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I’m generally receptive to point the finger at Google’s intentions but in their defense, administrative subpoenas frequently include non disclosure orders. Google’s own transparency policies have always carved out (industry standard) exceptions for cases where they’re legally prohibited from notifying.
[0] https://evrimagaci.org/gpt/judge-rebukes-trump-over-student-...
The person in question said he was in Geneva when he received the email from Google. Therefore is a non-US citizen residing outside the country entitled to 1A protections for something they said or did while in the US? I'm not expressing an opinion but I wouldn't take that statement as legal advice.
Whether the government waits for him to leave the country to violate his rights feels like a small detail in this issue.
Also, if you intend to claim that us foreigners are free targets for any abhorent behaviour of your government, maybe you should rename your bill of rights a bill of privileges.
What we do know is that the US, like all other countries, has wide legal latitude on not allowing foreigners into the country. You can be denied entry for no more than a Facebook like of the wrong post.
do you know what any of those words mean? if you do, perhaps you could share what they mean (and then explain why you lied)
But you are conflating seeking entry with being present inside the country. That’s the legal line, and the Supreme Court has stated it clearly. “once an alien enters the country, the legal circumstance changes, for the Due Process Clause applies to all ‘persons’ within the United States, including aliens, whether their presence here is lawful, unlawful, temporary, or permanent.” [0]
As for the First Amendment specifically the Supreme court has reversed the deportation order of an Australian labor activist due to alleged Communist Party affiliation, concluding that “freedom of speech and of the press is accorded aliens residing in this country” [1]
The Geneva detail doesn’t apply. He was on US soil as a lawful visa holder when he attended the protest. It’s a question of where he was when the government action targeted his protected expression not where he was when Google emailed him.
His departure doesn’t retroactively strip the constitutional protections that applied when the conduct occurred.
[0] https://law.onecle.com/ussc/533/533us693.html
[1] Bridges v. Wixon https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/aliens/
At least in terms of being "at the border", United States v. Martinez-Fuerte would appear to disagree.
That legal line you mention is both figuratively and literally not at the border; protections are weakened up to 100 miles away.
If that is to happen, who would enforce the rulings? The DOJ is not neutral and will likely abide to the wishes of the Administration
Not to mention the supreme court that is willing to let this happen.
As a European my opinion of Trump could not be any lower, but it is my understanding that they have complied with all court orders to date (with some being contested all the way to the Supreme Court). They are certainly testing the authority limits of various courts and congressional processes, but they have complied with all legal processes to date.
"At least 35 times since August, federal judges have ordered the administration to explain why it should not be punished for violating their orders in immigration cases."
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/us/politics/judges-contem...
0. "DOJ acknowledges violating dozens of recent court orders in New Jersey" [0]
1. In Minnesota, judges reported 94 court-order violations in January and, separately, one judge identified 210 orders in 143 cases where ICE had not complied. [1]
[0] https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/18/trump-ice-immigrati...
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/us/politics/judges-contem...
> That does not end the Court’s concerns, however. Attached to this order is an appendix that identifies 96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases. The extent of ICE’s noncompliance is almost certainly substantially understated. This list is confined to orders issued since January 1, 2026, and the list was hurriedly compiled by extraordinarily busy judges. Undoubtedly, mistakes were made, and orders that should have appeared on this list were omitted. This list should give pause to anyone—no matter his or her political beliefs—who cares about the rule of law. ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.230...
Which Google definitely knows are not enforceable.
I agree: this is exactly what the administration is doing.
> I’m generally receptive to point the finger at Google’s intentions but in their defense, administrative subpoenas frequently include non disclosure orders.
Except immigration aren't allowed to put gag orders on administrative subpoenas [1]:
> First, any gag order in these subpoenas has no legal effect; you are free to publicize them and inform the target of the subpoena.
and
> The agency’s administrative subpoena power is limited, but ICE often uses the subpoenas to obtain more assistance than is legally required
This is the key problem. Companies like Google aren't making government agencies go to court to get a subpoena, they're not resisting that subpoena, they're not informing targets when they're legally allowed to and they're giving agencies more assistance than is legally required.
I don't think it's asking a lot to expect any platform to only provide the minimum legally required cooperation.
[1]: https://www.acluofnorthcarolina.org/app/uploads/drupal/sites...
There seems to be broad discretion that the government has in revoking visas.
Similarly, the US government can revoke someone's visa, but they can't revoke someone's visa because of speech protected by the first amendment.
It's a guest pass.
When getting a visa you're basically asked to agree to America's terms of service. Violations can be found pretty easily in the fine print if someone is really looking.
From there it's the same administrative work to revoke and deport as it is to say ban someone from Twitch for saying the wrong thing.
https://statements.cornell.edu/2024/20241019-career-fair-dis...
I’m a First Amendment absolutist and AFAIK foreign students can protest, but this video shows to me it probably crosses the line into something else. Exactly what, I have no opinion.
Your framing had me expecting a degree of mayhem and violence that was absent here.
For example, you have a First Amendment right to "peacefully" hurl the most awful insults you can think of at a police officer.
