> In several cases, the DHS has withdrawn a 1509 summons after it was challenged in court and before a judge could rule on its legality. That may be a deliberate strategy to avoid having a judge rule on the legality of the summons.
They have a toy, they’re increasingly abusing it, then trying to dodge from it being taken away.
The thing is nobody has to comply with 1509 summons, DHS has to go to court to enforce it. A lot of the fault is on a company that complies without just ignoring it.
> The thing is nobody has to comply with 1509 summons, DHS has to go to court to enforce it.
You're not wrong, but companies such as Google make business decisions, not moral decisions. It's far easier and cheaper for them to comply, while there is basically no incentive for them to fight the summons. Especially given the current administration's proven record of taking retaliation against anyone who stands in their way.
If you want companies to behave in the interest of the general public, you need to create an incentive structure that supports that.
Wouldn't the affected individual be able to sue the provider at least in some cases? From what I understand e.g. Stored Communications Act might allow suing T-Mobile in this case, at least if the individual isn't covered by binding arbitration. And possibly even government under 18 U.S.C. §2712.
Of course then it's up to judge to determine if the request was valid or not.
Both SCA and 18 U.S.C. §2712 can grant punitive damages and attorney fees. So there might be lawyers who would take it on contingency, and in this kind of case some non-profit could also have interest in litigating the issue.
And as this is something that has already happened there isn't much else the person in question can do. Third parties always have option to just disclose information to whoever asks it, at most you can hold them accountable for it later if it was unlawful. And what accountability exactly means depends on what laws exists. If you want some real accountability for the people/companies involved in these kinds of decisions then get Congress to pass such laws (however impossible it might be).
"In Fort’s case, Google did not comply with the summons for any of the accounts. The company responded to the DHS by saying it had not offered evidence of how it was related to a customs investigation."
> companies such as Google make business decisions, not moral decisions
The world is more complicated than that; they make both kinds of decisions and many decisions aren't clearly in one basket or the other. Humans don't biologically change to amoral creatures when they pull into the office parking lot (despite theories to the contrary or attempts to encourage it), nor are they absolved of human responsibility when doing things for which they are paid.
Not sure what this means. I think you meant to write "fiduciary duty": the company's board have an affirmative legal obligation to act in the interest of stockholders, regardless of moral impact.
I don't know why people keep repeating this. The board of a company must act in the interests of shareholders but the interests of shareholders go beyond just "make as much money as possible."
It's entirely possible to still satisfy those requirements by building a sustainable and moral company. The shareholders get to vote, if they don't like it they'll make that clear.
> The board of a company must act in the interests of shareholders
I think you don't understand what this phrase means. In a publicly-traded company, "the interest of the shareholders" does not mean "whatever the shareholders want"; it means "whatever is best for the company." That means money.
It may be possible to be both profitable and moral; but if it isn't, the fiduciary duty obligates corporate officers to choose the profitable path rather than the moral one.
The easy way of looking at this is that there beyond complying with the law, there is no general obligation for companies to behave morally, but there is a general obligation to behave profitably. So it's not hard to see why they make they choices they do.
> It's entirely possible to still satisfy those requirements by building a sustainable and moral company.
It is, but it's a lot easier to be not sustainable and not moral.
No, our responsibilities go far beyond fiduciary duties. You can see what Google did in this case, for example, or Apple's extraordinary investment in engineering for privacy a "human right", per Apple - far more than its users grasp or could understand.
> the company's board have an affirmative legal obligation to act in the interest of stockholders, regardless of moral impact.
That's a theory of the ~1980s that people who suffer from its consequences still seem to latch onto - perhaps it's simplicity is appealing, maybe its algorithmic decision-making appeals to the IT world - but not true.
Even now, when such things are at historical extremes, corporations take into account other issues. Not long ago, DEI and ESG were widely accepted and practiced.
The system in which those companies exist is explicitly designed though to strip away any humanity or moral qualms as much as possible. Dividing it on the shoulders of many people, making nobody in particular feel responsible for the damages themselves. Gaslighting employees into thinking they are doing the "lesser evil" or something. Just following commans of their boss.
> You're not wrong, but companies such as Google make business decisions, not moral decisions. It's far easier and cheaper for them to comply
From the space between the lines in the article, it seems pretty clear that Google denied the request, and its employees were the source for the claim being reported at all. Yes, they absolutely could be evil in principle. They appear to have been good in practice.
