Google broke its promise to me – now ICE has my data

What we do know is that the US, like all other countries, has wide legal latitude on not allowing foreigners into the country. You can be denied entry for no more than a Facebook like of the wrong post.

do you know what any of those words mean? if you do, perhaps you could share what they mean (and then explain why you lied)

At least in terms of being "at the border", United States v. Martinez-Fuerte would appear to disagree.

That legal line you mention is both figuratively and literally not at the border; protections are weakened up to 100 miles away.

Yes, I know there are examples where he is trying to screw with big corps like Anthropic. But Anthropic is not Google.

"At least 35 times since August, federal judges have ordered the administration to explain why it should not be punished for violating their orders in immigration cases."

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/us/politics/judges-contem...

0. "DOJ acknowledges violating dozens of recent court orders in New Jersey" [0]

1. In Minnesota, judges reported 94 court-order violations in January and, separately, one judge identified 210 orders in 143 cases where ICE had not complied. [1]

[0] https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/18/trump-ice-immigrati...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/us/politics/judges-contem...

> That does not end the Court’s concerns, however. Attached to this order is an appendix that identifies 96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases. The extent of ICE’s noncompliance is almost certainly substantially understated. This list is confined to orders issued since January 1, 2026, and the list was hurriedly compiled by extraordinarily busy judges. Undoubtedly, mistakes were made, and orders that should have appeared on this list were omitted. This list should give pause to anyone—no matter his or her political beliefs—who cares about the rule of law. ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.230...

It's a guest pass.

When getting a visa you're basically asked to agree to America's terms of service. Violations can be found pretty easily in the fine print if someone is really looking.

From there it's the same administrative work to revoke and deport as it is to say ban someone from Twitch for saying the wrong thing.

There's the case of the getaway driver in a bank robbery that resulted in murder also getting murder, and that is basically what the two poster up is advocating for.

For example, you have a First Amendment right to "peacefully" hurl the most awful insults you can think of at a police officer.

If that police officer feels "antagonized"--or even if your goal was to hurt their feelings--that does not permit them to abuse the special power of their workplace to attack you. If they try anyway, now that's a real crime.

They wear masks in case their political opponents take exception to their actions and hunt them down later and hurt their families.

(This seems like an extremely dubious justification to me, but I've been told on HN that this is the reason that ICE wear masks, so why wouldn't it apply here...?)

> On November 20, 2025, Google, through outside counsel, explained to the undersigned why Google did not give Thomas-Johnson advanced notice as promised. Google’s explanation shows the problem is systematic: Sometimes when Google does not fulfill a subpoena by the government’s artificial deadline, Google fulfills the subpoena and provides notice to a user on the same day to minimize delay for an overdue production. Google calls this “simultaneous notice.” But this kind of simultaneous notice strips users of their ability to challenge the validity of the subpoena before it is fulfilled.

Google knows users care about their privacy, and it made the promise in its terms precisely for that reason. People pay attention to this stuff, as the popularity of this story shows.

Therefore, it's generally not going to be in Google's interest to break its own terms.

So what's going on? Did a Google employee simply mess up? Is the reporting not accurate or missing key details, e.g. Google truly is legally prohibited? Or is there some evidence that the Trump administration was putting pressure on Google, e.g. threatening to withhold some contract if this particular person were notified, or if Google continued notifying users belonging to some particular category of subpoenas?

Because Google isn't breaking its own terms just for funsies. There's more to this story, but unfortunately it's not clear what.

> First, numerous other individuals have challenged recent administrative subpoenas in court after receiving notice, and the Department of Homeland Security has withdrawn those subpoenas before reaching a court decision.

They don't want a ruling against them.

> [The subpoena would have been quashed because] there are facial deficiencies in the subpoena, including that the subpoena is missing a “Title of Proceeding.”

[1]: https://www.eff.org/files/2026/04/13/eff_letter_re_google_no...

> In April 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent Google an administrative subpoena requesting his data.

> In September 2024, Amandla Thomas-Johnson was a Ph.D. candidate studying in the U.S. on a student visa when he briefly attended a pro-Palestinian protest. In April 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent Google an administrative subpoena requesting his data.

Being in America is a privilege that can easily be taken away. Guests of America should walk a narrow path.

Same as being in any other country.

Fair, but everything else I said goes through the same.

> Americans are rolling over and justifying terrifying out reach

I just don't see the terror? If someone is coming over here on a student visa and then doing political activism, it seems completely reasonable for the immigration authorities to check that out.

