I’m generally receptive to point the finger at Google’s intentions but in their defense, administrative subpoenas frequently include non disclosure orders. Google’s own transparency policies have always carved out (industry standard) exceptions for cases where they’re legally prohibited from notifying.
[0] https://evrimagaci.org/gpt/judge-rebukes-trump-over-student-...
>We won’t give notice when legally prohibited under the terms of the request.
The post states that his lawyer has reviewed the subpoena, but doesn't mention whether or not it contained a non-disclosure order. That's an important detail to address if the claim is that Google acted against its own policy.
1. Does that mean the same thing in the ToS?
2. How valid are these requests?
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.
> This document explains two key ways that recipients can resist immigration administrative subpoenas: First, any gag order in these subpoenas has no legal effect; you are free to publicize them and inform the target of the subpoena. Second, you do not have to comply with the subpoena at all, unless ICE goes to court—where you can raise a number of possible objections—and the court orders compliance.
[1]: https://www.acluofnorthcarolina.org/app/uploads/drupal/sites...
> 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challenged recent administrative subpoenas in court after receiving notice, and the Department of Homeland Security has withdrawn those subpoenas before reaching a court decision.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.
I don’t know what you mean by “activism narrative” but the EFF has been fighting for your digital rights for many, many years. It reads like you consider their work disingenuous, but I can tell you from firsthand experience it is not. They deserve less skepticism than you’re giving them.
This is like saying the real solution to bad practices of food companies is to exclusively grow your own food, or the answer to anti-repair practices is to only build your own devices, vehicles, etc. Contractors cut corners? Don't try to regulate, just learn carpentry, plumbing, and HVAC plus codes!
Even if it's fun as a hobby, I don't want to be on call for my own basic online services.
It's not an apples to apples comparison because an administrative warrant served to Google is much different from raiding your home but if they wanted to they could.
At this point, acting as if America (and many parts of the world for that matter) aren't living under an authoritarian government is futile. We still have freedoms but they're trying really hard to take them away from us.
This is where encryption comes in.
https://thblegal.com/news/can-i-be-prosecuted-for-failing-to...
> 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.
Under TIA Act provisions (such as s180), an authorised officer of a criminal law‑enforcement agency can authorise access to prospective telecommunications data [metadata only; not whole messages] if satisfied it is reasonably necessary for investigating an offence punishable by at least three years’ imprisonment. (In other words, ~any time they want)
Example: the data‑retention regime’s records were being accessed over 350,000 times a year by at least 87 different agencies, including non‑traditional bodies such as local councils and the RSPCA [pet cruelty nonprofit].
Given Australia's population is only 28M, that means roughly 1 in every 80 people gets communications metadata pulled by their own government annually.
The only way to win the game is to not play.
It was a real eye opener to experience how challenging it was to move my data from one Google account to another. Takeout is nice in theory, but there is no equivalent "Takein" service that accepts the data form import to another Google account in the format produced by Takeout! I naively assumed "Export Google calendar from here, import same files to there" but nope, that did not work at all. Maps data was even worse.
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.
I previously looked at jmp.chat but they didn't really inspire confidence on the security front.
Never used Gmail other than as a throwaway account.
Went many years before I had a Youtube account. Finally made one to upload some videos. I am normally not logged in.
(OK, OK - I was more concerned with them suddenly charging for a "free" service, as well as selling data to commercial enterprises than with them giving to the government).
(OK, OK - I do use Android).
Edit: People are not understanding the humor in the question. I implied I predicted this reality 20 years ago, and he's asking for another prediction 20 years out.
The question is, who do you trust with your private data forever? To me and the parent, the answer is obvious: no one except yourself.
Someone is going to say self hosted is better and I don't disagree, but there's limits to how much time I can spend on self hosted stuff.
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.
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://redact.dev/blog/proton-mail-journalist-suspensions-c...
https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1nd07w0/comment/nd...
