It's a clear violation of the 4th Amendment, but the government acts like they've found a "loophole" because it's private businesses doing the spying.
Attorneys challenge each other as a matter of course in every case before a court. This is how the adversarial system works.
Perhaps what you meant to say is that “I don’t like the activity that is happening here,” or “I think some of this might be unconstitutional.” When someone makes a naked blanket assertion about the law, it’s usually a sign that that person doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
And yes, they are spying on everybody. They have access to things like cellphone metadata, which to a normal human being is a very clear violation of privacy.
It's also my firm belief that our legal system has been undermining these basic concepts for decades now. It benefits the federal government to make this all very vague, as if modern technology suddenly means you have no expectation of privacy anymore. They've also mixed in some of that wonderfully authoritarian "for purposes of national security".
There's actual lawyers saying these same things, if you'd like someone to properly debate with.
However:
> They have access to things like cellphone metadata, which to a normal human being is a very clear violation of privacy.
In the U.S., when you study 4th Amendment law in Criminal Procedure, you learn there is a "third party doctrine" that says that if you voluntarily provide a third party with information--even information you consider private-it's the third party's property and you can no longer object to it being sought by the Government. There's a good overview of this on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine
The Supreme Court declined to extend the third-party doctrine to tracking one's location via cell-phone metadata in Carpenter v. U.S., 585 U.S. 296 (2018), so it's not absolute.
The government can now partner with private businesses to effectively bypass the Fourth Amendment.
If it were a violation, Courts could enjoin it. But since it's not a violation, there's nothing to enjoin.
It's almost like HN isn't a court and the OP was expressing their opinion that this should be illegal. . . Not relying on specific semantics for the current state of affairs?
HN is a forum of written communications. Clarity and accuracy are essential skills for participating effectively in such places, and are the responsibility of the author.
Are you trying to argue that people shouldn’t be taken at their word? Or that we shouldn’t challenge people who make unqualified legal assertions? I’m not sure what your point is.
We all know that the actual interpretation is up to 5 republicans on the supreme court and whatever they feel on a given day will increase their side's power/ideology.
No one is going to be making arguments about that because there's no point, you can't logic someone out of a position that they didn't use logic to get to in the first place.
So again, when someone on a forum says "this is wrong and something should be done about it" replying that it might technically be legal at this moment in time is incredibly useless. It's completely missing the point.
If that had been what was said, we wouldn’t even be here.
You have the roles and responsibilities exactly backwards.
The difference is significant for that reason alone. The other reason is that if you’re looking to recruit supporters you will get more of them if you get your ducks in a row. Disorganized ducks impair credibility and create friction.
Not making the distinction between the two is only helpful for the purpose of blowing off steam and the only outcome is outrage fatigue.
Which is why it's a misnomer to call the legal system a justice system in criminal cases. Lol.
> The Supreme Court declined to extend the third-party doctrine to tracking one's location via cell-phone metadata in Carpenter v. U.S., 585 U.S. 296 (2018), so it's not absolute.
In other words, principles are law -- in the US, whatever the principles of 9 judges at a given time, because they are the final arbiter of what anything written down by Congress means. "Third-party doctrine" is not law as written by Congress, it is something the Supreme Court made up out of thin air according to their principles. And these principles are not binding; a later panel of judges is free to throw out the rulings of older judges if they decide their principles differ, as famously happened to Roe v. Wade among other cases.
Very well said. While the legal system's details are important for a few avenues of effecting change, they're often used to bog down conversions into "what is" territory rather than staying focused on "what ought". And "what ought", based on the ideals laid out in our country's founding documents, is very different from "what is" in the modern day.
Why have the other amendments not enjoyed this same individual freedom absolutism? Why are we cherry picking which amendments get expanded modern powers "in the spirit of the text"? It's because of how the judges feel.
So before you dismiss someone's opinion because how it might be, let's all be honest with ourselves and realize constitutional law of this nature does not depend on precedent and is largely do to the whims of the supreme court.
I also disagree with your characterization of 2nd Amendment jurisprudence, but I'm not going into that rathole!
People have good-faith disputes over whether their activities should be permitted or forbidden, and--like it or not--it's up to our judicial system to interpret the law, especially when it's unclear (which is rather often). The judges hear the arguments and, having heard both sides out fully, has to decide who has the strongest case. It's not an easy job, but in a vague, messy, and imperfect world, someone has to do it.
There are ways to reduce ambiguity, like passing new laws, clarifying existing ones, and even amending the Constitution. That requires we vote and press our representatives to do these things. This has the benefit of making it clear what we want, as opposed to leaving it to the unelected judiciary to try to figure it out and anger half the country who thought they decided wrong.