Weren't the democrats criticised for campaigning on the message that voting for Trump was a significant risk to due process and democracy? I feel like every voter was aware of what happened on Jan 6th and still voted for him with some level of knowledge about that.

This is true, but it is only one part of the picture. I feel journalism in general has stopped asking controversial questions and investigating. There is no more difficult interviews where they are, if need be, confrontational and try to get answers that mean anything, that deeply clarify an item or a stance. It's all become so docile, nobody goes digging deep into facts anymore, euphemism everywhere. For example: a couple of weeks ago I watched a Johnny Harris video re. America/fascism and he really managed - after spending most of the video on Hitler and Mussolini - to arrive at the conclusion that the US is trending towards an illiberal democracy while depicting Victor Orban as fascist. Orban called his vision for Hungary an illiberal democracy.

But his self-described quest to create a so-called illiberal democracy in...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/hungary-election-orban-9.71605...

The whole video managed to ommit that populism always rises when capitalism fails.

News has basically become entertainment and it makes me sad.

There's no formal mechanism of accountability for members of Congress. Representatives hold a few town halls a year where they might be subject to social shaming by their constituents, but there's no legal obligation to do so and even when they're publicly embarrassed they often dismiss public opposition as 'a few paid agitators' or the like.

This is doubly and triply true for complex policy issues which require a lot of explaining, making it virtually impossible to build grassroots support. So you just end up with a nonprofit industrial complex that needs to constantly raise funds for lobbying and publishes slates of endorsements at election time that relatively few people have the time or inclination to read.

Government or big tech?

I haven't seen a single ICE raid in the 10 years i've lived in the area. I did see DHS do a raid on a house once but i've yet to even see ICE. I'm not saying they're not around but they certainly don't make their presence known in an area overflowing with undocumented immigrants. I keep waiting for the jack boots and armored vehicles to roll through and wholesale round everyone up like i read about but it seems business as usual all day every day in Oakcliff.

edit: Honestly, i think no one really cares about oakcliff anymore. Dallas PD does nothing about the constant gunfire at night or street racing. So it makes sense ICE is never alerted, i think the people who would alert ICE just don't bother. I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

https://www.wlrn.org/immigration/2026-01-23/politifact-fl-im...

https://tracreports.org/tracatwork/detail/A6019.html

https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO00/20200109/110349/HHRG...

Obama might have even campaigned on some of these issues, but DNC insiders are experts at making big promises up front and walking them back[0]. Hell, I'm pretty sure Obama deported more people more often than Trump did, at least in his first term. And when people were suing ICE over COVID-era border closures, Biden staffers were privately wishing the activists on their side would lose.

Keep in mind, open borders is a libertarian policy, not a left-wing one. American lefties tend to also skew libertarian, but the "liberals" running the DNC are basically just Republicans with a liberal accent. The uniparty is real.

[0] I'm already seeing this with Mamdani and Queenslink. He is, at the very least, letting the shitty Queensway "let's cover this old railway up with politically untouchable greenspace to make the car-owning NIMBYs happy by stopping Queenslink" plan continue forward.

   Congress shall make no law ... abridging ... the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

    ... the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Note in Heller and elsewhere it was determined "the people" are those who belong to the political class (which is a bit vague, refer to next sentence, but not same as voting class). Generally this is not those on non-immigrant visas or illegal aliens (though circuits are split on this). If you don't have the right to bear arms, clearly you are not "the people" since people by definition have the right to bear arms, which means you wouldn't have the right of "the people" to protest either, no? So it appears since they are not people, they don't have the right to assemble in protest, though they may have other first amendment rights since it's protest specifically that was narrowed to "the people" rather than many of the other parts of the first amendment which are worded without that narrowing.

For instance, speech without assembly isn't narrowed to just "the people." Perhaps this was done intentionally since allowing non-people to stage protests was seen as less desirable than merely allowing them to otherwise speak freely.

Note: Personally I do think non-immigrants are people, but trying to apply the same "people" two different ways with the exact same wording makes no sense. If they can't bear arms they necessarily are not "the people" and thus are not afforded the right to "assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

I thought it was settled constitutional law that it doesn't? Moreover, during the war on terror, it was established that the president can freely order the murder of non Americans outside the US.

I'm curious if this was a common issue or Google's legal team was flooded with subpoenas during the first months of the administration during their deportation surge (they did around 100k removals around that time). Homeland sent the request to Google a month prior to when they released the data and notified him, so they had time to notify, but it clearly isn't an automated thing.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/05/palest...

[2]: https://panthernow.com/2026/03/03/international-students-sel...