And in times of extremis like this, maybe it's important to call out those little victories and find allies where you can. Even if you happen to be a HN Apple stan.
> there is basically no incentive for them to fight the summons
Ehhh, seems to me a cloud provider that wants to back up my documents, communications, photos, passkeys etc has a very strong business case for ensuring the data is as safe with them as they would be in my own home.
They have an incentive to maintain a perception that it is at least as safe with them as any of their competitors. That isn't quite the same thing as having an incentive to protect your privacy.
> They have a toy, they’re increasingly abusing it, then trying to dodge from it being taken away.
This isn't uncommon - this is how NY deals with any compelling case involving their infringing gun control statutes. If a defendant has money and no other meaningful charges, they tend to just dismiss and moot the issue rather than risk a finding of unconstitutionality.
Apparently in this case, T-Mobile caved and Google didn't:
> The DHS also sought and obtained six months of phone records for Fort from T-Mobile, which included records for more than 10,000 calls and text messages. Fort was not notified the government was seeking the records until mid-July, when government lawyers produced them to her lawyers. Fort’s lawyers wrote in a filing this week they were “stunned” to see the government had unilaterally been able to obtain a log of her communications after a judge had warned them about obtaining records about a journalist.
...
> In Fort’s case, Google did not comply with the summons for any of the accounts. The company responded to the DHS by saying it had not offered evidence of how it was related to a customs investigation.
> A Google spokesperson said the company reviews each request for data it gets to ensure it is legal and pushes back when it is too broad or doesn’t follow the correct process.
Note that the DHS budget ($100bn) is sufficient to provide healthcare to every uninsured child, and about half (EDIT: a third) of what it would cost to provide universal healthcare to every American under 18 at the CMS average rate.
At the end of the day this sort of wastefulness eventually attracts attention.
To cover 70.5 million seniors [1]. $17k per senior.
“Per person personal health care spending for the 65 and older population was $22,356 in 2020, over 5 times higher than spending per child ($4,217) and almost 2.5 times the spending per working-age person ($9,154)” [2].
80 million under 19 [3] at that rate comes to about $400bn. And most efficiency estimates would take at least a third off that when we eliminate redundant billing processes.
Given 6% of children lack health insurance, we could cover them for about $24bn. Less than Trump’s war in Iran has cost [4].
Use small platforms where possible. Oh wait, small platforms get sanctioned as terrorist organisations. I've been thinking I need to get my own IP range, but that requires exposing a lot of personal information.
Hm true but I'm not in the US (and if I was I'd have much bigger problems). Maybe I have to register a company in my country that owns one in the US. But I wouldn't want the US to have power over my IP assignment, that defeats the point. Even if it was a US company registering with RIPE, the US government would have a veto by deleting the company.
There may be other uses for an anonymous US company though.
“It’s outrageous conduct on so many levels. It’s hard to know where to begin,”
Do they not get that we live under an authoritarian regime? The regime doesn't care about the law. They have been installing their own people at every level of government for years, taking over parts of the government, and granting themselves new powers. When eventually every powerful person in government is part of the regime, it won't matter what the law says. This isn't hyperbole, this is how they have been operating for 1.5 years.
This is what the beginning looks like. The end looks like Germany 1942.
Remember when Republicans ran on small government, don't tread on me, Tea Party libertarians fighting the surveillance state? That was less than 20 years ago. Probably it was always a fraud.
I like 2D, that one's nice. So in total it reads (ellipses for brevity):
"In any investigation or inquiry conducted for the purpose of ascertaining the correctness of any entry, for determining the liability of any person for duty, fees and taxes due or duties, fees and taxes which may be due the United States, for determining liability for fines and penalties, or for insuring compliance with the laws of the United States administered by the United States Customs Service, the Secretary (but no delegate of the Secretary below the rank of district director or special agent in charge) may ... summon, upon reasonable notice ... any other person he may deem proper".
And of course, one could argue that it's important to just double check and determine (note it doesn't say suspect, just determine) if someone has entered the country legally, ever, and paid all import taxes, ever. In order to do that, you'd need to see a lot of records. And of course the result can be "nope, they're all good". You don't need to have a good-faith suspicion of these things, just that you have a need to determine these things.
