Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

eff.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 830 posts

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

#441

Post by crazygringo »

inkysigma wrote: post #420
jgkelley wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EFF's letter offers more details and says that the subpoena did not contain a gag order: https://www.eff.org/files/2026/04/13/eff_letter_re_google_no...

Well it did contain a request to not notify according to that same letter. I suppose that brings up several questions. 1. Does that mean the same thing in the ToS? 2. How valid are these requests?

I'm very curious about this.

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.

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

#442

Post by Cider9986 »

fhdkweig wrote: post #352
flaburgan wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still is risky, as who knows what tools NSA & cie really have. Even if it feels safe now, it can be stored by them, and what will (quantum?) computers be able to do in a decade? And how will the US gov look like at that time?

Even if the encryption is sound, some day in the future laws can be written that compel a citizen to relinquish their passwords. In 2000, the UK passed a law called RIPA that can be used that way. They say it is only used in emergencies, but who is to say what constitutes an emergency. https://thblegal.com/news/can-i-be-prosecuted-for-failing-to...

Of course, technical solutions are only helpful for a small portion of the population, while the default is what happens to most people. Since this is Hacker News, for plausible deniability for forced password disclosure, you can use VeraCrypt hidden partitions.

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

#443

Post by keithnz »

weird everyone's focusing on privacy and google.... Not the actual insanity of a government targeting people who are legally allowed to be in the US.

You can try to find a way to keep things private, and many of the people on HN likely have the capability to do so. But hiding from your government because they are weaponizing your information against you seems to be the wrong approach. I just don't understand the American people just rolling over and letting their country / rights / freedoms just be obliterated.

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

#444

Post by rootusrootus »

bdangubic wrote: post #436
angry_octet wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has very low voter turnout. Winning is mainly getting your voters to turn up, but usually apathy wins. Of course the media plays a huge part in this, but voter suppression is the US is fine art. Personally I feel that non voters effectively voted for Trump, and they should own that as much as die hard MAGA types.

> The US has very low voter turnout Don't disagree with you in principle but 2024 saw a very, very, very large turnout for US standards - the biggest one... Kamala's 75m+ votes basically are good enough (by very wide margin) to win any previous election (slimmer margin in 2020 than others but you get my point...)

> the biggest one

2020 had about 4 million more votes cast.

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/voter-turnou...

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

#445

Post by lmm »

rebasedoctopus wrote: post #421
patrickmay wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No major party. There are smaller parties who oppose mass surveillance.

Yes, unfortunately you can't vote for them without benefiting a major party you oppose.

That's a toxic way of thinking. No party is entitled to your vote, and not voting for one is certainly not an endorsement of another.

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

#446

Post by armadyl »

busterarm wrote: post #435
spockz wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protonmail iirc. You can even get documents and photos synced. Not sure how well it works for photos.

Protonmail is widely believed to be compromised and some evidence supporting this has come forth in two separate incidents in the last year. 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 rec…

> Protonmail is widely believed to be compromised and some evidence supporting this has come forth in two separate incidents in the last year.

There has been no evidence of this, stop spreading misinformation. They're clear on what they can and can't hand over and what you can do to reduce the information that they can hand over like billing info. For some inexplicable reason people expect a corporation to disregard legal government warrants and subpoenas. Thinking any company would do this is next level delusion. Even if you self-hosted, you wouldn't be able to escape this because it would just end up with you in jail.

The only protection against that is end to end encryption. And to this day Proton has handed over zero data that falls under their E2EE umbrella.

At best, even if you assumed that they were collecting incoming/outgoing emails before encryption it would be nonsensical to think that this wasn't happening to other providers, it's just the nature of email. Nobody who cares about absolute privacy should be using it as a means of critical communication regardless.

The notion that Proton capitulates and somehow hands over your emails or other encrypted data is false and completely unsubstantiated. Unlike Google on the other hand, who will hand over your entire inbox unencrypted with zero issue to DHS/the FBI merely for writing a letter to an attorney:

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

https://archive.is/kmWHG

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

#447

Post by lmm »

keithnz wrote: post #443

weird everyone's focusing on privacy and google.... Not the actual insanity of a government targeting people who are legally allowed to be in the US. You can try to find a way to keep things private, and many of the people on HN likely have the capability to do so. But hiding from your government because they are weaponizing your information against you seems to be the wrong approach. I just don't understand the Amer…

Was it a right he had in the first place? Many countries make it illegal for foreigners to undertake political activities as a condition of their visa, for good reason.

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

#448

Post by busterarm »

armadyl wrote: post #446
busterarm wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protonmail is widely believed to be compromised and some evidence supporting this has come forth in two separate incidents in the last year. 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 rec…

> Protonmail is widely believed to be compromised and some evidence supporting this has come forth in two separate incidents in the last year. There has been no evidence of this, stop spreading misinformation. They're clear on what they can and can't hand over and what you can do to reduce the information that they can hand over like billing info. For some inexplicable reason people expect a corporation to disregard…

I would put Phrack's reputation up against ProtonMail's 10 times out of 10.

https://redact.dev/blog/proton-mail-journalist-suspensions-c...

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

#449

Post by HerbManic »

contingencies wrote: post #410
trocado wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fwiw that post states: > 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 instructi…

They can say what they like, and I am a customer, but in hand-wavey generalization terms one should be aware that Australian law enforcement has excessively broad access to telecommunications data on request and a long history of doing the bidding of the United States. Carriers are forced to retain your data for 2 years. Under TIA Act provisions (such as s180), an authorised officer of a criminal law‑enforcement agen…

Yep, I am a fastmail user, born and live in Oz. I just assumed that this data would be collected either on this side or via the US servers. Also, we are still a part of the 5 eyes alliance.

The only way to win the game is to not play.

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

#450

Post by rootusrootus »

bdangubic wrote: post #434
rootusrootus wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. People had already experienced one round of Trump before, and had every opportunity to see what he was planning for this term. There is no reasonable conclusion other than that they indeed wanted exactly what we got.

Running against a President (especially one that is not on the ballot) is much easier than people think, all you have to do is pitch that while I may be terrible, your alternative is much, much, much worse which is exactly what the Trump campaign was all about. It worked because a lot of people bought that story (and many continue to buy it evidenced by DJT's approval ratings among the GOP voters). The whole campaign…

It worked because as bad as the GOP platform was, the dems' strategy was just awful, and their tactical decision making was abysmal.

  * focus on abortion, which is an important issue ... mostly to evangelicals
  * focus on threats to democracy, which sounded shrill and got blown off
  * no real message on the economy, which was widely perceived as floundering under Biden, and was very important to a lot of swing voters
On top of that, Trump's approval ratings on the economy were pretty good when he left office. People remembered that and thought he'd do better.

Then of course there's the whole "hey, let's not tell the senile old man that he basically promised to be a one-hit-wonder, and wait until the last moment to switch to his running mate instead".

In a way, it's impressive that the dems didn't lose by larger margins. Trump wasn't that popular, the dems were just that incompetent. I hope they pull their head out of their ass for 2028. But I'm not counting on it.

Post reply on HN