First I signed up with Proton Mail and added my own domain, they fit the bill for me, YMMV.
Then I did a search in my password manager and went through those accounts.
Then I just let the old account sit there for a year. Each time I got an email from something I cared about I'd log in and change mail.
It's been a year now, and I'm about to terminate the old account. All I get there now is occasional spam.
I really dreaded this, but all in all quite painless. And next time it should be easier since I now own the email domain.
edit: Forgot to mention I use Thunderbird, so old email I archived to local folders. That's part if why I ended with Proton, their IMAP bridge allows me to keep using Thunderbird.
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.
I've actually split the accounts. I have a Gmail which I use for "throwaway" accounts, like shopping sites where I don't care if I lose access. But it's probably better to exercise some account hygiene and do some spring cleaning every now and then.
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?
I'd say "don't do that". I had a friend pass which I knew had a custom domain for email, I told the relatives they had to be on the ball regarding renewal.
At least my registrar will keep sending invoices for a few months without letting go cough cough, so should be enough time to get the certificate of probate. With that the heirs should be able to get the invoice so they can pay.
For general security, I also use a yubikey for all services that support it, froze credit with all agencies, and added phone support passwords to all my financial institutions.
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.
Overall it’s been an acceptable trade off and I’m glad years ago I switched to a custom domain for email so I can have portability.
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.
I'm getting a lot of emails and between 10-20 spams a day, but that's years of the very careful messages reporting and categorisation.
Similarly with important and "normal" emails - i only get one-two important per week, and marked as such for the same reasons; no false negatives.
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...
I didn't mention it in op but I also moved to graphene os which tbh feels much better than android has recently.
The request came in April 2025, and the user was notified the following month. That's next to a year for them to hear about it internally and then quit and setup self-hosting prior to today.
For all I know this could be somebody's OpenClaw spouting bullshit. The default credibility of all throwaways is zero and that was even true before 2023.
If you let it influence your opinion in any way you're a fool.
The account is from 2013 but given that profile, I can't give it any credibility. After all, it could be somebody's OpenClaw having been granted control of the account.
Luckily for HN, I actually have a post history. You can use my post history, textual analysis and statistics to make an informed decision about whether I'm a bot or not. Whether I'm being consistent or spouting any random bs.
The account I was responding to doesn't have anything.
> The account is from 2013 but given that profile, I can't give it any credibility.
What's in my profile is a statistical fact. It's there as a reminder, to me, not to expect everyone to see the world the same way that I do. To be comfortable with strong disagreement.
Just a hair shy of half the population is below average intelligence. Roughly 1 in 4 people has a cognitive impairment. This is of any age but trends upwards with age, reaching 2 in 3 by age 70. 1 in 4 Americans take psychiatric medication. 1 in 4 participates in illegal drug use. We haven't even touched on alcohol abuse.
My profile statement is just objective reality, whether you're comfortable with being stated openly or not.
This is a violation of the guidelines: "Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to."
This just proves my point to discount what you say. You're basically admitting to being a pest.
You don't have to dox yourself, but people have to be able to at least call you out on consistency. There needs to be some indication that you're not _just_ a sockpuppet.
Otherwise I don't have any justification to engage with your expressions seriously.
- iCloud Backup (including device and Messages backup)
- iCloud Drive
- Photos
- Notes
- Reminders
- Safari Bookmarks
- Siri Shortcuts
- Voice Memos
- Wallet passes
- Freeform
A reasonable approach might be to use an iPhone with a privacy respecting email provider.
Did you not understand it at the time? Did you not see the news stories? This isn't rhetoric, I'm genuinely curious. It's been public knowledge for a long long time that Google hands data over to the USG without a warrant (likely without even Google eyes on the request, via automated means).
What changed that this story was the one that made you react?
On a more practical level, forcing them to go to court might not be much better. If this went to a FISA court, those are essentially rubber stamps and give nearly 100% approval.