If that police officer feels "antagonized"--or even if your goal was to hurt their feelings--that does not permit them to abuse the special power of their workplace to attack you. If they try anyway, now that's a real crime.
They wear masks in case their political opponents take exception to their actions and hunt them down later and hurt their families.
(This seems like an extremely dubious justification to me, but I've been told on HN that this is the reason that ICE wear masks, so why wouldn't it apply here...?)
what has this got to do with the joke of the eff saying "google pink swore"?
> damage
what damage?
What is the punishment though? According to the article (written by the same person whose data was subpoenaed) they are still around, alive, safe and sound in geneva, not even formally accused of anything.
So far there is only evidence of an investigation.
And pro-pal movements arr usually pro-terrorism, so it make sense to investigate.
>We won’t give notice when legally prohibited under the terms of the request.
The post states that his lawyer has reviewed the subpoena, but doesn't mention whether or not it contained a non-disclosure order. That's an important detail to address if the claim is that Google acted against its own policy.
1. Does that mean the same thing in the ToS?
2. How valid are these requests?
> On November 20, 2025, Google, through outside counsel, explained to the undersigned why Google did not give Thomas-Johnson advanced notice as promised. Google’s explanation shows the problem is systematic: Sometimes when Google does not fulfill a subpoena by the government’s artificial deadline, Google fulfills the subpoena and provides notice to a user on the same day to minimize delay for an overdue production. Google calls this “simultaneous notice.” But this kind of simultaneous notice strips users of their ability to challenge the validity of the subpoena before it is fulfilled.
Google knows users care about their privacy, and it made the promise in its terms precisely for that reason. People pay attention to this stuff, as the popularity of this story shows.
Therefore, it's generally not going to be in Google's interest to break its own terms.
So what's going on? Did a Google employee simply mess up? Is the reporting not accurate or missing key details, e.g. Google truly is legally prohibited? Or is there some evidence that the Trump administration was putting pressure on Google, e.g. threatening to withhold some contract if this particular person were notified, or if Google continued notifying users belonging to some particular category of subpoenas?
Because Google isn't breaking its own terms just for funsies. There's more to this story, but unfortunately it's not clear what.
> First, numerous other individuals have challenged recent administrative subpoenas in court after receiving notice, and the Department of Homeland Security has withdrawn those subpoenas before reaching a court decision.
They don't want a ruling against them.
> [The subpoena would have been quashed because] there are facial deficiencies in the subpoena, including that the subpoena is missing a “Title of Proceeding.”
[1]: https://www.eff.org/files/2026/04/13/eff_letter_re_google_no...
> In April 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent Google an administrative subpoena requesting his data.
> In September 2024, Amandla Thomas-Johnson was a Ph.D. candidate studying in the U.S. on a student visa when he briefly attended a pro-Palestinian protest. In April 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent Google an administrative subpoena requesting his data.
> This document explains two key ways that recipients can resist immigration administrative subpoenas: First, any gag order in these subpoenas has no legal effect; you are free to publicize them and inform the target of the subpoena. Second, you do not have to comply with the subpoena at all, unless ICE goes to court—where you can raise a number of possible objections—and the court orders compliance.
[1]: https://www.acluofnorthcarolina.org/app/uploads/drupal/sites...
You can try to find a way to keep things private, and many of the people on HN likely have the capability to do so. But hiding from your government because they are weaponizing your information against you seems to be the wrong approach. I just don't understand the American people just rolling over and letting their country / rights / freedoms just be obliterated.
Being in America is a privilege that can easily be taken away. Guests of America should walk a narrow path.
Same as being in any other country.
Fair, but everything else I said goes through the same.
> Americans are rolling over and justifying terrifying out reach
I just don't see the terror? If someone is coming over here on a student visa and then doing political activism, it seems completely reasonable for the immigration authorities to check that out.
Only on the darkest timeline is a picture more offensive than the threat of genocide.
Gives a good insight into the psyche of power in the US (and probably the psyche of power in general).
The US isn't some global free zone where everyone has a right to come and go - do as they please.
If you came to the US legally with a visa. Great. When you signed your visa documents there were some questions they asked you and some fine print that basically made you liable for "bad behavior."
I'm an American living in the UK and I'm under no illusion that if I start doing dumb stuff here it's possible they tell me to leave. (Tho apparently the UK government has a pretty lax attitude with who they ask to leave.)
If someone wants to come to my country and behave in any way outside their best - then yes I support the government kicking them out.
No matter what kind of mental gymnastics you try to do, this is just an obvious case of a foreign government having a huge influence and control over internal US affairs.
That would be true if We The People were reliably informed when we showed up to cast our votes. However, in recent years, we have become detached from reality. "News media" companies pivoted away from keeping their audiences informed about things that mattered and instead focused on capturing audiences and keeping those audiences maximally engaged so that they could be sold to advertisers and otherwise exploited.
Now when people show up to the polls, they think they're voting to keep themselves safe from violent crimnals running rampant; they think they are voting to keep out the flood of strange outsiders coming to take their jobs and eat their family pets. But in reality they're voting for -- and getting -- something quite different.
