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

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

#551

Post by rootusrootus »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #527
rootusrootus wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the biggest one 2020 had about 4 million more votes cast. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/voter-turnou...

Weird, and why didn’t those people show up to vote for Kamala? How did Biden get more votes than Obama, but Trump won the popular vote four years later?

> why didn’t those people show up to vote for Kamala?

Enthusiasm gap. And not during COVID. 2020 was an interesting time as you may recall.

> How did Biden get more votes than Obama, but Trump won the popular vote four years later?

You will be less likely to fall prey to grifters if you look past absolute numbers and realize that the voting age population tends to increase about 10 million every four years. And with turnout generally abysmal, under 60% most times, there is a lot of room for variation.

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

#552

Post by rootusrootus »

bdangubic wrote: post #505
rootusrootus wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the biggest one 2020 had about 4 million more votes cast. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/voter-turnou...

thanks for the correction, I keep forgetting just how awful 2016-2020 years were that 81 million people came out to vote for a senile grandpa (exactly the point I was making, you need strong against case much more than anything else)

> 81 million people came out to vote for a senile grandpa

Yeah, people were getting fed up with the chaos. Biden owes his presidency to Donald Trump, for sure. He tried several times in years prior and could not win on the merits.

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

#553

Post by pyrale »

refurb wrote: post #546
pyrale wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To condone what happens to him, you must first condone that your government lists and identifies people attending opponent meetings. Whether the government waits for him to leave the country to violate his rights feels like a small detail in this issue. Also, if you intend to claim that us foreigners are free targets for any abhorent behaviour of your government, maybe you should rename your bill of rights a bill of…

Whoa! I’d slow down with the hypotheses, considering we have one side of the story. 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.

The EFF letter tends to line up with this guy’s story, though.

Also, since google complied without giving him the ability to challenge the request, we will never have another version. In that context, it feels fair to accept the only version we have.

The events he was likely targeted for happened on a campus in the US.

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

#554

Post by dmix »

traderj0e wrote: post #482
dwaltrip wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s rather generic… Do you apply that principle universally in your life? C’mon, be honest about why you doubt the story.

Yeah I apply that principle. To be honest, it's that plus the fact that this article omits things we already know. It wasn't just that he "attended a pro-Palestine protest at Cornell University," they shut down a jobs fair. I went to a liberal college too, I know that a lot of these "peaceful" protests are actually quite forceful and infringe on others' rights more than anyone ever reports. My bias is in the other di…

> because they're making us pay taxes to a small country overseas.

I read recently that 80% of the money the US commits to Israel has to be spent in the United States. Similar to the US funding Ukraine it is largely just buying from domestic US manufacturers or old stockpiles. It's a sort of stimulus program that funds the US military industrial complex and prop up allies. There was law passed that 100% of foreign military financing has to be spent in the US in 2028.

Israel gets $3b/yr, Egypt $1.3B/yr, Jordan $1.4B/yr, Taiwan etc. Lebanon recently started getting financing. Pakistan used to be a big beneficiary.

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

#555

Post by rootusrootus »

angry_octet wrote: post #470
bdangubic wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...)

Both sides got more voters out, but it's still a low proportion of eligible voters. Lots of people don't vote in mid terms, that's what Trump is aiming for.

The Trump factor is interesting.

His whole schtick seems to be getting voters to show up at the polls who otherwise don't bother to put forth the effort. I've heard it said that this was also Mamdani's trick in NYC (heck, maybe that explains why Trump is so smitten with Mamdani).

So GOP politicians do significantly better any time Trump is sharing the ballot with them. I won't be surprised if the 2026 midterms go very poorly for the GOP. And given that Trump won't ever be on a ballot again, I won't be surprised if his control over congressional GOP members starts to noticeably erode even before the midterms. They definitely know how the game works, and they are going to start looking for ways to keep their jobs.

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

#556

Post by skue »

neya wrote: post #509

> 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. Why would you go to a country for study purposes - where you explicitly tell the visa officers you're on US soil ONLY for study purposes - which is what the student visa explicitly grants you to do and then participate in a protest against the very country that g…

> where you explicitly tell the visa officers you're on US soil ONLY for study purposes

What in the world does “ONLY for study purposes” mean? 24 hours a day, every day of the week?

> participate in a protest against the very country that granted you the study visa and then get mad that you are under investigation and would have been kicked out for violating the said visa? That's so bizarre.

First, he briefly attended the protest. Not the same as participating. I doubt the data from Google indicated he was holding a sign, shouting slogans, or speaking on stage. And it doesn’t sound like there was any marching or sit-in involved. (And if so, for 5 minutes?)

Second, why are you willfully equating a pro-Palestinian protest with being an anti-US protesT? Was the purpose of the protest to raise charitable funds, encourage more open discussion about the war on campus, provide moral support to Palestinian classmates, and/or any of a myriad of other purposes?

Finally, even if the purpose of the protest was politically motivated —- to push US policy on Israel and Palestine to change, how is that bizarre? In your mind is any protest that seeks to change a government’s policy at that moment an assault on that government, or on that nation? Someone who protests the death penalty, protests for stronger/weaker abortion laws, stronger/weaker gun laws, etc?

This is the USA we’re talking about. Despite all our faults (and they are legion), it is the bedrock of our founding and our core principles that democracy is a participatory process. Not just on Election Day. Throughout history we have advanced as a people and a nation because individuals have stepped up and spoken up. That has always been what has pushed us forward.

Bizarre indeed.

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

#557

Post by Jimmc414 »

refurb wrote: post #546
pyrale wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To condone what happens to him, you must first condone that your government lists and identifies people attending opponent meetings. Whether the government waits for him to leave the country to violate his rights feels like a small detail in this issue. Also, if you intend to claim that us foreigners are free targets for any abhorent behaviour of your government, maybe you should rename your bill of rights a bill of…

Whoa! I’d slow down with the hypotheses, considering we have one side of the story. 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.

The policy of applying US immigration enforcement actions against legal visa holders who have attended specific legal (US based) protests has been publicly reported and confirmed by many government officials and is unrelated to anyone trying to enter the country.

Senior ICE officials have testified under oath in federal court that analysts were moved from counterterrorism, global trade, and cybercrime work to this group focused specifically on writing reports about people involved in student protests.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/09/politics/ice-homeland-securit...

https://time.com/7272060/international-students-targeted-tru...

https://www.wbur.org/news/2025/07/10/ice-lawsuit-deportation...

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

#558

Post by voidfunc »

Jimmc414 wrote: post #479

The First Amendment applies to everyone on US soil, not just citizens. That’s settled law. The government can revoke visas for legitimate immigration violations, but it’s not allowed to use immigration machinery as a pretext to punish political expression. That’s exactly what they are doing. It looks like the courts will eventually put an end to this [0] but it won’t reverse the damage that’s already been done. I’m g…

There is no such thing as "settled law" in the US. The Supreme Court can always throw away precedent at any time they choose.

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

#559

Post by rbits »

lmm wrote: post #445
rebasedoctopus wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe if the US had a sane voting system, but they don't. I'm of the opinion that their flawed voting system is a huge factor in why the US government is the way it is.

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

#560

Post by eviks »

WalterBright wrote: post #55

I simply assume that everything that travels out of my home through a wire gets tracked and stored by the government. Everywhere you go, if your phone is in your pocket, you are being tracked and stored, and available to the government. Everywhere your car goes, is tracked and stored and available to the government. BTW, the J6 protesters were all tracked and identified by their cell phone data.

Why would they need to subpoena Google if they track and store everything?
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