Also remember, that when you exchange email with people who use GMail, then they've got you again.
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.
That would be true if We The People were reliably informed when we showed up to cast our votes. However, in recent years, we have become detached from reality. "News media" companies pivoted away from keeping their audiences informed about things that mattered and instead focused on capturing audiences and keeping those audiences maximally engaged so that they could be sold to advertisers and otherwise exploited.
Now when people show up to the polls, they think they're voting to keep themselves safe from violent crimnals running rampant; they think they are voting to keep out the flood of strange outsiders coming to take their jobs and eat their family pets. But in reality they're voting for -- and getting -- something quite different.
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.
What a particular voter was “aware of” regarding Jan 6th and the events that caused it very much depended on where that person got their news. For example, one prominent network was found in court depositions to have knowingly reported complete BS about what Jan 6 was all about: “During pre-trial discovery, Fox News' internal communications were released, indicating that prominent hosts and top executives were aware the network was reporting false statements but continued doing so to retain viewers for financial reasons.”
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Voting_Systems_v._Fox....
More than ever before, people now live in news silos where they get only the news that engages their prior beliefs. And people who are in the Fox News silo have been told, repeatedly, that NPR is fake news from “far-left lunatic” Democrats. Do you remember all the air time Fox News gave to people arguing for the defunding of NPR? How much do you think a Fox News viewer is likely to trust NPR?
Think about it. If you are like the vast majority of people, almost everything you know about what is happening in the world, especially about the highest levels of government, is something you have been told from a source you trust. You are not a part of government policy decisions. You do not speak to people who are primary sources in those decisions. You know only what has been reported to you by third parties. Now imagine that you are getting those reports only from third parties that tell you something that is not true. How would you know that you are being misled?
Personally I feel that non voters effectively voted for Trump, and they should own that as much as die hard MAGA types.
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...)
2020 had about 4 million more votes cast.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/voter-turnou...
Lots of people don't vote in mid terms, that's what Trump is aiming for.
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 basically had no platform other than your cookie-cutter "migrant crime", "economy bad" ...
* 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
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.
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.
Terrance McKenna once said that the worst president was the one in power, regardless of when it is. It is because for the most part, they just keep building on the existing frame work, standing on the shoulders of those before them.
Now one could argue that Trump is doing the opposite this term, but depending on were you stand, this might not have been a great out come.
A solution is Ranked Choice Voting where you can say, "Green, and if they don't win, D (or whatever)."
Fwiw, I vote my conscience, not to win. Not the best for my political positions maybe, but I hope to send a signal to others that maybe something other than R/D is one day possible. But, yeah, RCV would help with that conundrum.
That desire is gone so they are going all out.
Willing, optional compliance with the administration is the core problem here.
[1]: https://www.acluofnorthcarolina.org/app/uploads/drupal/sites...
Unfortunately Trump is doing whatever he wants at this point and ignoring anyone that says otherwise.
b) I also lived in Austin during that time, and the scale and militarization of current ICE action is on another level to what it was in the early 10's
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...
Whether you think we should look at per-year numbers or the overall numbers, I'd say that most people count total progress of a thing moreso than the velocity, or the prices of things instead of the spot inflation rate.
I rememebr friends doing migrant support in San Antonio in 2012 and similar actions.
I bet it feels nice to pretend that it's other folks who are hypocrites.
But don't forget that you're just pretending.
https://www.aclu.org/news/human-rights/ones-obama-left-behin...
https://www.aclu.org/news/human-rights/ones-obama-left-behin...
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.
Secondly: "open borders is a libertarian policy, not a left-wing one" doesn't really make sense. Saying a particular policy is inherently part of only a single ideology just isn't how ideologies work. Also, if you're looking for anti-statists who view people from all countries as equal and are for people being able to choose which government to be under then the ideology that best fits that is "anarchism". If you're using a definition where "anarchism" and "libertarianism" are essentially the same then you're using a definition where "libertarian" isn't particularly right wing (which makes contrasting it to "left wing" not make sense).