How many laws like this are on the books? In the same way that LLMs are fantastic at finding bugs, what other bugs are in the U.S. Code or similar that LLMs could find? We've been living in a world for a long time where things like this wouldn't be exploited, or maybe even noticed, but now it feels like these vulns are being hoarded and used like software exploits.
No that’s the whole point of this article. In this case, the private companies being summonsed are acting as both judges and data holders being summonsed. This doesn’t go to a judge to approve. So in this case, the point they’re making is most private companies just roll over at the sight of a summons, so the law absolutely executes deterministically (ok, not truly deterministic, but you’re relying on the judgement of private companies and their legal teams who don’t want that heat from the government, so, close enough).
“About a month after the judge’s ruling in late February, the government said it was withdrawing the request.
But officials hadn’t given up on getting the data.
Less than a month later, the DHS served Google with a different request for the YouTube information. This time, DHS utilized a different method that didn’t require approval from a judge, only a sign-off from a DHS official. It served Google an administrative summons citing an arcane provision of federal law – 19 USC 1509 – dealing with customs imports. The provision gives the DHS broad power to inspect records in order to determine whether duties and taxes are being correctly levied on imported items. It also instructed the recipients of the summons to keep it secret.”
So that also requires all judges who a case could be brought to about this, declaring that they don’t have jurisdiction. It’s still a choice made by the judges.
A key Republican insight, many years ago was that their voters prioritize causing
harm to those they dislike. You might naively assume that out of "Kick everybody in the head" and "Kick nobody in the head" the latter would be more popular with voters, but Republicans discovered that their voters absolute will pick "Kick everybody in the head" so long as you emphasise that people they don't like get kicked in the head.
They don't enjoy being kicked in the head, they agree that part is bad, but they experience joy knowing that people they don't like got kicked in the head.
A difficulty is coming up with a way to ensure your wealthiest donors don't get kicked in the head, they annoyingly may not accept that it's a fair price unlike voters - but you can often fiddle around this, we'll find a way. If that donor doesn't even live in the area affected by the policy, for example because he's a War Criminal who lives in a different country entirely, that's not a problem...
This state of affairs benefits the ruling class of both parties. Causing harm is much simpler for the state to follow through on than improving conditions, and it's less likely to require meaningful sacrifices from wealthy elites. Republicans can run on "we'll hurt people you don't like". Democrats can run on "we won't hurt people as much as they will". Both can avoid dealing with spiraling wealth inequality, the sacred cash cow of US militarism, the healthcare system we've all been complaining about for decades and decades, etc...
> In February of this year, federal prosecutors twice sought search warrants for account information for the YouTube channel of Fort and the journalist Don Lemon, both of whom have pleaded not guilty to criminal charges in connection to a protest at a Minneapolis church in January that they were covering.
The incident in question involved Lemon and Fort participating in a anti-ICE protest that involved disrupting a church service, and then after getting arrested for disrupting the church service claiming that they were just journalists reporting on the protest and therefore their arrest was immoral and illegal.
I do actually think that pro-immigration-enforcement people want anti-immigration-enforcement people who participate in disruptive protests over the issue to get punished by the criminal justice system for this, in order to dissuade them from disrupting other people's private events; and further that they do not want "being a journalist" to be a mitigating factor for this kind of disruption. If you want the criminal justice system to treat disrupting other people's private events as a crime, even if they claim it's for a protest and that their status as journalists makes this ok, then you do in fact want the criminal justice system to investigate people who commit those acts of disruption.
>There is no judge in the loop. You don’t have that independent authority to scrutinize the demand and to say whether or not it’s legitimate,
The 4th amendment does not require a judge in the loop to decide if a search is unreasonable. This type of thinking leads to adding bureaucracy making law enforcement less efficient. Criminals benefit from having law enforcement's throughput minimized so they will campaign at every turn to make the government less and less efficient and require more and more procedures for an investigation so it all comes to a halt that way as long as they aren't most wanted 1-10 for a year they can get away with what they are doing.
My viewpoint is that we should eventually have AI be assisting in determining if a search is reasonable in the moment. If there is an actual constitutional violation that that happens it can be resolved after the fact. So for simple cases you could get the equivalent of a warrant in under 10 seconds.
By increasing efficiency and decreasing cost it allows for both higher quality, consistent, and wide spread law enforcement. I believe every part of the law enforcement and legal system needs to be systematically reevaluated finding ways to increase efficiency.
> My viewpoint is that we should eventually have AI be assisting in determining if a search is reasonable in the moment.
