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The archive link isn't working for me atm.

But tech companies should be complying with subpoenas from governments in countries they would like to operate in. I don't like what is happening in the US either, but to me this feels like a problem with the electorate. Maybe it's possible for Google to provide some of these services without actually having access to the data under subpoena, but I don't know enough about what services they were using or how they work.

Re-read the first few sentences of his post.

> if there is a valid warrant or subpoena

In the sense that all reasons are made up, I suppose that might be true. But while deporting illegal immigrants for no other reason is totally fine, deporting the ones that also have a criminal conviction is definitely not made up reasons.

You obviously don't live in the EU, UK.

You can't write rules against bad actors. There will always be some legal loophole a bad president can invent to exploit. if not for administrative warrants we would see some other creative (read: illegal) use of executive power.

The only option is to not elect someone that doesn't respect rule of law. And since I know some enlightened "centrist" will play the both sides game: What's 1 thing any previous president has done equivalent to violating posse comitatus.

> An administrative subpoena implies that there has been a legal procedure and the administrative agencies are not exactly run like the wild west

Hard disagree. The fact that a government agency "reviewed" its own subpoena before enforcing it does not follow the spirit of the Fourth Amendment, which is to prevent government overreach in taking your belongings and information.

In fact, to take your definition of what's not unreasonable to its logical conclusion, by definition any process an agency came up with would be acceptable, as long as they followed it.

I think a better definition of a reasonable search and seizure would be one where a subpoena goes before a judge, the target of the subpoena is notified and has the opportunity to fight it, and where there are significant consequences for government agents who lie or otherwise abuse the process of getting a subpoena.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,[a] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

>>no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation<<

that means there must be affirmation of probable cause to an overseeing body [i.e. judiciary]

administrative warrants are a process of "i know im right i dont need someone else to look things over"

If the party on the receiving end of a search needs to be a lawyer to simply understand the legality of a warrant, I’d argue the search is unreasonable.

> All the fourth amendment guarantees is unreasonable search and seizure.

Are you saying that by the existence of the fourth that unreasonable search/seizures are guaranteed to happen? It can't guarantee protection from them either.

DHS/ICE is in a weird constitutional spot. Most immigration violations in the US are _civil_ violations. So the Fourth Amendment is less applicable. It's also why detained immigrants don't automatically get the right to be represented by a lawyer.

ICE/DHS technically are just acting as marshals, merely ensuring that defendants appear at court proceedings and then enforcing court decisions (deportations).

Google, among most other tech companies, deny portions of administrative warrants. Here's a story about someone who was stressed out about their notification by Google (spoiler, Google decided to deny the government's request)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/02/03/hom...

edit: It appears that this outcome is an outlier and most admin warrants are honored. It is unfortunate to see the Washington Post decline in reliability like this.

There is a case to be made that administrative subpoenas can be good. They save taxpayers money, they speed up investigations, and they free up the court for more important matters.

As with all things though, these agencies should not be self-regulated without civilian and judicial oversight.

Isn't that why the scare quotes are there?

I'm getting tired of these comments that normalize being in the middle of the slippery slope as if it is merely the same as being at the top of the slippery slope was. They may not have been "good" times, but they were certainly better times when government agencies at least aimed to carry out their roles in good faith rather than minmaxing the rules to cause the most damage to enemies of the Party. Applying judgement while exercising delegated authority is exactly why these agencies were given wide leeway in the first place. And while we can say this was naive, it is even more naive to normalize the current behavior.

Maybe it is to a child or average citizen, but I don't believe that "not understanding the consequences" is the case here on HN. This is just a difference in philosophy, the old "freedom vs. security" tradeoff that everyone falls down on a little differently. Giving up your data to a company (and therefore the government) in exchange for services is a trust exercise, and there are ways to avoid making it, but they have significant unavoidable costs. It's an easier decision when you don't fear your own government, but where you fall on the spectrum rapidly changes when your government makes you the target. Of course you can say "the government is always going to turn on you, so you should never trust them!", but you'll sound like a loon to many native citizens of a Western nation that have had little to fear for decades.

The US is just experiencing a little more of what the citizens of communist and fascist nations have experienced. Over time, that might lead to rapid societal change, or maybe it's too late.

