> In several cases, the DHS has withdrawn a 1509 summons after it was challenged in court and before a judge could rule on its legality.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.
"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.
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.
If this area of research interests you, look into Thompsons "Designing Responsibility: The Problem of Many Hands in Complex Organizations" from 2017 or Bovens ur-werk "The Quest for Responsibility" from 1998.
Diffusion of moral responsibility in complex organizations is not a new observation.
The Wikipedia article leans a bit too much on the psychology and not on the organizational design / decision architecture, but is still a good entry point:
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.
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.
> or Apple's extraordinary investment in engineering for privacy
It's easy for a company to build privacy-related features, if those features help sell products. But you are kidding yourself if you think Apple is willing to sacrifice billions of dollars for a "moral good".
I'm not saying (publicly traded) companies never act morally. I am saying that given a choice, they will always choose profits over morality.
> Not long ago, DEI and ESG were widely accepted and practiced.
And how much difference did they actually make? Studies show not much. It's performative posturing to improve the company's image in pursuit of profits, not a real moral stand. How does Raytheon putting a rainbow in their advertising for one month a year help anyone? And as soon as they feel the cultural tide shift, they drop those policies like a hot potato.
It is not, which is why you've failed to show that law, or indeed any cases in the last 50 years of companies having been successfully sued for such a thing.
It's honestly so obvious that this couldn't be the law that I can't assume good faith here. It's completely untenable as a principle, it wouldn't be possible to run a business if it were the law. Imagine what that law would look like. Would it be short term profit maximization? Would it be long term? What would that term be?
You're literally saying that there's a law that would ask judges to decide whether business decision X maximizes Y-term profit. A child could see how that would be impossible. It's asking for a fortune teller on a subject that is inherently very volatile. The whole point of running a business is believing that you can make decisions that you think are right to succeed. If this were real, you'd genuinely see companies running from the US because it'd be untenable to run a business there.
This is the worst case of FUD I've seen on HN bar none, because it's one person being so persistent about a complete myth.
> It's easy for a company to build privacy-related features, if those features help sell products.
As I said in the GP, Apple's engineering investment in privacy is far beyond what customers understand and what helps sales. Lots of companies simply add the word 'privacy' to their marketing and do nothing about it that has an impact ('we use 256-bit encryption to protect your data!' seems popular on websites).
> And how much difference did they actually make? Studies show not much.
No , you're spreading misinformation [0]. The company's board does not have a legal obligation to "act in the interest of stockholders regardless of moral impact" in any meaningful manner. Anything, including "positive moral impact", can be spun as being in the interest of shareholders. What you're implying is a legal duty towards short-term profit maximization. Absolutely nothing of the sort exists.
"Can be spun" is doing a lot of work in your argument.
In fact, corporate officers are routinely sued (or even criminally prosecuted) for failing to advance specifically the company's interests. Trying to "spin" general moral good as a net positive for the company when it negatively impacts share price typically does not sway a jury.
We're now entering complete FUD territory. Firstly your link is aimed at the UK. This thread started about Google and talked about the US. But hey, let's imagine it's focused on the US.
Let me quote what you were claiming:
> the company's board have an affirmative legal obligation to act in the interest of stockholders, regardless of moral impact.
Yet now you're saying yourself:
> failing to advance specifically the company's interests
You silently swapped the "stockholder's" interests - which is what this thread, and the oft mentioned "fiduciary duty", are about - for the "company's" interests. In this legal context, these are two very different things.
And then if you actually read the duties they list (i.e. the ones to the company, not the shareholders) and the breaches they talk about, it's stuff like self-dealing, conflicted transactions, usurping corporate opportunities, securities law violation. This has nothing to do with making business decisions in order to prioritize short-term shareholder value.
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, it does not mean money. A fiduciary duty is a duty to manage money in someone else's best interests.
It's confusing because "fiduciary" sounds like you have to optimize for the mercenary interests of shareholders, but that is not true. Not every corporation is founded to turn a profit; what do you think the fiduciary duty looks like for a nonprofit?
The general obligation for the company to behave morally comes from two places: specific laws and the fact that its employees want to sleep at night. These are more powerful than a lot of people want to give credit for.