The author isn't American.
Edit - wait until y'all find out other countries also have borders and laws...
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."
How many of the Pilgrims had a valid modern visa?
US also didn't have Jus soli citizenship until the whole civil war and slavery debacle. You had to go into a local court and show you lived in the US for a couple years, who would swear you in as a citizen. But most people didn't care about voting or holding office enough to bother.
Actually, my understanding is that the US did largely follow jus soli. What it wasn't was unconditional jus soli, but the principle was birth in the bounds of the US conferred citizenship except if positive law existed not conferring citizenship.
As I said above, a law you have to tie yourself in knots to justify might be a bad law.
> If you have to work your way round to "they are not people" for the law to be consistent, consider that it might be a bad law.
I disagree that the law (which has been changed, amended and clarified) has been 'consistently obvious', and I still maintain that the conclusion of 'immigrants aren't people' invalidates the law.
You could make this argument, but the Supreme Court does not seem to agree, they have consistently said that "the people" is basically everyone here. Even those unlawfully here.
That said, the second amendment does have some interpretation that allows for restrictions on temporary visa holders like the student that is the topic of this discussion. But it also has rulings that support it applying to illegal immigrants.
This is absolutely false. DC v Heller cites that "the people" refers to members of the "political community."[] Not "basically everyone here." The interpretation of what "political community" means has been split in the circuits. One court in Illinois found it might include illegal immigrants (who have settled as immigrants) or non-immigrant visa holders that were illegally settling here. This is anomalous. Generally they've found the political community to be something approximating those with immigrant type visas, permanent residency, or citizenship -- barring some exceptions from those like felons.
Even if you dig up the most generous case in illinois (I've forgotten the name) which claims some illegal immigrants are "the people", which it has been awhile since I read it -- even they narrow the political community refered to by "the people" to people actually settling as part of the community and not just basically anyone inside the US in a way that would suggest it applies to tourists or student visa holders using their visa in the legal manner.
What is more, in all six other provisions of the Constitution that mention “the people,” the term unambiguously refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset. As we said in United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U. S. 259, 265 (1990):
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.
Sounds like Google stopped caring.
But... Why on earth do the people filing an administrative subpoena not have to notify the interested parties too? Why is it Google's responsibility? If they didn't tell you, would you ever find out?
Generally they do - with some notable exceptions being if you're a non-citizen and you're no longer in the US, and it's either a criminal investigation or related to intelligence or national security.
> 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.
> Weeks later, in Geneva, Switzerland
It is obviously not criminal, but I guess that you don't need much to qualify something as related to intelligence and national security, attending a pro-Palestinian protest may be enough.
The problem is they tell user that they'll inform you right away and give them a chance to challenge the subpoena.
A quick search shows that they've done in the past and people have been able to get the subpoena's withdrawn.
https://thefulcrum.us/rule-of-law/us-administrative-subpoena...
KYC laws mean that his carrier has his name and email address and the feds probably got that without anyone informing the customer.
Do you apply that principle universally in your life?
C’mon, be honest about why you doubt the story.
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 direction if anything. The author was protesting the US involvement with Israel. If you ask me, Israel has way too much control over US politics and other institutions, and I hate paying taxes to a small country overseas. AIPAC and ADL ought to be classified as foreign entities because they de facto represent Israel's govt here, and there are some people in those orgs I consider outright traitors to the USA.
It’s a huge pet peeve of mine when people don’t say what they are actually thinking :)
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/05/palest...
[2]: https://panthernow.com/2026/03/03/international-students-sel...
Sun reporters on the scene did not observe any physical violence towards law enforcement but did note distress among recruiters, students and administration involved in the career fair.[1]
[1] https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2024/09/pro-palestine-pro...
"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."
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.
Many of the insurrectionists were also caught on camera in congress after they broke down the doors and stormed the building. Some even took selfies in the offices of various senators and house reps.
