DHS demanded Google surrender data on a Canadian man over anti-ICE posts | Hacker News Reader

DHS demanded Google surrender data on a Canadian man over anti-ICE posts

wired.com

130 pointsHotGarbage18 comments

> According to the complaint, Google alerted the man about the request on February 9, despite an ask included in the summons “not to disclose the existence of this summons for an indefinite period of time.”

Which means this sort of heads up is entirely dependent on the good graces of a tech company. Google chose to notify "the man" in this case but who knows how many other such requests are complied with and the subject never even finds out.

The DHS is more averse to getting real judicial subpoena/warrant than the USA is to using the metric system. They will use literally any contrived, illegal, "loophole" to avoid getting a proper judicial warrant or subpoena. The entire DHS needs to be defunded and gotten rid of. It is rotten to the core. The panic immediately after the 9/11 attacks allowed completely unconstitutional laws like the PATRIOT Act to be passed and the DHS to be created. These, and the 2001/2002 Authorization of use of Military Force need to be let lapse and repealed.

It's crazy that talking about the murders of US citizens on the streets by unaccountable DHS employees, for whom the heads of DHS literally made up and broadcast bold faced lies in order to cover up the murders, is now met with threats of use of force from the US federal government.

It has a significant chilling effect. I know I'm worried and almost did not post this comment fearing they will attack me or my family as well.

it is not beneficial to us to ever have been quiet about these issues.

This seems inappropriate, possibly illegal.

The law certainly hasn’t stopped some of them from murdering people so far.

Did Google give them any data?

The fact that a 1930s trade law can be leveraged to demand data on a foreign citizen is a stark reminder of why local-first software and hardware transparency matter more than ever.

When we build tools that rely entirely on centralized cloud providers, we aren't just outsourcing the hosting—we're outsourcing our legal jurisdiction.

Shouldn’t we fix the laws instead of penalizing users for using cloud services? There should be freedom to use cloud services for our convenience without having to accept legal defeat. That should be the focus for fix.

In theory yes. In practice, the working class is competing with corporations that are flooding the political arena with billions. This was already a daunting challenge to deal with even before the oligarchy went mask off across all branches of government.

Even if you fix the law today, the law can change tomorrow. As Bruce Schneier put it: "it's not enough to protect ourselves with laws. We must also protect ourselves with mathematics".

Also, the president of United States and his ICE Czar do not seem to care what law says. And no one seems to care to enforce the opposite.

sure, except if you're Canadian like the man in question you can't do that for US law. Easier to use local-first software than influence the laws of every country where a service provider you could potentially one day use be based.

American laws aren't something I can meaningfully influence.

We could, but then these companies would just go on ignoring the law like they do now. The current state of American governance has made it very, very clear that following the law is strictly optional if you have enough money or power

No, it's a reminder of why not letting your country descend into fascism matters more than ever.

Two things can be true. We rejected our fascist clown in a landslide, but local-first is still necessary to avoid your fascist clown.

I'm not going to say to not do the thing that'll get you a 1% benefit, but you should definitely do the thing that will get you an 80% benefit.

> we aren't just outsourcing the hosting

Like you've outsourced this comment to an LLM.

Incredible that this isn't flagged/dead yet despite so many replies.

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