This is absolutely not true. Your link is focused on the UK, the "interests of the company" are independent of "the interests of shareholders", and the duties/breaches listed there revolve around betraying the company (not shareholders) for individual gain. Insider trading, embezzlement, leaking, conflicts of interests. Nothing at all like "making a decision that prioritizes morals over short-term profits".
They aren't, and as such, deciding to forego short-term profit by making sustainable decisions and practices is of course not illegal whatsoever, nor does any company ever get sued for it.
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).
If you go by this logic, you can forget the entire legal system. You might as well immediately close all lawsuits and declare the party the winner that has more capital.
>Ιf you go by this logic, you can forget the entire legal system.
I did. I'll still file a lawsuit if I'm forced to, but I gave up in the idea that it functions in any singificant way as to not declare the winner the party that has more capital.
> 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.
You could say that the difference between "don't be evil" and having no backbone at all is quite a strong incentive (and strongly influences your brand valuation), but once your reputation is in the gutter, maybe it doesn't matter anymore.
> 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.
The government isn't big brother, they just let mega corps do all of the spying via "ads" and then just buy your data from a data broker to whom you let have all of your personal information for game on your phone that gives you a little dopamine hit.
We somehow let corporations just take the data that we all create every day and then sell it and make billions in profit.
I want that to change. I want to own any and all data I create interacting with anything anywhere, to be copyright by me, in an enforcable way. I should get paid for the data I generate. The problem is that as long as we, collectively, allow ads that spy on us in exchange for really nothing other than amusement and that pursuit of the next dopamine hit we get. I can't enforce agency and ownership of the data I create unless we, collecively, change the rules. We have the power to do that by voting for the candidates that speaks to the issues you care about. We also need to tell politicians what we want, because if we do not, nothing will change. I think the data we create should be automatically copyright of the person generating it, so I can make money from my data if I choose, or not to, if I don't.
Don't you want to own and make money from the data you create every single day?
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.
>Since when were private companies part of the Judicial Branch?
What part of GP's quote from the article gets you to "private companies are part of the judicial branch"? The judicial branch wasn't involved there, only the executive. All of us, private individuals or organizations, have the right to challenge any requests by the executive branch (and by the same token, unless forbidden by law we can also just voluntarily go along with its requests). The judicial branch can then rule on who is right. If the executive wants to force it then it can go to the judicial branch up front and get an actual for real warrant. If it wants to bypass judicial review, then it doesn't have the same legal force either.
Here, it asked T-Mobile and Google for a bunch of stuff on a journalist. T-Mobile said sure. Google said no, come back with a warrant.
I get what you're saying, but "the company reviews each request for data it gets to ensure it is legal" just sounds like something a judge should do, no?
>but "the company reviews each request for data it gets to ensure it is legal" just sounds like something a judge should do, no?
No, unless you're arguing that the government should be barred from even making voluntary requests at all? I'm not sure I'd agree with that either though, there's plenty of times where a government request really is just an honest "request" for pure info, like a poll or survey or something on how a program is working and any feedback participants want to give. Though of course it's also easy to see how things like 3rd party doctrine have expanded in effect over time and gotten badly abused, particularly in combination with other levers government has. Perhaps that doctrine should be abolished and the government shouldn't be able to make "voluntary requests" for anything that'd touch on a criminal or civil investigation (so they'd still be able to ask for surveys and the like), but that'd require some careful consideration. Or maybe there are some reasonable limits in terms of data automatically and unavoidably collected (like cellular location) vs data voluntarily shared.
Regardless however, if the government wants to compel somebody to comply, well that's literally what a warrant (or court order) is for right? If the government chooses not to involve a judge in a request for data that'd require a warrant to force, then yeah of course the private party they're asking gets to decide whether to voluntarily go along with that or not. That's the trade.
> No, unless you're arguing that the government should be barred from even making voluntary requests at all?
IMHO the third-party doctrine is an area where legislators ought to be passing laws to broaden constitutional protections, in suitably nuanced way, to keep up with the times. In the modern age, people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks.