If it's not your computer, it's not your data.
There’s been some pushback since then, but nothing to give any confidence that CODENAMEY, CODENAMEZ, and many others have have sprung up.
There are many things everyday people can do to insulate themselves from these choices. Encrypted DNS, VPNs, avoiding cloud services, educating friends on why Gmail is really Fedmail, etc. It's not so over-and-done with as you seem to make it out to be.
People may be tired of seeing stories like this appear on HN, but getting this story exposure to this group is exactly why they need to hit the homepage.
When you call in to Support at Google, you'll get someone who is a specialist in a certain thing, and they have access to only the tools and data necessary to do their particular job with your account. They rely on your disclosure of stuff to them. I often find myself uploading files to Drive, or images to Photos, and sharing them Public so that the Googler can follow a link.
As an anecdotal example, I've visited Waymo depots a couple of times. (Not actually Google, but a sister company under Alphabet.) The depot is completely nondescript, and I wouldn't have identified it if I didn't know what it was. There are a few Visitor parking spaces up front. And the front entrance leads to a Security Desk. The waiting room has about 4 chairs and a table of interesting design. The Security Guard will see you know. And there's a door beyond.
I was there to pick up "Lost & Found" items. You basically get the impression that security is tight as a drum. The guards can be kind of informal; there are employees circulating in and out; but ain't nobody going to exfiltrate a bunch of data, if they appreciate their freedom and civil rights.
I am not tired of that at all. But you have people be tired of tons of things, on reddit too. That should not distract discussions. If technology is involved I think it perfectly fits HN and in this regard, the state uses technology to sniff after people - without a real legal, objective cause. It's almost as if the current administration attempts to inflate court cases to weaken the system, e. g. until judges say "no, that's too much work, I just auto-convict via this AI tool the government gave me".
> the administration’s rhetoric about cracking down on students protesting what we saw as genocide forced me into hiding for three months. Federal agents came to my home looking for me. A friend was detained at an airport in Tampa and interrogated about my whereabouts.
Do you think any of them were sincere?
On a side note, it was interesting after Trump was elected where some of my co-workers wanted to use old pronouns after some laws changed _in meetings_ and I realized the only thing stopping them was the awkwardness it would have been for _them_ in that situation
Of course, it turned out that the average American had no problem learning what a pronoun was if it gave them the opportunity to be mean. Sigh.
Maybe there was some other sign they didn't ask in good faith? But I have no idea what dumb thing trump said you're even talking about.
It's so weird how people join these partisan factions that have a full package of beliefs that you have to be evil not to share. Woe to your job if you say that you think brush buildup should be cleared; you're obviously racist.
Intelligent people don't post condescending, shallow dismissals.
Were they clearly actually talking about that? If that was their question, word-for-word, it's a good question! We are not managing our forests all that well. No, we shouldn't be doing Trump's dumbass raking "idea", but we should be doing controlled burns, at minimum.
Are you sure about that? I've been hearing for at least a decade that the solution to CA's forest fire problem is something along the lines of reducing the amount of potential fuel that is allowed to build up by either allowing smaller fires to run their course without intervention or alternatively aggressively executing controlled burns on a regular schedule.
Not sure how viable that is as a solution but I do know the idea didn't originate with Trump because it predates his entire political career.
Not that this is the only factor in play here on a lot of these fires, and once again I do agree Trump's take is idiotic and ultimately he's not helping but pouring gasoline on the issue. Just pointing out, we definitely aren't managing our forests well for a multitude of reasons.
https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/12/12/twenty-year-study-confi...
In the west coast, the state vs federal friction reduces how much of that happens, and there's more uncontrolled growth happening. And there's not always a lot that e.g. CA government can do about it if it's federal land.
For example, Minnesota (intentionally) burns like 50% more acreage than California on an annual basis, despite being like half the size. But CA also is like half federal land, MN is like 5% or something.