I dunno. Maybe because I used to do research at a Chinese lab when I was a student? That was my impression when I was once questioned for many hours by DHS at the airport. It's impossible to get an answer. They are granted broad legal authority to screen foreign nationals.

No indictment. Nothing physical. But a lot of headaches like delays in visa/immigrant application :shrug:

See the other comment.

> did you fight it?

I talked to university lawyers (and LLMs) regarding another issue with DHS. For the sake of national security, they have the legal authority. There isn't much I can do. Unless I can prove they discriminated against me due to my race, national origin, etc. -- which may be the case but how can I prove that. I requested FOIA from DOS/DHS. What I got was basically no more than the original applications I submitted.

According to this article, it is treated as a request and often denied by the company. The target of the warrant did go to court to quash it, but that was already after Google declined to share the information.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/02/03/hom...

edit: it appears that either 1. the Washington Post is printing misinformation, or 2. I have made a grave misinterpretation.

> They certainly don't allow ICE to enter a private abode.

I'd just note that ICE is (falsely) claiming otherwise these days.

https://apnews.com/article/ice-arrests-warrants-minneapolis-...

"Federal immigration officers are asserting sweeping power to forcibly enter people’s homes without a judge’s warrant, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo obtained by The Associated Press, marking a sharp reversal of longstanding guidance meant to respect constitutional limits on government searches."

This is more aimed at individuals or smaller actors that may be getting subpoenas from ICE.

There is actually a legal standing for DHS to issue these administrative warrants on corporations in this way.

Apparently around 300 students have been deported over pro-Palestine activism, similar to the person in the article who self-deported

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/04/05/visa-immigrati...

> Legally, the answer is murky, one expert told The Washington Post — at least when it comes to combing through Supreme Court decisions for answers. The court has been clear that First Amendment protections from criminal or civil penalties for speech apply to citizens and noncitizens alike. What’s less settled, however, is how those protections apply in the immigration context, where the executive branch has broad discretion to detain or deport.

Because it’s important context for understanding what the “point” of the article is. It could be any of:

- reporting on google’s violation of privacy laws or handing over info they weren’t required to

- reporting on the US government’s abuse of existing process that Google was legally required to comply with but ought to have challenged

- calling attention to investigatory legal practices that are normal and above-board but the author of the article wishes they were otherwise.

Some of these are motives are closer to the journalism end of the spectrum and some of them are closer to advocacy. I interpret this article as the third bucket but I wish it were clearer about the intent and what they are actually attempting to convey. The fact that the article is not clear about the actual law here (for example, was this a judicial subpoena?) makes me trust it less.

It reflects even worse on Google for vacuuming up and keeping the data.

They can’t really refuse to hand over the data, but they could purge and stop collecting identifying data on Americans. As is, they are tacitly complicit by collecting data they know will be used against protesters.

giant private companies like Google are not ever going to be involved with defying court orders, especially ones that do lots of business with the federal government (which will be just about any company even half of google's size). You can say it's wrong or whatever but it's like asking a brick wall to do an Irish jig.

The only solution to this problem is for the US to have a vastly more active anti-monopoly regime so that companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon etc. are simply not allowed to exist at such scales where consumers are locked into them.

Let's be real, if a bigtech ignored judicial orders, whether you would describe it as "fighting autocracy" or "corporate fascism" is 100% dependent on who is currently in office

Google is a multi trillion dollar company, not a scrappy libertarian upstart ready to gamble everything in court

Is there any evidence that Apple fights administrative subpoenas issued by US federal agencies?

Or is Google just more transparent than Apple about the government orders it complies with?

For example, after the Department of Justice demanded app stores remove apps that people use to track ICE deployments, Apple was the first to comply, followed later by Google.

Alternatively, use them pseudonymously? There's little reason any of these companies need to know your real identity. This will both reduce the likelihood of ICE finding your account from a real-life interaction, as well as reduce the likelihood of ICE finding your real-life identity if they do get your account data (they'd at least need to dig through it more than just going by first/last name on the account itself).