Even if it's fun as a hobby, I don't want to be on call for my own basic online services.

you're acting like these are bad or impossible skills to learn? these is just basic skills that people should have.

> It has been pointed out to us that since we have our servers in the US, we are under US jurisdiction. We do not believe this to be the case. We do not have a legal presence in the US, no company incorporated in the US, no staff in the US, and no one in the US with login access to any servers located in the US. Even if a US court were to serve us with a court order, subpoena or other instruction to hand over user data, Australian communications and privacy law explicitly forbids us from doing so.

EDIT: asking because I've been working on an alternative of sorts. I used GV a lot before I figured I could go without it/Google.

Protonmail also has gone on record stating that they will comply with legal orders from the Swiss government to spy on and turn over the private data of their users.

https://proton.me/blog/climate-activist-arrest

Swiss law has recently gotten significantly more aggressive in recent years, especially wrt to prosecuting climate activists. Criminal damages for drawing with chalk on pavement, for example...

Look up the "Secret Files Scandal" of 1989 and decide for yourself how comfortable you are with Swiss law.

I’ve also had some bad experiences with rates being raised on domains. That still ends up feeling like a risk to me, as the problem of domain squatters has not been solved, and the “solution” being employed seems to be continued rate hikes and exorbitant pricing for “premium” domains. It makes buying a domain for email not seem worth it… or at least not without its own long-term risks.

My current project has been trying to reduce my footprint, by deleting old and unused accounts, so any future migrations will be easier. I’ve found with many sites, this is easier said than done. For example, I deleted my Venmo account at least 2 months ago, yet I just got an email from them yesterday about reviewing privacy settings. Did they delete my account? They sure didn’t delete all my data if I continue to get emails. I’m betting they just set a ‘delete’ flag in the database. The lack of accountability and transparency on these things is really bad.

There are a million services that assume that if you have access to the email content you are the account holder. Google claims they don't recycle email addresses, but if you lose your domain, the next owner has access to all emails from that point forward.

If something happens and you're unable to renew your domain, are your next of kin out of luck?

The failure modes of that are fire/natural disaster, and thieves. Do that, but also have a geographically redundant backup scheme. Either encrypted eg Backblaze or a relatives house in another state.

I honestly assumed that everyone had a rotten time with Gmail spam filtering but I guess it’s just a me problem. I suppose that means I’m up for an interesting time dealing with it as I move to a custom domain somewhere else.

Anyone have any recommendations for providers that have exceptionally good spam filtering? Hell I’d even just settle for ones that honor “mark as spam,” because Gmail absolutely does not.

Fair point. However...the parent's comment is also fair because the article does a poor job of raising this material fact. You have to click through a sub-article.

It's almost like this article should be tagged (2025) because it's basically a replay of the author's account from 2025.[0]

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/05/palest...

Allowing people they don't like to insult them? Not much of a priority.

I don't think anyone posting here thinks that Democrats are pro-free speech and pro-privacy, and it would be great if we could have politicians that truly support free speech and privacy rights. But of the options currently available, one is much less bad than the other.

IMO there are no surprises from this admin, they are doing what they promised.

Trump has been very clearly against free speech well before 2015. He's been anti-American and anti-constituion well before he came down that escalator.

It doesn't make me feel better that you're still pretending otherwise.

Trump? Not holding up his end of the deal? Who could have seen that coming!

Even today, I would argue an average sample of Googlers will likely think slightly differently about these things than an average sample of Facebook employees; but of course both will have to respond to influence from the external world: i.e. customer, society, govt.

...then BackRub turned Gogool mis-spelled, and the rest is history.

You can read the bill of rights here (no mention of citizens or national security): https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transc...

Pretending the rules of a private domicile apply to a jurisdiction by analogy is a sleight of hand. It operates like arguing that because memory safety is a strict requirement in system architecture, we must ensure human memories remain uncorrupted. The domains function under entirely different mechanics. A non-citizen in a public space is constrained by statutory law (and our statutory law is based on our understanding of inherent freedoms), not the etiquette of a houseguest.

However, as a thought experiment, let's go with your flawed analogy: Even then, this person was acting like a guest -- it is a long-cherished American tradition to exercise our constitutionally-protected right to free speech, assemble, and yes, protest. Nothing's more American than speaking against Government oppression and overreach.

The government is not your owner. The government is not your father. You are a participant in the affairs of your country, and take responsibility in its direction. Civic engagement and right to protest are important tools to make our government accountable. These are fundamental American values. And you're welcome to bring friends. It's legal.

Yes, I know it's widespread, but it should really apply to non-residents. People that live and work in a country should have the right to protest.