Allowing people they don't like to insult them? Not much of a priority.
The number of HNers (and people at large) who think that both corporate parties don't vehemently oppose free speech and privacy is disturbing. Right now, today, a massive number of Democrats who have spent years decrying Trump (and Republicans as a whole) as fascists are lining up to support a "clean" reauthorization of section 702 of FISA, which allows (despite the phony claims of its supporters) the warrantless and unconstituional surveillance of US citizens (and others). If our government was controlled fascists, why would anyone give them the power to spy on anyone without a warrant? Because it's all kabuki theater and everyone in DC is part of the same team, and you ain't on it.
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.
Obama was murdering US citizens for exercising their free speech, and their children, more than a decade ago.
>But of the options currently available, one is much less bad than the other.
If one person says they are going to stab 99 people and the other person says they are going to stab 100 people, you could argue that the guy who stabs 99 people isn't as bad, but I won't ever support either one of them or consider them worthwhile no matter how many others do.
With such a small sample size, you have a whole lot of confidence saying "well, the Dems encouraged them".
Which ones?
Can you further clarify how the US was involved in the war in Gaza, and how that was the Democrats getting involved? And do you really feel that involvement was anywhere near what is happening or comparable with Iran at the moment?
How many US servicemembers were injured or killed in the US's apparent major war with Gaza?
We've spent ~$20B in grants for weapons procurement on Israel's behalf over several years, with a lot of that being defensive missile systems. I'm not a fan of us spending so much of our money on another country's military, especially when we hear over and over how we can't afford to feed kids or provide transportation to our people. But, we've spent over double than that so far in Iran in less than two months, and that's ignoring the many billions it'll cost to fix things that were destroyed so far. We're looking at the actual US cost of this war potentially reaching one trillion dollars.
Its a scale that's so radically different. And also, one was in support of a country who we have defense agreements with who was attacked, and another was us deciding to go bomb a country seemingly unprovoked.
Who is spreading whataboutism again?
Everyone must simultaneously fight for a better system and choose the least-worst option when it comes time for an election.
At the time, the Republicans whined incessantly about how soft Obama was. But they sure enjoyed dropping those Obama Bombs last year that he commissioned as a Plan B. Obama spoke softly, carried a big stick, and hammered out a brilliant deal. Trump bragged loudly, tore up the deal, swung the stick he inherited, missed, and fell in the oil. Sad.
At the time, Israel whined incessantly about how Iran was going to secretly enrich anyway. But their own intelligence from compromising the enrichment program shows in hindsight that this was not the case and Iran was behaving themselves.
That's why I base my expectations on track records, not on Republican whining.
US withdrew from JCPOA under Trump (which led to a certain chain of events), but Biden was not able to revive it during his term. Not clear why we think a different president would be able to, and under what terms/concessions.
I wonder what wonderful things all the Russian and Iranian (!) oil that Trump lifted sanctions on will fund! We will find out in time.
Kamala had a better shot at reviving the deal for the same reason Trump thought he had a chance at regime change: Iran's situation has been deteriorating. I'm quite sure that if she had hammered out a deal comparable to the JCPOA, Republicans would be running around yapping about how Trump would have achieved peace in the middle east by just having the stones to bomb Iran. Lol.
This is probably the best and most succinct -- and pithy -- take I've read as of yet.
Iran's regime sucked (still sucks), to be sure. This was frankly not all that much of an issue for the US. It was a big issue for other Arab nations in the area (not to mention for Israel), but I'm not sure why we should be doing their dirty work.
If the end result of all this is a large weakening in Iran's regime, a reduction in Iran's influence in the region, and (otherwise) a return to the status quo, I guess that's something of a victory. But it's far from clear that we'll even come out that well, and meanwhile we've murdered civilians, and spent American lives and war materiel. Not great. We should have left well enough alone.