Weren't the democrats criticised for campaigning on the message that voting for Trump was a significant risk to due process and democracy? I feel like every voter was aware of what happened on Jan 6th and still voted for him with some level of knowledge about that.
This is true, but it is only one part of the picture. I feel journalism in general has stopped asking controversial questions and investigating. There is no more difficult interviews where they are, if need be, confrontational and try to get answers that mean anything, that deeply clarify an item or a stance. It's all become so docile, nobody goes digging deep into facts anymore, euphemism everywhere. For example: a couple of weeks ago I watched a Johnny Harris video re. America/fascism and he really managed - after spending most of the video on Hitler and Mussolini - to arrive at the conclusion that the US is trending towards an illiberal democracy while depicting Victor Orban as fascist. Orban called his vision for Hungary an illiberal democracy.
But his self-described quest to create a so-called illiberal democracy in...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/hungary-election-orban-9.71605...
The whole video managed to ommit that populism always rises when capitalism fails.
News has basically become entertainment and it makes me sad.
There's no formal mechanism of accountability for members of Congress. Representatives hold a few town halls a year where they might be subject to social shaming by their constituents, but there's no legal obligation to do so and even when they're publicly embarrassed they often dismiss public opposition as 'a few paid agitators' or the like.
This is doubly and triply true for complex policy issues which require a lot of explaining, making it virtually impossible to build grassroots support. So you just end up with a nonprofit industrial complex that needs to constantly raise funds for lobbying and publishes slates of endorsements at election time that relatively few people have the time or inclination to read.
Government or big tech?
That desire is gone so they are going all out.
Willing, optional compliance with the administration is the core problem here.
[1]: https://www.acluofnorthcarolina.org/app/uploads/drupal/sites...
Unfortunately Trump is doing whatever he wants at this point and ignoring anyone that says otherwise.
The author isn't American.
Edit - wait until y'all find out other countries also have borders and laws...
This isn't about enforcing the law, its the book definition of fascism, and we're letting it happen.
> wait until y'all find out other countries also have borders and laws...
Legal citizens are being arrested based on no evidence. where in your law book says this is legal?
Note in Heller and elsewhere it was determined "the people" are those who belong to the political class (which is a bit vague, refer to next sentence, but not same as voting class). Generally this is not those on non-immigrant visas or illegal aliens (though circuits are split on this). If you don't have the right to bear arms, clearly you are not "the people" since people by definition have the right to bear arms, which means you wouldn't have the right of "the people" to protest either, no? So it appears since they are not people, they don't have the right to assemble in protest, though they may have other first amendment rights since it's protest specifically that was narrowed to "the people" rather than many of the other parts of the first amendment which are worded without that narrowing.
For instance, speech without assembly isn't narrowed to just "the people." Perhaps this was done intentionally since allowing non-people to stage protests was seen as less desirable than merely allowing them to otherwise speak freely.
Note: Personally I do think non-immigrants are people, but trying to apply the same "people" two different ways with the exact same wording makes no sense. If they can't bear arms they necessarily are not "the people" and thus are not afforded the right to "assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
I thought it was settled constitutional law that it doesn't? Moreover, during the war on terror, it was established that the president can freely order the murder of non Americans outside the US.
Sounds like Google stopped caring.
But... Why on earth do the people filing an administrative subpoena not have to notify the interested parties too? Why is it Google's responsibility? If they didn't tell you, would you ever find out?
Generally they do - with some notable exceptions being if you're a non-citizen and you're no longer in the US, and it's either a criminal investigation or related to intelligence or national security.
> In September 2024, Amandla Thomas-Johnson was a Ph.D. candidate studying in the U.S. on a student visa when he briefly attended a pro-Palestinian protest.
> Weeks later, in Geneva, Switzerland
It is obviously not criminal, but I guess that you don't need much to qualify something as related to intelligence and national security, attending a pro-Palestinian protest may be enough.
The problem is they tell user that they'll inform you right away and give them a chance to challenge the subpoena.
A quick search shows that they've done in the past and people have been able to get the subpoena's withdrawn.
https://thefulcrum.us/rule-of-law/us-administrative-subpoena...
I'm curious if this was a common issue or Google's legal team was flooded with subpoenas during the first months of the administration during their deportation surge (they did around 100k removals around that time). Homeland sent the request to Google a month prior to when they released the data and notified him, so they had time to notify, but it clearly isn't an automated thing.
KYC laws mean that his carrier has his name and email address and the feds probably got that without anyone informing the customer.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/05/palest...
[2]: https://panthernow.com/2026/03/03/international-students-sel...
As difficult as it sounds, we need to wait this crazy dude out, and do our best Vance doesn't take over.
Everywhere you go, if your phone is in your pocket, you are being tracked and stored, and available to the government.
Everywhere your car goes, is tracked and stored and available to the government.
BTW, the J6 protesters were all tracked and identified by their cell phone data.
Many of the insurrectionists were also caught on camera in congress after they broke down the doors and stormed the building. Some even took selfies in the offices of various senators and house reps.