The idea that fourth amendment protections apply to physical mail, but not to e-mail [1] doesn't really make much sense.
Unfortunately this is the sort of thing change that really needs to come from legislators, and the legislative process isn't very effective at the moment.
[1] except for the 0.1% of people who self-host their own e-mail server in their own home
> ...but "the company reviews each request for data it gets to ensure it is legal" just sounds like something a judge should do, no?
This is assuming the first pass is before a judge. They're circumventing this by going straight to the companies, as noted by the following blurbs:
> This time, DHS utilized a different method that didn’t require approval from a judge, only a sign-off from a DHS official.
and
> It also instructed the recipients of the summons to keep it secret.
In most cases, a company's legal team will attempt to validate the legality of a request because, if they just acquiesce, it becomes a legal problem for them to turn over data without that validation of legality - which can have financial repercussions.
In those cases, the government most often will not (and cannot) step in to save them from the financial blowback (i.e.: the government got what it wanted; it's not their problem, now).
Company legal departments should absolutely review requests and make sure they're legal before handing over data.
If they suspect the request isn't legal, they can refuse it, and then it can be escalated to a judge.
Are you suggesting that every request should go through a judge before it gets sent to a company? That would be great, but even then, different judges interpret laws differently, so a company will still do a legal review before deciding whether or not to comply.
“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.
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.
I hope it attracts attention. Everything bad that rational people predicted about the DHS when it was created has come true, but people seem to have become comfortable with their civil liberties taken away.
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.
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.”
There are startlingly few, if any situations where anything other than an actual court order, not any of this BS "administrative subpoena" can compel someone to silence - that whole "prior restraint" thing.
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.
Most countries are on the path to curtail privacy in the name of security and profit. The US, however, is really good at being at the forefront of the movement while pretending to be otherwise. It’s extremely obvious to outsiders how blissfully ignorant the average american is.
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...
You’re replacing the issue with a different one. This is not about whether agencies should be able to use lawful subpoenas efficiently. It is about DHS using 19 U.S.C. §1509—customs-import summons authority to demand records concerning journalists, nonprofits, and unions without prior judicial approval, while requesting secrecy. DHS has also reportedly withdrawn demands after they were challenged but before courts could rule on their legality.
If you support that specific use of administrative power, say as much. Calling it “efficient subpoenas” does not address how rotten it is with near enough precision, and is intentionally routing around what the actual issue is. Thats exactly the kind of corrupt attitude that government has embraced and why this is even a story.
> 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.
Honestly not sure how we escape this shit pile of fascist government organizations other than completely abolishing the DHS, ICE, and the majority of police departments at a minimum and start fresh again. But I don't see that happening without a complete upheaval and downfall of both major political parties which seems even more unlikely.
we went full authoritarian empire in less than a year
imagine two more years by 2028 what this nightmare is going to look like
even if the Dems get the Senate somehow it will barely slow them down
Bush admin was horrible with Iraq War and economy crashing but this is a whole new level of corruption
and I am starting to believe USPS is most definitely going to destroy voting by mail handing them the midterms anyway while supreme court slow-walks sorting it out if not making it 100x worse
Not less than a year. This has been in the works for a very, very long time. They needed six seats on the Supreme Court, a decades long propaganda machine to produce a population scared, hateful, and malinformed enough to elect such an obvious empathy lacking charlatan as president, …
Fascism happens slow at first, then all at once. Sadly, that’s where we find ourselves.
> On the other hand, I'm working on a prototype to completely throw away conventional email. Creating a system where you can simply spin your own physical mail box and node, and reach others at their unique address.
I thought the exact same thing and that's what I would do too(I didn't). This is from the official openpgp repository and you end up asking your self these things.
PGP is set up in a way where this wouldn't be that hard either. You could easily encrypt every message with a master key so that every PGP message sent would be decryptable. That's how group messaging works, everyone encrypts the same message with everyone's key. Otherwise you would not be able to read your own outbound main for instance.
The hardest thing you would have to do is hide the fact that your key exists inside the source code, as well as the instruction set to encrypt it with this key.
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".
>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.