That is truly bananas. Whose AI? Trained on what data? We've had numerous studies show how AIs can be biased, and a police dept. is going to choose whatever AI "works best for them" — i.e., keeps most out of their way.
You can see Flock for examples here: despite requiring justification for searches, cops are entering things like "hehehe"[1]; the AI would similarly be given bad or falsified inputs.
> If there is an actual constitutional violation that that happens it can be resolved after the fact.
The entire point of the Constitution is to prevent exactly that. There is no resolution for violating someone's rights; you cannot merely go back in time and unviolate them. The point is to be free from unreasonable searches & seizures.
Your comments read like police have no ability to search without a warrant, which isn't true. If circumstances warrant it, a warrant from a judge is not required, and I'm sure a good number of people would argue that that's already true more often than it ought to be.
Part of the point of having a separate branch of government involved, too, is to prevent the first branch from just deciding "why, of course I'm right. What else would I be?", and to evaluate the facts separately (which the police cannot by definition do).
> I believe every part of the law enforcement and legal system needs to be systematically reevaluated finding ways to increase efficiency.
I'm all for increased efficiency, but AI is not that. "Slop, faster" is not the same "the correct action, while respecting the rights of the citizens, faster".
And you are not even addressing how easily a model could hide all kinds of special treatment - either way - at the whim of its creators, be they the government or some outside "trusted" party
Indeed they can but they are in some ways like an individual model per judge, albeit with a sub-optimal interface and very slow, but at least they are hard to game in mass.
>Whose AI? Trained on what data?
The government. Trained on data to maximize accuracy and minimize constitutional violations.
>We've had numerous studies show how AIs can be biased, and a police dept. is going to choose whatever AI "works best for them"
Violating the constitution means that evidence gets thrown out in court and the victims get financially rewarded. It is not in the police's interest to violate people's rights.
>the AI would similarly be given bad or falsified inputs.
And then those cops should be severely punished for intentionally violating people's constitutional rights.
>There is no resolution for violating someone's rights
There is already resolution for having your constitutional rights violated. You sue for damages and to have them stop violating your rights.
>no ability to search without a warrant, which isn't true. If circumstances warrant it
There are other situations where it doesn't warrant it which is what we are talking about here. Refer to TFA.
>Part of the point of having a separate branch of government involved, too
And I'm pointing out that this involvement is not needed by the constitution. Branches of government is an arbitrary degree of separation.
> Violating the constitution means that evidence gets thrown out in court and the victims get financially rewarded. It is not in the police's interest to violate people's rights.
Victims get financially rewarded by the state and the officers involved receive no kind of punishment at all. It's not hard to see why incentives lead to this already being widespread, and that's just what we know about when it gets thrown out or overturned. There's a whole shady practice of parallel construction going on.
> In several cases, the DHS has withdrawn a 1509 summons after it was challenged in court and before a judge could rule on its legality. That may be a deliberate strategy to avoid having a judge rule on the legality of the summons.
They have a toy, they’re increasingly abusing it, then trying to dodge from it being taken away.
The thing is nobody has to comply with 1509 summons, DHS has to go to court to enforce it. A lot of the fault is on a company that complies without just ignoring it.
> The thing is nobody has to comply with 1509 summons, DHS has to go to court to enforce it.
You're not wrong, but companies such as Google make business decisions, not moral decisions. It's far easier and cheaper for them to comply, while there is basically no incentive for them to fight the summons. Especially given the current administration's proven record of taking retaliation against anyone who stands in their way.
If you want companies to behave in the interest of the general public, you need to create an incentive structure that supports that.
Wouldn't the affected individual be able to sue the provider at least in some cases? From what I understand e.g. Stored Communications Act might allow suing T-Mobile in this case, at least if the individual isn't covered by binding arbitration. And possibly even government under 18 U.S.C. §2712.
Of course then it's up to judge to determine if the request was valid or not.
> least if the individual isn't covered by binding arbitration
But binding arbitration is pretty standard in terms of service.
It is, but T-Mobile's terms at least used to allow you to opt out from what I remember.
>Wouldn't the affected individual be able to sue the provider at least in some cases?
And lose time and money, which they also likely don't have?
Both SCA and 18 U.S.C. §2712 can grant punitive damages and attorney fees. So there might be lawyers who would take it on contingency, and in this kind of case some non-profit could also have interest in litigating the issue.