Iran isn't a democracy, it's an authoritarian theocracy that spreads terrorism throughout the Middle East, and that brutally oppresses it's own people[0]. The only objective of the regime is to stay in power, regardless of the costs imposed to Iran and other countries, and the only language they understand is violence.
I hope you're joking!
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!
They were also very eager to supply weapon tech to Israel when the Gaza war started, far more eager than they ever were to supply it to our own country. Leadership was letting employees push back, then all of a sudden in ~2023 they told everyone to shut up and physically gated off the HQ. Then told everyone to shut up even more after some people broke into Thomas Kurian's office.
Maybe the founders have personal reasons. Sergey Brin called the UN antisemitic for calling out genocide in Gaza.
Google was also sued by former employees who claim they were fired because they tried to prevent Google from doing evil[2], in accordance with the code of conduct they agreed to. Sadly that lawsuit ended with a secret settlement, so we'll never know what a jury thinks. Since "don't be evil" is still in there I suppose it could come up again.
[0]: https://abc.xyz/investor/board-and-governance/google-code-of...
[1]: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-dont-be-evil/2540...
[2]: https://www.npr.org/2021/11/29/1059821677/google-dont-be-evi...
What is called "Google" today is actually the old, fully evil, advertising firm "DoubleClick" pretending to be "Google" to make use of the goodwill the "Google" brand name used to have attached to it.
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.
here is the google code of conduct: https://abc.xyz/investor/board-and-governance/google-code-of...
scroll down to the bottom, and you will see:
"And remember... don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!"
That plus aggressive avoidance of anything resembling customer service and what sounds like an internal environment that may be moving towards cage matches makes it worth avoiding for anything important.
> The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users.
- Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, 1998
...then BackRub turned Gogool mis-spelled, and the rest is history.
What exactly did the request for information say from DHS? What exactly was the reason for them to look for you specifically (certainly there are many others protesting)? Following up on that, how do others avoid something like this? What red flags should be avoided and how?
There may or may not be a solid answer for any of this. But this article feels like it's made for awareness, when it could also be made for action, with the right details included.
I've been thinking about this a lot while working on a side project. I ended up making it work entirely offline — no server, no account, no network calls. Not out of paranoia, just because I couldn't come up with a good reason to ask users to trust me with their data. Turns out the best privacy policy is just not having anyone's data.
It's called Hodor — prompt launcher for macOS.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/05/palest...
You made an editorial choice to leave out the part about selling weapons to Israel to use against Gaza.
Once can agree or disagree with the action to disrupt the career.
Either way, I find your omission a bit glaring.
That said, a lot of this comes down to a failure in education around privacy and the cultural norm around folks thinking they have nothing to hide. The intuition most people have around privacy, and security, is incredibly poor.
Others do have constitutional rights, but the legislative and executive hold plenary powers in the realm of national security and immigration.
https://policies.google.com/terms/information-requests?hl=en...
I cannot find any promises in that document nor would I expect to find any. It's a policy not an agreement
At best, the policy contains "representations"
The author might claim he was deceived by misrepresentations, and this deception had consequences for him, amounting to measurable harm
But proving these statements about Google's internal operations are false is difficult. Proving Google's intent in making them is even more difficult
It's incorrect to interpret a "policy" comprising statements about what Google allegedly does internally as an agreement to do anything in the future
Promises can be enforced through the legal process. Generally, Silicon Valley's so-called "tech" companies do not make "promises" to users that can be enforced. Imagine what would happen if they did
Was that ever wrong?
incredible.
Now, please tell me that American companies are better at privacy than the Chinese ones.
Btw, some alternative email providers in truly democratic countries:
* ProtonMail (Switzerland)
* TutaMail, Posteo, Mailbox.org and Eclipso (Germany)
* Runbox (Norway)
* Mailfence (Belgium)
If you have sensitive things in your emails, host your own mail, use GPG encryption or a one-time pad, or even avoid electronic networked machines altogether (depending on the level of security that you require).