I'm guessing your constraint is impossible as living in the US pretty much requires banking and working with companies that will gladly give government agencies your information. I severely doubt that tech is the only group doing this.

Wild guess: You like Apple more than Google.

I only guessed that because that is a strange conclusion to draw when Apple was involved in PRISM, they worked with China to black pro- democracy hong kong apps, and I believe they turned over data to China and Russia.

Apple's PR/marketing is best in class, so I can also see this just being a knowledge level error rather than bias.

Are they going to stop because a company fights a subpoena? Or perhaps in the case of some touted alternatives, even if a subpoena were acted upon, no data would be intelligible?

Maybe they'll just show up to your house next time. I'm not sure why people complain about US companies complying with US government subpoenas. Isn't that how it is supposed to work? Imagine if the opposite were routine, would you like that?

People want to stop using Gmail to feel agency in a situation where the real problem is their own government. The real answer thus lies in deeply reforming a federal government that really both sides of the aisle (in their own way) agree has gotten too powerful and out of control.

> Don't use products from large US tech companies?

What does large have to do with it? Why do you think smaller companies are any more likely to resist? If anything, they have even less resources to go to court.

And why do you think other countries are any better? If you use a French provider, and they get a French judicial requisition or letters rogatory, then do you think the outcome is going to be any different?

I mean sure if you're avoiding ICE specifically, then using anything non-American is a start. But similarly, in you're in France and want to protect yourself, then using products from American companies without a presence in France is similarly a good strategy.

Do you have any specifics about the law they allegedly broke?

Terrorist groups like the Proud Boys and other Jan. 6ers?

Come back in 2-3 years. I bet will be one of the worst if still around

They have contracts with Palantir.

How far back do you have to go for Microsoft to be seen as "good" the way Google was?

yep re blizzard. they've gotten lots better since the msft acquisition, based on my (limited) experiences with the newer employees there.

Blizzard is a bunch of sex pests and Microsoft is the guys with the AI upsells on every inch of their OS...

Blizzard ~10 years ago, maybe. Microslop has always been one of the worst. I don't understand why anyone would have a positive disposition towards Microslop.

Agreed. Nvidia too maybe? That said, Nvidia is highly competitive and has built a walled garden via their software so I have mixed feelings.

Degenerate gambling company.

The article indicates even Meta pushed back on some of these:

> Unlike Thomas-Johnson, users in that case were given the chance to fight the subpoena because they were made aware of it before Meta complied.

Fastmail is Australian, though?

Fastmail's calendar works reasonably well. My two complaints with it:

- There isn't a convenient calendar widget; Google's calendar widget only works with Google's calendar. I'd like something exactly like Google's calendar widget but working with Fastmail's calendar.

- Sites that integrate with Google Calendar but not with arbitrary CalDAV servers.

I could live without the latter, but the former is a dealbreaker; I'd switch given a functional widget that is fully self-contained and doesn't require some separate sync app.

Google Calendar is pretty cross-compatible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICalendar

That was really their argument?

Quite contrary, the "right thing" is the ambiguous one. I think that most people agree what is evil. Certainly much more than what is right.

We're on the forum where people are most capable of doing this for themselves.

And if your company uses GMail that is less than ideal for de-Googling, but it does not meaningfully impact the benefits of de-Googling your personal life.

Refusing to run all your search history, personal transactions, and correspondences through one of the fascist state's pet companies is still beneficial.

It's almost like there should be some third party that represents people who could regulate companies like Google and prevent them from becoming too big. Maybe there are some examples from US history where some such third party existed.

I don't think it's as simple as "corps. = bad". It's more that naive slogans like "don't be evil" used to be taken seriously. Companies exist to make money. This is ok! It generally works well in a capitalistic system. But to expect more than that people are realizing is a pipe dream... which is why you need good rules in place (i.e., regulations, laws) to direct companies and their behaviors.

Not really. HN had its Eternal September moment years ago.

The "net" refers here to "the good that Google does" (e.g., some pretty impressive networking research) is outweighed by "the bad that Google does," such as the linked article.

Nothing is pure evil or pure good. Gauging where on the scale a person or group lies is really hard, and subjective.

So, I try and keep score on the big players, but understand that my judgement is fallible.