And as this is something that has already happened there isn't much else the person in question can do. Third parties always have option to just disclose information to whoever asks it, at most you can hold them accountable for it later if it was unlawful. And what accountability exactly means depends on what laws exists. If you want some real accountability for the people/companies involved in these kinds of decisions then get Congress to pass such laws (however impossible it might be).
The OP contradicts your theory:
"In Fort’s case, Google did not comply with the summons for any of the accounts. The company responded to the DHS by saying it had not offered evidence of how it was related to a customs investigation."
> companies such as Google make business decisions, not moral decisions
The world is more complicated than that; they make both kinds of decisions and many decisions aren't clearly in one basket or the other. Humans don't biologically change to amoral creatures when they pull into the office parking lot (despite theories to the contrary or attempts to encourage it), nor are they absolved of human responsibility when doing things for which they are paid.
> human responsibility
Not sure what this means. I think you meant to write "fiduciary duty": the company's board have an affirmative legal obligation to act in the interest of stockholders, regardless of moral impact.
I don't know why people keep repeating this. The board of a company must act in the interests of shareholders but the interests of shareholders go beyond just "make as much money as possible."
It's entirely possible to still satisfy those requirements by building a sustainable and moral company. The shareholders get to vote, if they don't like it they'll make that clear.
> The board of a company must act in the interests of shareholders
I think you don't understand what this phrase means. In a publicly-traded company, "the interest of the shareholders" does not mean "whatever the shareholders want"; it means "whatever is best for the company." That means money.
It may be possible to be both profitable and moral; but if it isn't, the fiduciary duty obligates corporate officers to choose the profitable path rather than the moral one.
The easy way of looking at this is that there beyond complying with the law, there is no general obligation for companies to behave morally, but there is a general obligation to behave profitably. So it's not hard to see why they make they choices they do.
> It's entirely possible to still satisfy those requirements by building a sustainable and moral company.
It is, but it's a lot easier to be not sustainable and not moral.
How are unsustainable decisions and practices working in the best interests of the shareholders?
> there is no general obligation for companies to behave morally, but there is a general obligation to behave profitably
What is that based on? I'd say there are certainly obligations for both.
The fact that some ignore those obligations - either obligation, for example when corrupt management stuffs its own pockets - doesn't make them less.
> Not sure what this means
That's quite a statement.
> I think you meant to write "fiduciary duty"
No, our responsibilities go far beyond fiduciary duties. You can see what Google did in this case, for example, or Apple's extraordinary investment in engineering for privacy a "human right", per Apple - far more than its users grasp or could understand.
> the company's board have an affirmative legal obligation to act in the interest of stockholders, regardless of moral impact.
That's a theory of the ~1980s that people who suffer from its consequences still seem to latch onto - perhaps it's simplicity is appealing, maybe its algorithmic decision-making appeals to the IT world - but not true.
Even now, when such things are at historical extremes, corporations take into account other issues. Not long ago, DEI and ESG were widely accepted and practiced.
The system in which those companies exist is explicitly designed though to strip away any humanity or moral qualms as much as possible. Dividing it on the shoulders of many people, making nobody in particular feel responsible for the damages themselves. Gaslighting employees into thinking they are doing the "lesser evil" or something. Just following commans of their boss.
> The system in which those companies exist is explicitly designed though to strip away any humanity or moral qualms as much as possible.
Citation needed.
> You're not wrong, but companies such as Google make business decisions, not moral decisions. It's far easier and cheaper for them to comply
From the space between the lines in the article, it seems pretty clear that Google denied the request, and its employees were the source for the claim being reported at all. Yes, they absolutely could be evil in principle. They appear to have been good in practice.
And in times of extremis like this, maybe it's important to call out those little victories and find allies where you can. Even if you happen to be a HN Apple stan.
> there is basically no incentive for them to fight the summons
Ehhh, seems to me a cloud provider that wants to back up my documents, communications, photos, passkeys etc has a very strong business case for ensuring the data is as safe with them as they would be in my own home.
They have an incentive to maintain a perception that it is at least as safe with them as any of their competitors. That isn't quite the same thing as having an incentive to protect your privacy.
Sweet summer child.
> They have a toy, they’re increasingly abusing it, then trying to dodge from it being taken away.