If it's not your computer, it's not your data.
There’s been some pushback since then, but nothing to give any confidence that CODENAMEY, CODENAMEZ, and many others have have sprung up.
There are many things everyday people can do to insulate themselves from these choices. Encrypted DNS, VPNs, avoiding cloud services, educating friends on why Gmail is really Fedmail, etc. It's not so over-and-done with as you seem to make it out to be.
This is like saying the real solution to bad practices of food companies is to exclusively grow your own food, or the answer to anti-repair practices is to only build your own devices, vehicles, etc. Contractors cut corners? Don't try to regulate, just learn carpentry, plumbing, and HVAC plus codes!
Even if it's fun as a hobby, I don't want to be on call for my own basic online services.
you're acting like these are bad or impossible skills to learn? these is just basic skills that people should have.
the entire point of encryption is to facilitate communication across adversarial channels, if you want to keep your data in a locker you don't need encryption, and if you use encryption you can keep it stored in North Korea for all it cares
> It has been pointed out to us that since we have our servers in the US, we are under US jurisdiction. We do not believe this to be the case. We do not have a legal presence in the US, no company incorporated in the US, no staff in the US, and no one in the US with login access to any servers located in the US. Even if a US court were to serve us with a court order, subpoena or other instruction to hand over user data, Australian communications and privacy law explicitly forbids us from doing so.
It was a real eye opener to experience how challenging it was to move my data from one Google account to another. Takeout is nice in theory, but there is no equivalent "Takein" service that accepts the data form import to another Google account in the format produced by Takeout! I naively assumed "Export Google calendar from here, import same files to there" but nope, that did not work at all. Maps data was even worse.
EDIT: asking because I've been working on an alternative of sorts. I used GV a lot before I figured I could go without it/Google.
Never used Gmail other than as a throwaway account.
Went many years before I had a Youtube account. Finally made one to upload some videos. I am normally not logged in.
(OK, OK - I was more concerned with them suddenly charging for a "free" service, as well as selling data to commercial enterprises than with them giving to the government).
(OK, OK - I do use Android).
My initial motivation for this was the "account 89% full" notice, so I wanted to delete all the old junk to free up some space. But after reviewing what's in there (and I've had that account since ~2004) the opposite sentiment arose: delete everything important, unique, personal. Leave them with the junkyard of various subscriptions, newsletters, just the digital flotsam that's both ambiguous and meaningless -- perfect for appearing both legitimate and irrelevant.
Someone is going to say self hosted is better and I don't disagree, but there's limits to how much time I can spend on self hosted stuff.
Protonmail also has gone on record stating that they will comply with legal orders from the Swiss government to spy on and turn over the private data of their users.
https://proton.me/blog/climate-activist-arrest
Swiss law has recently gotten significantly more aggressive in recent years, especially wrt to prosecuting climate activists. Criminal damages for drawing with chalk on pavement, for example...
Look up the "Secret Files Scandal" of 1989 and decide for yourself how comfortable you are with Swiss law.
First I signed up with Proton Mail and added my own domain, they fit the bill for me, YMMV.
Then I did a search in my password manager and went through those accounts.
Then I just let the old account sit there for a year. Each time I got an email from something I cared about I'd log in and change mail.
It's been a year now, and I'm about to terminate the old account. All I get there now is occasional spam.
I really dreaded this, but all in all quite painless. And next time it should be easier since I now own the email domain.
edit: Forgot to mention I use Thunderbird, so old email I archived to local folders. That's part if why I ended with Proton, their IMAP bridge allows me to keep using Thunderbird.
I’ve also had some bad experiences with rates being raised on domains. That still ends up feeling like a risk to me, as the problem of domain squatters has not been solved, and the “solution” being employed seems to be continued rate hikes and exorbitant pricing for “premium” domains. It makes buying a domain for email not seem worth it… or at least not without its own long-term risks.
My current project has been trying to reduce my footprint, by deleting old and unused accounts, so any future migrations will be easier. I’ve found with many sites, this is easier said than done. For example, I deleted my Venmo account at least 2 months ago, yet I just got an email from them yesterday about reviewing privacy settings. Did they delete my account? They sure didn’t delete all my data if I continue to get emails. I’m betting they just set a ‘delete’ flag in the database. The lack of accountability and transparency on these things is really bad.
There are a million services that assume that if you have access to the email content you are the account holder. Google claims they don't recycle email addresses, but if you lose your domain, the next owner has access to all emails from that point forward.
If something happens and you're unable to renew your domain, are your next of kin out of luck?
The failure modes of that are fire/natural disaster, and thieves. Do that, but also have a geographically redundant backup scheme. Either encrypted eg Backblaze or a relatives house in another state.
Overall it’s been an acceptable trade off and I’m glad years ago I switched to a custom domain for email so I can have portability.
I honestly assumed that everyone had a rotten time with Gmail spam filtering but I guess it’s just a me problem. I suppose that means I’m up for an interesting time dealing with it as I move to a custom domain somewhere else.
Anyone have any recommendations for providers that have exceptionally good spam filtering? Hell I’d even just settle for ones that honor “mark as spam,” because Gmail absolutely does not.