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
what the judge sees is all public record, and can be appealed up the chain, and ultimately overridden by a pardon.
for a model, we would need all the training data, training method, fine tuning, etc to all be public record, along with all of the operations at inference time.
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.
Why stop there? We should have RoboCops discovering evidence, robot prosecutors presenting the case to a robot grand jury, which, after charging, is immediately adjudicated by a robot judge in front of a robot jury, with the sentence to be carried out by a robot executioner. The whole thing could be done in like a day, including appeals! THINK OF THE EFFICIENCY WE COULD ACHIEVE!!!
Obviously crime would cease to exist, producing the utopia we all knew this administration would achieve! America would be HOT! So HOT!!!
When dealing with an entity that constantly abuses power, it is safe to assume as the default that they are abusing their power in every situation. The administration is evil, filled with evil people committing evil acts against humanity every single day. It is best to assume all of their acts are a form of abuse.
> 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.
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.
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.
If this area of research interests you, look into Thompsons "Designing Responsibility: The Problem of Many Hands in Complex Organizations" from 2017 or Bovens ur-werk "The Quest for Responsibility" from 1998.
Diffusion of moral responsibility in complex organizations is not a new observation.
The Wikipedia article leans a bit too much on the psychology and not on the organizational design / decision architecture, but is still a good entry point:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility
> 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.
> 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.
> or Apple's extraordinary investment in engineering for privacy
It's easy for a company to build privacy-related features, if those features help sell products. But you are kidding yourself if you think Apple is willing to sacrifice billions of dollars for a "moral good".
I'm not saying (publicly traded) companies never act morally. I am saying that given a choice, they will always choose profits over morality.
> Not long ago, DEI and ESG were widely accepted and practiced.
And how much difference did they actually make? Studies show not much. It's performative posturing to improve the company's image in pursuit of profits, not a real moral stand. How does Raytheon putting a rainbow in their advertising for one month a year help anyone? And as soon as they feel the cultural tide shift, they drop those policies like a hot potato.
> That's a theory
Not a theory. It's literally the law.
> Not a theory. It's literally the law.
It is not, which is why you've failed to show that law, or indeed any cases in the last 50 years of companies having been successfully sued for such a thing.
It's honestly so obvious that this couldn't be the law that I can't assume good faith here. It's completely untenable as a principle, it wouldn't be possible to run a business if it were the law. Imagine what that law would look like. Would it be short term profit maximization? Would it be long term? What would that term be?
You're literally saying that there's a law that would ask judges to decide whether business decision X maximizes Y-term profit. A child could see how that would be impossible. It's asking for a fortune teller on a subject that is inherently very volatile. The whole point of running a business is believing that you can make decisions that you think are right to succeed. If this were real, you'd genuinely see companies running from the US because it'd be untenable to run a business there.
This is the worst case of FUD I've seen on HN bar none, because it's one person being so persistent about a complete myth.
> It's easy for a company to build privacy-related features, if those features help sell products.
As I said in the GP, Apple's engineering investment in privacy is far beyond what customers understand and what helps sales. Lots of companies simply add the word 'privacy' to their marketing and do nothing about it that has an impact ('we use 256-bit encryption to protect your data!' seems popular on websites).
> And how much difference did they actually make? Studies show not much.
Which studies?
No , you're spreading misinformation [0]. The company's board does not have a legal obligation to "act in the interest of stockholders regardless of moral impact" in any meaningful manner. Anything, including "positive moral impact", can be spun as being in the interest of shareholders. What you're implying is a legal duty towards short-term profit maximization. Absolutely nothing of the sort exists.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48975048
"Can be spun" is doing a lot of work in your argument.
In fact, corporate officers are routinely sued (or even criminally prosecuted) for failing to advance specifically the company's interests. Trying to "spin" general moral good as a net positive for the company when it negatively impacts share price typically does not sway a jury.
https://www.iod.com/resources/governance/fiduciary-duties-fo...
We're now entering complete FUD territory. Firstly your link is aimed at the UK. This thread started about Google and talked about the US. But hey, let's imagine it's focused on the US.
Let me quote what you were claiming:
> the company's board have an affirmative legal obligation to act in the interest of stockholders, regardless of moral impact.