This isn't uncommon - this is how NY deals with any compelling case involving their infringing gun control statutes. If a defendant has money and no other meaningful charges, they tend to just dismiss and moot the issue rather than risk a finding of unconstitutionality.
Perfect thread to drop tmailplus. It's for journalists who can't rely on centralized systems.
Become your own tiny infra
https://gitlab.com/here_forawhile/tmailplus
Apparently in this case, T-Mobile caved and Google didn't:
> The DHS also sought and obtained six months of phone records for Fort from T-Mobile, which included records for more than 10,000 calls and text messages. Fort was not notified the government was seeking the records until mid-July, when government lawyers produced them to her lawyers. Fort’s lawyers wrote in a filing this week they were “stunned” to see the government had unilaterally been able to obtain a log of her communications after a judge had warned them about obtaining records about a journalist.
...
> In Fort’s case, Google did not comply with the summons for any of the accounts. The company responded to the DHS by saying it had not offered evidence of how it was related to a customs investigation.
> A Google spokesperson said the company reviews each request for data it gets to ensure it is legal and pushes back when it is too broad or doesn’t follow the correct process.
Note that the DHS budget ($100bn) is sufficient to provide healthcare to every uninsured child, and about half (EDIT: a third) of what it would cost to provide universal healthcare to every American under 18 at the CMS average rate.
At the end of the day this sort of wastefulness eventually attracts attention.
Medicare alone costs $1.21 Trillion, I find that extremely hard to believe.
> Medicare alone costs $1.21 Trillion
To cover 70.5 million seniors [1]. $17k per senior.
“Per person personal health care spending for the 65 and older population was $22,356 in 2020, over 5 times higher than spending per child ($4,217) and almost 2.5 times the spending per working-age person ($9,154)” [2].
80 million under 19 [3] at that rate comes to about $400bn. And most efficiency estimates would take at least a third off that when we eliminate redundant billing processes.
Given 6% of children lack health insurance, we could cover them for about $24bn. Less than Trump’s war in Iran has cost [4].
[1] https://data.cms.gov/summary-statistics-on-beneficiary-enrol...
[2] https://www.cms.gov/data-research/statistics-trends-and-repo...
[3] https://www.cms.gov/data-research/statistics-trends-and-repo...
[4] https://www.aecf.org/blog/uninsured-children-in-america
This is like UAE and North Korea behavior.
If you have to spy on these particular groups then you know you’re doing something wrong.
Use small platforms where possible. Oh wait, small platforms get sanctioned as terrorist organisations. I've been thinking I need to get my own IP range, but that requires exposing a lot of personal information.
They just removed ownership reporting requirements. Feel free to start an anonymous company and buy an IP block.
Hm true but I'm not in the US (and if I was I'd have much bigger problems). Maybe I have to register a company in my country that owns one in the US. But I wouldn't want the US to have power over my IP assignment, that defeats the point. Even if it was a US company registering with RIPE, the US government would have a veto by deleting the company.
There may be other uses for an anonymous US company though.
“It’s outrageous conduct on so many levels. It’s hard to know where to begin,”
Do they not get that we live under an authoritarian regime? The regime doesn't care about the law. They have been installing their own people at every level of government for years, taking over parts of the government, and granting themselves new powers. When eventually every powerful person in government is part of the regime, it won't matter what the law says. This isn't hyperbole, this is how they have been operating for 1.5 years.
This is what the beginning looks like. The end looks like Germany 1942.
Remember when Republicans ran on small government, don't tread on me, Tea Party libertarians fighting the surveillance state? That was less than 20 years ago. Probably it was always a fraud.
I'm surprised they still need a law.
ah, but the boot is off of a16z’s neck, so it’s all worth it!
Joke’s on them, Andreesen has no neck.
Friends don't let friends use SMS/MMS
I like 2D, that one's nice. So in total it reads (ellipses for brevity):
"In any investigation or inquiry conducted for the purpose of ascertaining the correctness of any entry, for determining the liability of any person for duty, fees and taxes due or duties, fees and taxes which may be due the United States, for determining liability for fines and penalties, or for insuring compliance with the laws of the United States administered by the United States Customs Service, the Secretary (but no delegate of the Secretary below the rank of district director or special agent in charge) may ... summon, upon reasonable notice ... any other person he may deem proper".
And of course, one could argue that it's important to just double check and determine (note it doesn't say suspect, just determine) if someone has entered the country legally, ever, and paid all import taxes, ever. In order to do that, you'd need to see a lot of records. And of course the result can be "nope, they're all good". You don't need to have a good-faith suspicion of these things, just that you have a need to determine these things.