Fair point. However...the parent's comment is also fair because the article does a poor job of raising this material fact. You have to click through a sub-article.
It's almost like this article should be tagged (2025) because it's basically a replay of the author's account from 2025.[0]
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/05/palest...
I didn't mention it in op but I also moved to graphene os which tbh feels much better than android has recently.
The request came in April 2025, and the user was notified the following month. That's next to a year for them to hear about it internally and then quit and setup self-hosting prior to today.
Did you not understand it at the time? Did you not see the news stories? This isn't rhetoric, I'm genuinely curious. It's been public knowledge for a long long time that Google hands data over to the USG without a warrant (likely without even Google eyes on the request, via automated means).
What changed that this story was the one that made you react?
On a more practical level, forcing them to go to court might not be much better. If this went to a FISA court, those are essentially rubber stamps and give nearly 100% approval.
A reasonable approach might be to use an iPhone with a privacy respecting email provider.
Also remember, that when you exchange email with people who use GMail, then they've got you again.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/05/palest...
You made an editorial choice to leave out the part about selling weapons to Israel to use against Gaza.
Once can agree or disagree with the action to disrupt the career.
Either way, I find your omission a bit glaring.
People may be tired of seeing stories like this appear on HN, but getting this story exposure to this group is exactly why they need to hit the homepage.
When you call in to Support at Google, you'll get someone who is a specialist in a certain thing, and they have access to only the tools and data necessary to do their particular job with your account. They rely on your disclosure of stuff to them. I often find myself uploading files to Drive, or images to Photos, and sharing them Public so that the Googler can follow a link.
As an anecdotal example, I've visited Waymo depots a couple of times. (Not actually Google, but a sister company under Alphabet.) The depot is completely nondescript, and I wouldn't have identified it if I didn't know what it was. There are a few Visitor parking spaces up front. And the front entrance leads to a Security Desk. The waiting room has about 4 chairs and a table of interesting design. The Security Guard will see you know. And there's a door beyond.
I was there to pick up "Lost & Found" items. You basically get the impression that security is tight as a drum. The guards can be kind of informal; there are employees circulating in and out; but ain't nobody going to exfiltrate a bunch of data, if they appreciate their freedom and civil rights.
I am not tired of that at all. But you have people be tired of tons of things, on reddit too. That should not distract discussions. If technology is involved I think it perfectly fits HN and in this regard, the state uses technology to sniff after people - without a real legal, objective cause. It's almost as if the current administration attempts to inflate court cases to weaken the system, e. g. until judges say "no, that's too much work, I just auto-convict via this AI tool the government gave me".
> the administration’s rhetoric about cracking down on students protesting what we saw as genocide forced me into hiding for three months. Federal agents came to my home looking for me. A friend was detained at an airport in Tampa and interrogated about my whereabouts.
Do you think any of them were sincere?
Allowing people they don't like to insult them? Not much of a priority.
The number of HNers (and people at large) who think that both corporate parties don't vehemently oppose free speech and privacy is disturbing. Right now, today, a massive number of Democrats who have spent years decrying Trump (and Republicans as a whole) as fascists are lining up to support a "clean" reauthorization of section 702 of FISA, which allows (despite the phony claims of its supporters) the warrantless and unconstituional surveillance of US citizens (and others). If our government was controlled fascists, why would anyone give them the power to spy on anyone without a warrant? Because it's all kabuki theater and everyone in DC is part of the same team, and you ain't on it.
I don't think anyone posting here thinks that Democrats are pro-free speech and pro-privacy, and it would be great if we could have politicians that truly support free speech and privacy rights. But of the options currently available, one is much less bad than the other.
IMO there are no surprises from this admin, they are doing what they promised.
Trump has been very clearly against free speech well before 2015. He's been anti-American and anti-constituion well before he came down that escalator.
It doesn't make me feel better that you're still pretending otherwise.
Trump? Not holding up his end of the deal? Who could have seen that coming!
They were also very eager to supply weapon tech to Israel when the Gaza war started, far more eager than they ever were to supply it to our own country. Leadership was letting employees push back, then all of a sudden in ~2023 they told everyone to shut up and physically gated off the HQ. Then told everyone to shut up even more after some people broke into Thomas Kurian's office.
Maybe the founders have personal reasons. Sergey Brin called the UN antisemitic for calling out genocide in Gaza.
Google was also sued by former employees who claim they were fired because they tried to prevent Google from doing evil[2], in accordance with the code of conduct they agreed to. Sadly that lawsuit ended with a secret settlement, so we'll never know what a jury thinks. Since "don't be evil" is still in there I suppose it could come up again.
[0]: https://abc.xyz/investor/board-and-governance/google-code-of...
[1]: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-dont-be-evil/2540...
[2]: https://www.npr.org/2021/11/29/1059821677/google-dont-be-evi...
here is the google code of conduct: https://abc.xyz/investor/board-and-governance/google-code-of...
scroll down to the bottom, and you will see:
"And remember... don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!"