Yet now you're saying yourself:
> failing to advance specifically the company's interests
You silently swapped the "stockholder's" interests - which is what this thread, and the oft mentioned "fiduciary duty", are about - for the "company's" interests. In this legal context, these are two very different things.
And then if you actually read the duties they list (i.e. the ones to the company, not the shareholders) and the breaches they talk about, it's stuff like self-dealing, conflicted transactions, usurping corporate opportunities, securities law violation. This has nothing to do with making business decisions in order to prioritize short-term shareholder value.
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, it does not mean money. A fiduciary duty is a duty to manage money in someone else's best interests.
It's confusing because "fiduciary" sounds like you have to optimize for the mercenary interests of shareholders, but that is not true. Not every corporation is founded to turn a profit; what do you think the fiduciary duty looks like for a nonprofit?
The general obligation for the company to behave morally comes from two places: specific laws and the fact that its employees want to sleep at night. These are more powerful than a lot of people want to give credit for.
> 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.
> What is that based on?
It's based on the (US) law. Corporate officers failing to advance the interests of the company can be prosecuted civilly or criminally.
There is no analogous legal obligation to act morally or in the interest of the general public.
https://www.iod.com/resources/governance/fiduciary-duties-fo...
This is absolutely not true. Your link is focused on the UK, the "interests of the company" are independent of "the interests of shareholders", and the duties/breaches listed there revolve around betraying the company (not shareholders) for individual gain. Insider trading, embezzlement, leaking, conflicts of interests. Nothing at all like "making a decision that prioritizes morals over short-term profits".
Required amorality is a widely told story (by the amoral), but it's disinformation.
How are unsustainable decisions and practices working in the best interests of the shareholders?
They aren't, and as such, deciding to forego short-term profit by making sustainable decisions and practices is of course not illegal whatsoever, nor does any company ever get sued for it.
Investors are motivated by short term gains.
Some are. Others are holding for the long term.
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.
>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).
If you go by this logic, you can forget the entire legal system. You might as well immediately close all lawsuits and declare the party the winner that has more capital.
It doesn't (yet) work that way.
>Ιf you go by this logic, you can forget the entire legal system.
I did. I'll still file a lawsuit if I'm forced to, but I gave up in the idea that it functions in any singificant way as to not declare the winner the party that has more capital.
> 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.
> 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.
You could say that the difference between "don't be evil" and having no backbone at all is quite a strong incentive (and strongly influences your brand valuation), but once your reputation is in the gutter, maybe it doesn't matter anymore.
> 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.
The government isn't big brother, they just let mega corps do all of the spying via "ads" and then just buy your data from a data broker to whom you let have all of your personal information for game on your phone that gives you a little dopamine hit.
We somehow let corporations just take the data that we all create every day and then sell it and make billions in profit.
I want that to change. I want to own any and all data I create interacting with anything anywhere, to be copyright by me, in an enforcable way. I should get paid for the data I generate. The problem is that as long as we, collectively, allow ads that spy on us in exchange for really nothing other than amusement and that pursuit of the next dopamine hit we get. I can't enforce agency and ownership of the data I create unless we, collecively, change the rules. We have the power to do that by voting for the candidates that speaks to the issues you care about. We also need to tell politicians what we want, because if we do not, nothing will change. I think the data we create should be automatically copyright of the person generating it, so I can make money from my data if I choose, or not to, if I don't.
Don't you want to own and make money from the data you create every single day?
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.
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>Since when were private companies part of the Judicial Branch?
What part of GP's quote from the article gets you to "private companies are part of the judicial branch"? The judicial branch wasn't involved there, only the executive. All of us, private individuals or organizations, have the right to challenge any requests by the executive branch (and by the same token, unless forbidden by law we can also just voluntarily go along with its requests). The judicial branch can then rule on who is right. If the executive wants to force it then it can go to the judicial branch up front and get an actual for real warrant. If it wants to bypass judicial review, then it doesn't have the same legal force either.
Here, it asked T-Mobile and Google for a bunch of stuff on a journalist. T-Mobile said sure. Google said no, come back with a warrant.