How many laws like this are on the books? In the same way that LLMs are fantastic at finding bugs, what other bugs are in the U.S. Code or similar that LLMs could find? We've been living in a world for a long time where things like this wouldn't be exploited, or maybe even noticed, but now it feels like these vulns are being hoarded and used like software exploits.
It also requires a judge who is willing to interpret the rule the way you want. Law doesn’t execute deterministically like code does.
No that’s the whole point of this article. In this case, the private companies being summonsed are acting as both judges and data holders being summonsed. This doesn’t go to a judge to approve. So in this case, the point they’re making is most private companies just roll over at the sight of a summons, so the law absolutely executes deterministically (ok, not truly deterministic, but you’re relying on the judgement of private companies and their legal teams who don’t want that heat from the government, so, close enough).
“About a month after the judge’s ruling in late February, the government said it was withdrawing the request.
But officials hadn’t given up on getting the data.
Less than a month later, the DHS served Google with a different request for the YouTube information. This time, DHS utilized a different method that didn’t require approval from a judge, only a sign-off from a DHS official. It served Google an administrative summons citing an arcane provision of federal law – 19 USC 1509 – dealing with customs imports. The provision gives the DHS broad power to inspect records in order to determine whether duties and taxes are being correctly levied on imported items. It also instructed the recipients of the summons to keep it secret.”
With a gag order as a bonus! No judge required!
Keeping it secret isn't part of that law. And they don't have to turn over anything not relevant to the payment of duties and taxes.
So that also requires all judges who a case could be brought to about this, declaring that they don’t have jurisdiction. It’s still a choice made by the judges.
Granted someone does have to actually file a suit
edited title for length
They are disgusting pigs and the sooner the public sends them to political hell the better
DHS is using obscure law to snoop on China and Russia
FTFY
Welcome to the dictatorship.
One has to wonder whether all Trump voters wanted this. I don't think so.
> One has to wonder whether all Trump voters wanted this. I don't think so.
They voted for it. The GOP quite clearly spelled out the authoritarian desire well before the election.
They wanted it, but for someone else.
A key Republican insight, many years ago was that their voters prioritize causing harm to those they dislike. You might naively assume that out of "Kick everybody in the head" and "Kick nobody in the head" the latter would be more popular with voters, but Republicans discovered that their voters absolute will pick "Kick everybody in the head" so long as you emphasise that people they don't like get kicked in the head.
They don't enjoy being kicked in the head, they agree that part is bad, but they experience joy knowing that people they don't like got kicked in the head.
A difficulty is coming up with a way to ensure your wealthiest donors don't get kicked in the head, they annoyingly may not accept that it's a fair price unlike voters - but you can often fiddle around this, we'll find a way. If that donor doesn't even live in the area affected by the policy, for example because he's a War Criminal who lives in a different country entirely, that's not a problem...
This state of affairs benefits the ruling class of both parties. Causing harm is much simpler for the state to follow through on than improving conditions, and it's less likely to require meaningful sacrifices from wealthy elites. Republicans can run on "we'll hurt people you don't like". Democrats can run on "we won't hurt people as much as they will". Both can avoid dealing with spiraling wealth inequality, the sacred cash cow of US militarism, the healthcare system we've all been complaining about for decades and decades, etc...
Wanted what? Government agencies to efficiently be able to obtain subpoenas. I want that.
You want them to be able to snoop on journalists and unions without showing any sort of criminal behavior? Definitely checking those Republican boxes.
> In February of this year, federal prosecutors twice sought search warrants for account information for the YouTube channel of Fort and the journalist Don Lemon, both of whom have pleaded not guilty to criminal charges in connection to a protest at a Minneapolis church in January that they were covering.
The incident in question involved Lemon and Fort participating in a anti-ICE protest that involved disrupting a church service, and then after getting arrested for disrupting the church service claiming that they were just journalists reporting on the protest and therefore their arrest was immoral and illegal.
I do actually think that pro-immigration-enforcement people want anti-immigration-enforcement people who participate in disruptive protests over the issue to get punished by the criminal justice system for this, in order to dissuade them from disrupting other people's private events; and further that they do not want "being a journalist" to be a mitigating factor for this kind of disruption. If you want the criminal justice system to treat disrupting other people's private events as a crime, even if they claim it's for a protest and that their status as journalists makes this ok, then you do in fact want the criminal justice system to investigate people who commit those acts of disruption.