What is called "Google" today is actually the old, fully evil, advertising firm "DoubleClick" pretending to be "Google" to make use of the goodwill the "Google" brand name used to have attached to it.
Even today, I would argue an average sample of Googlers will likely think slightly differently about these things than an average sample of Facebook employees; but of course both will have to respond to influence from the external world: i.e. customer, society, govt.
That plus aggressive avoidance of anything resembling customer service and what sounds like an internal environment that may be moving towards cage matches makes it worth avoiding for anything important.
> The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users.
- Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, 1998
...then BackRub turned Gogool mis-spelled, and the rest is history.
What exactly did the request for information say from DHS? What exactly was the reason for them to look for you specifically (certainly there are many others protesting)? Following up on that, how do others avoid something like this? What red flags should be avoided and how?
There may or may not be a solid answer for any of this. But this article feels like it's made for awareness, when it could also be made for action, with the right details included.
I've been thinking about this a lot while working on a side project. I ended up making it work entirely offline — no server, no account, no network calls. Not out of paranoia, just because I couldn't come up with a good reason to ask users to trust me with their data. Turns out the best privacy policy is just not having anyone's data.
It's called Hodor — prompt launcher for macOS.
That said, a lot of this comes down to a failure in education around privacy and the cultural norm around folks thinking they have nothing to hide. The intuition most people have around privacy, and security, is incredibly poor.
Others do have constitutional rights, but the legislative and executive hold plenary powers in the realm of national security and immigration.
It's very much not clear whether he is in a legal right or not. And no other country besides Western liberal democracies would allow anything like this. Certainly many Muslim countries do not allow it.
As an aside, a pro-Palestinian African is a laugh. Do you think Palestinians give the slightest damn about black African's plight?
eff are a joke "they pinky swore!"
Why would you go to a country for study purposes - where you explicitly tell the visa officers you're on US soil ONLY for study purposes - which is what the student visa explicitly grants you to do and then participate in a protest against the very country that granted you the study visa and then get mad that you are under investigation and would have been kicked out for violating the said visa? That's so bizarre.
What in the world does “ONLY for study purposes” mean? 24 hours a day, every day of the week?
> participate in a protest against the very country that granted you the study visa and then get mad that you are under investigation and would have been kicked out for violating the said visa? That's so bizarre.
First, he briefly attended the protest. Not the same as participating. I doubt the data from Google indicated he was holding a sign, shouting slogans, or speaking on stage. And it doesn’t sound like there was any marching or sit-in involved. (And if so, for 5 minutes?)
Second, why are you willfully equating a pro-Palestinian protest with being an anti-US protesT? Was the purpose of the protest to raise charitable funds, encourage more open discussion about the war on campus, provide moral support to Palestinian classmates, and/or any of a myriad of other purposes?
Finally, even if the purpose of the protest was politically motivated —- to push US policy on Israel and Palestine to change, how is that bizarre? In your mind is any protest that seeks to change a government’s policy at that moment an assault on that government, or on that nation? Someone who protests the death penalty, protests for stronger/weaker abortion laws, stronger/weaker gun laws, etc?
This is the USA we’re talking about. Despite all our faults (and they are legion), it is the bedrock of our founding and our core principles that democracy is a participatory process. Not just on Election Day. Throughout history we have advanced as a people and a nation because individuals have stepped up and spoken up. That has always been what has pushed us forward.
Bizarre indeed.
Strawman
>First, he briefly attended the protest. Not the same as participating. I doubt the data from Google indicated he was holding a sign, shouting slogans, or speaking on stage. And it doesn’t sound like there was any marching or sit-in involved. (And if so, for 5 minutes?)
You misunderstand. I'm not against protesting, nor am I against the reasons behind his protests. He may have had valid reasons. What I'm saying is - if you are a green card holder or a citizen, this would be very little risk vs going to a foreign country in a study visa and doing what he did. If you pay tens of thousands of dollars to get a degree from whatever country, for whatever reasons, why would you want to gamble all of it?
Also, if you are getting into a fight, you need to make sure you have the upper hand. As it stands, it is him who is in hiding and crossing borders, not the government agents or the corporate white collars that gave away his data. That's my point.
"When in Rome, do as the Romans do"
In fact, my mother had strongly discouraged me from attending UC Berkeley, because of the politicized environment there, the protests, the drug use. I had no interest in that stuff to begin with!
I read the on-campus commie newsletter that was distributed free. I ate at the vegan cafe out in the woods. It was literally called "The Ché Café". But I literally attended no protests or rallies. If they went on, I was steering clear or unaware of them. I went to rock concerts and other stuff at the student center, so I wasn't ignorant of events there.
Furthermore, in community college, I found engagement with a diversity of student groups, and most of them weren't political. There was an Asian-Pacific Islanders group (I am not) which had social events and films and no political advocacy (because they were probably oriented towards cultural exchange as well as assimilation.) There was an entrepreneur's group, an amateur radio group, and a cybersecurity group. Yes, there was a lot of activism on campus. There were rallies and protests and art installations. But I didn't partake, and it was basically easy to cultivate friendships and networking with apolitical people.