>I don’t remember that part of the Constitution.
Might want to reread if it's been awhile for you.
I get what you're saying, but "the company reviews each request for data it gets to ensure it is legal" just sounds like something a judge should do, no?
>but "the company reviews each request for data it gets to ensure it is legal" just sounds like something a judge should do, no?
No, unless you're arguing that the government should be barred from even making voluntary requests at all? I'm not sure I'd agree with that either though, there's plenty of times where a government request really is just an honest "request" for pure info, like a poll or survey or something on how a program is working and any feedback participants want to give. Though of course it's also easy to see how things like 3rd party doctrine have expanded in effect over time and gotten badly abused, particularly in combination with other levers government has. Perhaps that doctrine should be abolished and the government shouldn't be able to make "voluntary requests" for anything that'd touch on a criminal or civil investigation (so they'd still be able to ask for surveys and the like), but that'd require some careful consideration. Or maybe there are some reasonable limits in terms of data automatically and unavoidably collected (like cellular location) vs data voluntarily shared.
Regardless however, if the government wants to compel somebody to comply, well that's literally what a warrant (or court order) is for right? If the government chooses not to involve a judge in a request for data that'd require a warrant to force, then yeah of course the private party they're asking gets to decide whether to voluntarily go along with that or not. That's the trade.
> No, unless you're arguing that the government should be barred from even making voluntary requests at all?
IMHO the third-party doctrine is an area where legislators ought to be passing laws to broaden constitutional protections, in suitably nuanced way, to keep up with the times. In the modern age, people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks.
The idea that fourth amendment protections apply to physical mail, but not to e-mail [1] doesn't really make much sense.
Unfortunately this is the sort of thing change that really needs to come from legislators, and the legislative process isn't very effective at the moment.
[1] except for the 0.1% of people who self-host their own e-mail server in their own home
> ...but "the company reviews each request for data it gets to ensure it is legal" just sounds like something a judge should do, no?
This is assuming the first pass is before a judge. They're circumventing this by going straight to the companies, as noted by the following blurbs:
> This time, DHS utilized a different method that didn’t require approval from a judge, only a sign-off from a DHS official.
and
> It also instructed the recipients of the summons to keep it secret.
In most cases, a company's legal team will attempt to validate the legality of a request because, if they just acquiesce, it becomes a legal problem for them to turn over data without that validation of legality - which can have financial repercussions.
In those cases, the government most often will not (and cannot) step in to save them from the financial blowback (i.e.: the government got what it wanted; it's not their problem, now).
Company legal departments should absolutely review requests and make sure they're legal before handing over data.
If they suspect the request isn't legal, they can refuse it, and then it can be escalated to a judge.
Are you suggesting that every request should go through a judge before it gets sent to a company? That would be great, but even then, different judges interpret laws differently, so a company will still do a legal review before deciding whether or not to comply.
An extremely cosy relationship between large corporations and a government.
I've seen this somewhere before and I can't quite put my finger on where I saw it.
“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.
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.
I hope it attracts attention. Everything bad that rational people predicted about the DHS when it was created has come true, but people seem to have become comfortable with their civil liberties taken away.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There are startlingly few, if any situations where anything other than an actual court order, not any of this BS "administrative subpoena" can compel someone to silence - that whole "prior restraint" thing.
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
Most countries are on the path to curtail privacy in the name of security and profit. The US, however, is really good at being at the forefront of the movement while pretending to be otherwise. It’s extremely obvious to outsiders how blissfully ignorant the average american is.
Friends don't let friends use SMS/MMS
They are disgusting pigs and the sooner the public sends them to political hell the better
edited title for length
Welcome to the dictatorship.
One has to wonder whether all Trump voters wanted this. I don't think so.
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...
> 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.
As long as it hurts the right people, yes they voted for it completely.
[flagged]
You’re replacing the issue with a different one. This is not about whether agencies should be able to use lawful subpoenas efficiently. It is about DHS using 19 U.S.C. §1509—customs-import summons authority to demand records concerning journalists, nonprofits, and unions without prior judicial approval, while requesting secrecy. DHS has also reportedly withdrawn demands after they were challenged but before courts could rule on their legality. If you support that specific use of administrative power, say as much. Calling it “efficient subpoenas” does not address how rotten it is with near enough precision, and is intentionally routing around what the actual issue is. Thats exactly the kind of corrupt attitude that government has embraced and why this is even a story.