1. A retired US citizen emailed a DHS attorney urging mercy for an asylum seeker he had read about. Five hours later he received an email from Google advising him the federal government had served Google with a subpoena demanding information about him. Then they followed up by knocking on his door. The federal government's concerted effort to intimidate citizens should concern every American.
2. NYT: https://archive.ph/W5FwO ICE’s New Surveillance State Isn’t Tracking Only Immigrants
A memo from a Department of Homeland Security official reviewed by CNN and sent to agents dispatched to Minneapolis last month asked them to “capture all images, license plates, identifications and general information” on “agitators, protesters, etc. so we can capture it all in one consolidated form.” And the official reportedly provided such a form, called “intel collection.”
3. Moreover, ICE officers have traveled to the homes of protesters. Not to arrest them, because they have done nothing illegal. Rather, ICE was trying to intimidate them by letting them know ICE knows who they are and where they live. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/us/minneapolis-ice-agents
I found crim pro to be a very distressing and depressing course.
Also, that last link to The NY Times article is broken.
[1] To suggest that the Government doesn’t know what’s legal and what isn’t stretches credulity. They know; and they’re going to ride as close to that line as possible when motivated by their bosses.
I'm not going to engaged with someone on HN debating legal principles regarding something so straight forward. And, as I said, this is off the top of my head. It's basic constitutional law which I haven't found necessary to research. After that sentence I googled McCarthyism and found that SCOTUS ruled in multiple cases that Senator McCarthy and his supporters violated the First Amendment rights of the citizens they accused of communism. I haven't read the opinions, but I am confident they ( and many others ) support the very basic principles I speak of.
The government cannot collect and put the names of peaceful anti-government protestors into a government database; or show up at their homes when they violated no law; or the government issuing a subpoena to google for personal data about a man who wrote a one sentence letter to a DOJ prosecutor asking for leniency for the defendant in a case he read about.
These are all actions taken by the government in response to citizens expressing viewpoints the government did not like. You will never find more classic First Amendment fact patterns.
> The government cannot ... show up at [people's] homes when they violated no law
This happens all the time. It depends on the purpose. Is it purely to harass someone, or is it to perform an investigation or for some other legitimate purpose? It's not prima facie unlawful.
You might find this poster to be instructive. It is very difficult under current law to prevail in a harassment case. https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Infographic_First-...
Having said that, my posts had nothing to do with the 'realities' of winning in court regarding the activities outlined. Rather my point is the activities are clearly unconstitutional by any conventional analysis by any qualified US attorney. Whether or not you could develop the requisite proofs is another matter entirely. But it is clear that the current administration is following the Orban playbook ( and of some South American authoritarian regimes ).
This is not 'business as usual' in any way, shape or form.
A US Citizen ( a retired lawyer if I recall ) read an article about a prosecution by the DOJ and the citizen emailed the prosecutor ( after getting his email from the judicial database ) and sent a short plea urging mercy for the asylum seeker. Five hours later he received an email from Google advising him the federal government had served Google with a subpoena demanding information about him. Then they followed up by knocking on his door.
There can be zero doubt that the subpoena upon Google violated due process. Being an administrative subpoena, there was no judge involved but due process ( eg probable cause ) is still required and - absent some wildly unimaginable set of unknown facts - there was clearly no probable cause here.
This administration is clearly in the process of gathering names of US citizens who hold beliefs Trump does not like. The larger question is what is Trump's intention in collecting such names? Based upon his actions in the past year, Americans shouldn't hold their breath hoping they are wholesome.
I assume that when you say "develop the requisite proofs," you mean "prevail in court." In Constitutional law, these are inseparable and an outcome of Marbury v. Madison. The Court says what the law is. If the Court's opinion is that the Government's behavior is permitted by the Constitution, then it follows that the behavior is Constitutional; and because our law relies on precedent, that interpretation is rather sticky. It does so happen that from time to time, we overturn precedent--and I hope we do, because we have some pretty bad law out there--but until then, we rely on it to predict the outcome of future cases.
> There can be zero doubt that the subpoena upon Google violated due process. Being an administrative subpoena, there was no judge involved but due process ( eg probable cause ) is still required and - absent some wildly unimaginable set of unknown facts - there was clearly no probable cause here.
Yeah, I agree. The problem is, without some sort of injury, there's likely no standing, and so the case will probably never see the light of day.
I neither make nor imply any such suggestion.
>>they’re going to ride as close to that line as possible
This administration has already overtly failed to comply with valid Federal Court Orders.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/us/minneapolis-ice-agents...
It's only because we've had a century of legal contrivance that it doesn't IMO.