> I was definitely in touch with the communist/socialist underbelly of dissenters there [...] I read the on-campus commie newsletter that was distributed free.
Basically, this doesn't sound like disagreement to me. You did come across political activism, and you have some minor exposition. Granted our experience may be different, since we attended different universities at different times ; and so the magnitude of political activism was likely different. But academic freedom is a core tenet of western universities, and that means political life has always been part of campus life.
You seem to draw the limit at "attending protests", but this is an arbitrary limit. If, instead of profiling who attended the protests, the inquiry had been a network graph analysis of the commie underground, you may well have been listed.
Political rights are protected in the US. They don't have an arbitrary threshold such as "it's fine to read the commie newspaper but it's not fine to protest a topic". You draw an arbitrary limit which sets you on the good side, but what happens in reality is that this article questions whether it's fine for some government entity to draw that arbitrary line as they see fit. That's not exactly the same thing.
Now, please tell me that American companies are better at privacy than the Chinese ones.
Btw, some alternative email providers in truly democratic countries:
* ProtonMail (Switzerland)
* TutaMail, Posteo, Mailbox.org and Eclipso (Germany)
* Runbox (Norway)
* Mailfence (Belgium)
If you have sensitive things in your emails, host your own mail, use GPG encryption or a one-time pad, or even avoid electronic networked machines altogether (depending on the level of security that you require).
Switzerland-hosted services are no safer than others, recall that Crypto AG, who promised to sell secure encryption machines, were just a cover by foreign intelligence services (jointly US/DE-owned/operated by the CIA & BND).
This is such a myopic view of the situation. Are you going to only exchange emails with people you host as well? Otherwise, anyone you exchange emails with will go through other email providers.
Chinese companies give data to China.
I don't trust either of them, but if I had to choose, I would use Chinese products in the U.S. and vice versa.
Say what you want about especially Germany, but there you don't get sued by the president for billions if he doesn't like your opinion.
incredible.
Was that ever wrong?
"In September 2024, Amandla Thomas-Johnson was a Ph.D. candidate studying in the U.S. on a student visa when he briefly attended a pro-Palestinian protest."
https://policies.google.com/terms/information-requests?hl=en...
I cannot find any promises in that document nor would I expect to find any. It's a policy not an agreement
At best, the policy contains "representations"
The author might claim he was deceived by misrepresentations, and this deception had consequences for him, amounting to measurable harm
But proving these statements about Google's internal operations are false is difficult. Proving Google's intent in making them is even more difficult
It's incorrect to interpret a "policy" comprising statements about what Google allegedly does internally as an agreement to do anything in the future
Promises can be enforced through the legal process. Generally, Silicon Valley's so-called "tech" companies do not make "promises" to users that can be enforced. Imagine what would happen if they did
Where?
The policy does not contain the word "will" and makes no reference to what Google will (cf. "may") do in the future
The policy is comprised of statements about what Google has done in the past
The claims here are for deceptive trade practices, not breach of agreement (enforceable promise)
Google could agree, i.e., promise, to notify. It does not. Readers should ask themselves why
Instead Google states it typically notifies, i.e., has notified in the past, or may notify under certain circumstances
No doubt Google can show the statements in the policy are true at least some of the time. It is just disclosing what it has sometimes done in the past. Nothing in these statements binds it to doing something in the future. It could decide to change its procedures and update the policy at any time. It can also make justifiable exceptions at any time for any reason, irrespective of whatever it has done in the past
The "Guest author" of this EFF page should not be surprised when he/she is ignored by the Attorneys General contacted
That's the author's interpretation. The promise doesn't indicate anything of the sort (as of this writing). And users cannot challenge these requests -- users don't own the data (in the US). The promise is very clear that Google will provide the data, if the request is compliant.
Now the text of the notification was past tense, that the information was provided, whereas the promise is crystal clear that Google will notify before providing the info, but to me that could amount to a simplification of "we have verified that the request is legally compliant and will be providing the info to them in 250 ms".
Don't get me wrong, I'm not on Google's side. I'm a huge privacy nut. But the fix is to not give your info to Google, not trust that they will abide by any policy. Especially in a case like this where your freedom is at risk. Most people are completely unaware and unthinking but this guy seems that he was fully aware and placed his trust in Google.
The Google policy he linked to says:
> We won’t give notice when legally prohibited under the terms of the request. We’ll provide notice after a legal prohibition is lifted.
There appears to be no defense against this beyond not allowing companies access to your data in the first place.
https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview
And we don't even know what the guy is really wanted for. I think EFF was just waiting for this to happen to make a political statement. That's what they do, if course, but how the hell can they be sure they're aren't vouching for a criminal?
Take this as a warning.
President Trump pressured House Republicans on Wednesday to extend a high-profile warrantless surveillance law without changes, declaring on social media: “I am willing to risk the giving up of my Rights and Privileges as a Citizen for our Great Military and Country!”
Mr. Trump urged the G.O.P. to “unify” behind Speaker Mike Johnson for a critical procedural vote that had been scheduled for late Wednesday night. The vote would clear the way for House approval of a bill extending a major section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. The law is set to expire on April 20.