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.
Honestly not sure how we escape this shit pile of fascist government organizations other than completely abolishing the DHS, ICE, and the majority of police departments at a minimum and start fresh again. But I don't see that happening without a complete upheaval and downfall of both major political parties which seems even more unlikely.
The democrats are completely complacent right now. They don’t even want to pretend to fight anymore.
democrats thought they don't need competence as long as they have the "political correctness" magic wand.
Looks like they were wrong! Thankfully!
[dead]
we went full authoritarian empire in less than a year
imagine two more years by 2028 what this nightmare is going to look like
even if the Dems get the Senate somehow it will barely slow them down
Bush admin was horrible with Iraq War and economy crashing but this is a whole new level of corruption
and I am starting to believe USPS is most definitely going to destroy voting by mail handing them the midterms anyway while supreme court slow-walks sorting it out if not making it 100x worse
Not less than a year. This has been in the works for a very, very long time. They needed six seats on the Supreme Court, a decades long propaganda machine to produce a population scared, hateful, and malinformed enough to elect such an obvious empathy lacking charlatan as president, …
Fascism happens slow at first, then all at once. Sadly, that’s where we find ourselves.
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I know we're not supposed to comment on voting, but you're not fixing anything with a ten day old account that's already in the negative IMO.
[flagged]
I wouldn’t trust a week-old vibe coded project to protect my identity against state actors.
Especially when it's GP's own project lol
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49330876
> On the other hand, I'm working on a prototype to completely throw away conventional email. Creating a system where you can simply spin your own physical mail box and node, and reach others at their unique address.
I gave it a deeper look and it bundles 500+ kB minified OpenPGP library in JavaScript, presumably to do all the encryption and key management logic.
Not saying it's necessarily malicious, but if I wanted to do malice this is exactly how I'd do it.
I thought the exact same thing and that's what I would do too(I didn't). This is from the official openpgp repository and you end up asking your self these things.
PGP is set up in a way where this wouldn't be that hard either. You could easily encrypt every message with a master key so that every PGP message sent would be decryptable. That's how group messaging works, everyone encrypts the same message with everyone's key. Otherwise you would not be able to read your own outbound main for instance.
The hardest thing you would have to do is hide the fact that your key exists inside the source code, as well as the instruction set to encrypt it with this key.
If you want to do encryption the proper way on modern browser, look into https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Crypto_...
I'm aware of webcrypto, but decided PGP was more suitable.
Mainly, the physical private key
It's also been battle tested much longer then webcrypto.
What makes it improper in your eyes?
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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...
>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.
> Violating the constitution means that evidence gets thrown out in court and the victims get financially rewarded.
No, usually it only means that maybe that specific evidence only gets thrown out. Financial reward? No, maybe if it's absolutely egregious.
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.
what the judge sees is all public record, and can be appealed up the chain, and ultimately overridden by a pardon.
for a model, we would need all the training data, training method, fine tuning, etc to all be public record, along with all of the operations at inference time.
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.
Why stop there? We should have RoboCops discovering evidence, robot prosecutors presenting the case to a robot grand jury, which, after charging, is immediately adjudicated by a robot judge in front of a robot jury, with the sentence to be carried out by a robot executioner. The whole thing could be done in like a day, including appeals! THINK OF THE EFFICIENCY WE COULD ACHIEVE!!!
Obviously crime would cease to exist, producing the utopia we all knew this administration would achieve! America would be HOT! So HOT!!!
When did humanity decide to stop thinking?
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.
When dealing with an entity that constantly abuses power, it is safe to assume as the default that they are abusing their power in every situation. The administration is evil, filled with evil people committing evil acts against humanity every single day. It is best to assume all of their acts are a form of abuse.
They are the domestic terrorists, not Don Lemon.
Definitely we need to arrest and after a trial jail, and if necessary hang the terrorists in DHS.