>There is no judge in the loop. You don’t have that independent authority to scrutinize the demand and to say whether or not it’s legitimate,
The 4th amendment does not require a judge in the loop to decide if a search is unreasonable. This type of thinking leads to adding bureaucracy making law enforcement less efficient. Criminals benefit from having law enforcement's throughput minimized so they will campaign at every turn to make the government less and less efficient and require more and more procedures for an investigation so it all comes to a halt that way as long as they aren't most wanted 1-10 for a year they can get away with what they are doing.
Can you expound on your viewpoint?
It's dicey to say that because warrants are needed in the majority of places to search and individual.
My viewpoint is that we should eventually have AI be assisting in determining if a search is reasonable in the moment. If there is an actual constitutional violation that that happens it can be resolved after the fact. So for simple cases you could get the equivalent of a warrant in under 10 seconds.
By increasing efficiency and decreasing cost it allows for both higher quality, consistent, and wide spread law enforcement. I believe every part of the law enforcement and legal system needs to be systematically reevaluated finding ways to increase efficiency.
> My viewpoint is that we should eventually have AI be assisting in determining if a search is reasonable in the moment.
That is truly bananas. Whose AI? Trained on what data? We've had numerous studies show how AIs can be biased, and a police dept. is going to choose whatever AI "works best for them" — i.e., keeps most out of their way.
You can see Flock for examples here: despite requiring justification for searches, cops are entering things like "hehehe"[1]; the AI would similarly be given bad or falsified inputs.
> If there is an actual constitutional violation that that happens it can be resolved after the fact.
The entire point of the Constitution is to prevent exactly that. There is no resolution for violating someone's rights; you cannot merely go back in time and unviolate them. The point is to be free from unreasonable searches & seizures.
Your comments read like police have no ability to search without a warrant, which isn't true. If circumstances warrant it, a warrant from a judge is not required, and I'm sure a good number of people would argue that that's already true more often than it ought to be.
Part of the point of having a separate branch of government involved, too, is to prevent the first branch from just deciding "why, of course I'm right. What else would I be?", and to evaluate the facts separately (which the police cannot by definition do).
> I believe every part of the law enforcement and legal system needs to be systematically reevaluated finding ways to increase efficiency.
I'm all for increased efficiency, but AI is not that. "Slop, faster" is not the same "the correct action, while respecting the rights of the citizens, faster".
[1]: https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/tracking-alpr-c...
And you are not even addressing how easily a model could hide all kinds of special treatment - either way - at the whim of its creators, be they the government or some outside "trusted" party
Judges can hide all sorts of special treatment too. At least with a model as opposed to a soul we can study it and improve it.
Indeed they can but they are in some ways like an individual model per judge, albeit with a sub-optimal interface and very slow, but at least they are hard to game in mass.
>Whose AI? Trained on what data? The government. Trained on data to maximize accuracy and minimize constitutional violations.
>We've had numerous studies show how AIs can be biased, and a police dept. is going to choose whatever AI "works best for them"
Violating the constitution means that evidence gets thrown out in court and the victims get financially rewarded. It is not in the police's interest to violate people's rights.
>the AI would similarly be given bad or falsified inputs.
And then those cops should be severely punished for intentionally violating people's constitutional rights.
>There is no resolution for violating someone's rights
There is already resolution for having your constitutional rights violated. You sue for damages and to have them stop violating your rights.
>no ability to search without a warrant, which isn't true. If circumstances warrant it
There are other situations where it doesn't warrant it which is what we are talking about here. Refer to TFA.
>Part of the point of having a separate branch of government involved, too
And I'm pointing out that this involvement is not needed by the constitution. Branches of government is an arbitrary degree of separation.
> Violating the constitution means that evidence gets thrown out in court and the victims get financially rewarded. It is not in the police's interest to violate people's rights.
Victims get financially rewarded by the state and the officers involved receive no kind of punishment at all. It's not hard to see why incentives lead to this already being widespread, and that's just what we know about when it gets thrown out or overturned. There's a whole shady practice of parallel construction going on.
Domestic terrorists do exist. And Don Lemon got kicked out of the CNN. Not surprised he’s mentioned here. Not everything is an abuse of power.