The statute, known as Section 702, permits the government to collect the messages of foreigners abroad without a warrant from American companies like Google — even if the targets are communicating with Americans.
It was a decade+ ago that Snowden explained to us, with receipts, that the USG has warrantless access to everything stored in Apple (iCloud Photos and iCloud Backup are unencrypted and contain a copy of everything on your device), Google, Microsoft, Amazon, et al. You have to be an ostrich with your head in the sand to not be well aware of this at this late juncture.
You'd have to be a moron to let the feds read all of your mail without a warrant by default - any country's feds.
It's certainly been quite the turn recently. But being between the people and the governments that seemingly inevitably will turn into arch fascist pricks & go to war against the citizens is not an enviable position. Hopefully many jurisdictions start enacting laws that insist companies build unbreakable backdoorless crypto. Hopefully we see legislation that is the exact opposite of chat control mandatory backdoors. It's clear the legal firewalls are ephemeral, can crumble, given circumstances and time. We need a more resolute force to protect the people: we need the mathematicians/cryptographers!
A brand new car.
Paying the price of your own choices.
Yea, they are even worse. They would sell out in a sec once goverment is going after them.
How about making sure that your laws don't authorize ICE data requests? How about that?
The powers that be in the USA have signalled they won't tolerate foreigners protesting state department policy on their soil. This is obviously unconstitutional. But it won't be changed through lawfare.
I of course feel bad for the student here too, he should not be targeted for exercising his rights to peaceful protest.
But Google is not the enemy here, I would bet good money their hand is forced to comply and their mouth is silenced. The enermy here is the overreaching government and ICE
Or they could implement end-to-end encryption for many of their products and they wouldn't be able to give the government the data, even if they wanted to. But that would hamper them to analyze data for ad targeting.
The corporation has no feelings and I don't imagine the board members or shareholders are feeling bad about this.
It's still in the code of conduct
https://abc.xyz/investor/board-and-governance/google-code-of...
And it still doesn't mean a damn thing.
This is true, but only because Google is a horrific monopoly and is allowed to continue to be (and to grow) only by the grace of government. If they don't do what they're told, they won't be allowed to steal in the way that they are accustomed to doing.
I don't think that anybody who controls Google misses a moment of sleep over it, though. They're being "forced" to do it like a kid is being "forced" not to do their homework if you offer them candy. It's easy and lucrative to be passive.
The US is not in a full blown authoritarian regime. Big companies aren't failing to resist because they fear dire consequences. They're doing it because they don't care. If they think caving to the administration will result in $1 in additional profit compared to fighting it, that's what they'll do.
Big corporations are paperclip maximizers but for money. Treat them like you'd treat an AI that's single-mindedly focused on making number go up.
I think we need to expand CCPA so that the government cannot simply spy on you by claiming that “criminals” are near you. Even criminals should have their privacy protected or else they will just label everyone criminals.
It allowed analysts to:
- Watch and record a 30-square-mile area of the city simultaneously, in real-time.
- If a crime occurred, they could "go back in time" to see where a suspect came from. Ie. track a vehicle from its destination back to its source.
- Or they could follow a vehicle "forward" in time to see where it parked, identifying potential hideouts or residences.
Of course, it was recording everyone, not just criminals.
He is almost ashamed of his views because of the current climate but he didn't do anything wrong, apparently.
The law protects people up to a point. Collaborating with the enemy is an issue especially if you're not a confirmed citizen.
The author (in my opinion) needs to raise this with their own governments (UK is probably the one where they can get better action) to push for data sovereignty laws so that it's at least UK or Trinidad and Tobago that are the governments involved in investigating their data, via appropriate international warrants.
Expecting a company to hold its own promise (of notifying the user before it happens) sounds like a pretty minimal expectation, hard for me to imagine it being "too much".
Furthermore, how would data sovereignty affect whether Google holds its promise on notifying users?
> Expecting a company to hold its own promise (of notifying the user before it happens) sounds like a pretty minimal expectation, hard for me to imagine it being "too much".
I am saying that this expectation is unrealistic for a British/Trinbagonian citizen, given the political situation in the US right now. For a US citizen having the same issue (Google gave their data to the government without a safeguard), it would be realistic.
> Furthermore, how would data sovereignty affect whether Google holds its promise on notifying users?
The user could file a lawsuit in the UK about Google handing over their data without notification and proper jurisdiction. If Google UK employees were involved in handing over this data, they could be prosecuted and fined by the UK government.
Overall what I am hinting at is that this would incentivize Google to put in proper safeguards for non-US citizens. Currently they seem to be treated as a separate, non-protected category.
It's even harder than people doing the same, because at the end of the day companies are a bunch of stuff that can be taken over and controlled by other people.
Weird to decide that you have to choose to be mad at one party or the other, and that getting mad at one party somehow indicates that you are less mad at the other party.
Weird to make this comment in response to perfectly valid criticism of Google by the EFF.
Maybe you guys should read about what you are supporting first.
I think this is much more important than what big-tech do.