants require the cooperation of the target or else going to court to enforce the subpoena.

It’s weird but the legal system has an extremely broad view of when third parties can be forced to provide information relevant to litigation. Subpoenas date back to ancient Rome: https://commerciallore.com/2015/06/04/a-brief-history-of-sub...

Sorry, it's pretty clear that you like what ICE does and you're working backwards with what you think is a legal argument that justifies it. What ICE is reportedly doing has absolutely nothing in common with a lawful subpoena.

I do like ICE, but this point about administrative warrants is a rant I’ve been doing since the Obama administration. The only thing new is that these tactics are now being used for immigration enforcement.

> > Despite all its other warts, the FISA court is [a real court]

> You think fisa is the good one?

Is this an accidental fail to comprehend, or a deliberate strawman?

The entire point of having multiple branches of government is that they have different powers.

There are both different powers and similar powers between the different branches.

Ah, you must not be American. At least over here--the subject of the news post--that belief would be considered pro-dictatorship nonsense.

The US Federal government has different branches, and only certain branches have certain powers. This is widely known because we teach this to US children before they are 14 years old, sometimes aided by literal cartoons.

These "warrants" are not at all equivalent, the same way that a President cannot dream up and declare a "law" (even if he calls it that) because only Congress may make those.

The constitution does not give the judicial branch the exclusive power of issuing warrants. Having certain exclusive powers doing mean every action can only be exclusively done by them. Each branch has an obligation to adhere to the constitution.

> Each branch has an obligation to adhere to the constitution.

Somebody tell that to the executive branch, they seem to have forgotten it some time in late January, 2025.

Wait until you find out judges are appointed by the president...

It is actually amazing America managed to function as well as it has been to be honest.

The president only nominates them. The Senate confirms. Until the obama administration, judges required a supermajority of the senate to confirm, but a gop minority were filibustering all his nominees. So he asked the senate to remove the filibuster for judges. It was really the only use of the filibuster that made sense. Most democracies have independent commissions. Perhaps they all do now...

Yes. It's incredible that:

1. The loopholes were not exploited sooner.

2. No one cares about patching them, not before real-world identification, and not even after identification. They only keep increasing.

The only saving grace has been the two term limit of the President.

In a two party system, no one wants to get rid of the loopholes. Those currently in power don't think their opponents will have the opportunity to use it, and those not in power want to use it later when they finally get to be in power.

Check out the two parties wanting the Line Item Veto thinking only their side would be able to use it yet horrified to see the other side use it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-item_veto_in_the_United_S...

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