Switzerland-hosted services are no safer than others, recall that Crypto AG, who promised to sell secure encryption machines, were just a cover by foreign intelligence services (jointly US/DE-owned/operated by the CIA & BND).
This is such a myopic view of the situation. Are you going to only exchange emails with people you host as well? Otherwise, anyone you exchange emails with will go through other email providers.
Chinese companies give data to China.
I don't trust either of them, but if I had to choose, I would use Chinese products in the U.S. and vice versa.
Say what you want about especially Germany, but there you don't get sued by the president for billions if he doesn't like your opinion.
That's the author's interpretation. The promise doesn't indicate anything of the sort (as of this writing). And users cannot challenge these requests -- users don't own the data (in the US). The promise is very clear that Google will provide the data, if the request is compliant.
Now the text of the notification was past tense, that the information was provided, whereas the promise is crystal clear that Google will notify before providing the info, but to me that could amount to a simplification of "we have verified that the request is legally compliant and will be providing the info to them in 250 ms".
Don't get me wrong, I'm not on Google's side. I'm a huge privacy nut. But the fix is to not give your info to Google, not trust that they will abide by any policy. Especially in a case like this where your freedom is at risk. Most people are completely unaware and unthinking but this guy seems that he was fully aware and placed his trust in Google.
The Google policy he linked to says:
> We won’t give notice when legally prohibited under the terms of the request. We’ll provide notice after a legal prohibition is lifted.
There appears to be no defense against this beyond not allowing companies access to your data in the first place.
And we don't even know what the guy is really wanted for. I think EFF was just waiting for this to happen to make a political statement. That's what they do, if course, but how the hell can they be sure they're aren't vouching for a criminal?
It was a decade+ ago that Snowden explained to us, with receipts, that the USG has warrantless access to everything stored in Apple (iCloud Photos and iCloud Backup are unencrypted and contain a copy of everything on your device), Google, Microsoft, Amazon, et al. You have to be an ostrich with your head in the sand to not be well aware of this at this late juncture.
You'd have to be a moron to let the feds read all of your mail without a warrant by default - any country's feds.
President Trump pressured House Republicans on Wednesday to extend a high-profile warrantless surveillance law without changes, declaring on social media: “I am willing to risk the giving up of my Rights and Privileges as a Citizen for our Great Military and Country!”
Mr. Trump urged the G.O.P. to “unify” behind Speaker Mike Johnson for a critical procedural vote that had been scheduled for late Wednesday night. The vote would clear the way for House approval of a bill extending a major section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. The law is set to expire on April 20.
The statute, known as Section 702, permits the government to collect the messages of foreigners abroad without a warrant from American companies like Google — even if the targets are communicating with Americans.
It's certainly been quite the turn recently. But being between the people and the governments that seemingly inevitably will turn into arch fascist pricks & go to war against the citizens is not an enviable position. Hopefully many jurisdictions start enacting laws that insist companies build unbreakable backdoorless crypto. Hopefully we see legislation that is the exact opposite of chat control mandatory backdoors. It's clear the legal firewalls are ephemeral, can crumble, given circumstances and time. We need a more resolute force to protect the people: we need the mathematicians/cryptographers!
A brand new car.
Paying the price of your own choices.
This is embarrassing to admit, but I miss the halcyon days when folks were still nominally pretending to be free speech warriors.
If you're a guest in another country, act like a guest.
When I was living on a military base in Germany, I and my family were required to behave as a guest of the Germans. The military was quite strict about that.
I didn't have any issue with that. When I travel to another country, I behave as if I was their guest, which I was.
A couple times there were protests in a country I was visiting, and I stayed well away from them.
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.
The point remains, however. If you're here on a visa, the visa can be revoked, and you can be ejected. Revoking a visa is not a criminal sanction and not a violation of your rights, as there is no right to a visa. Your citizenship cannot be revoked.
These deportations are an interesting study in how this plays out, because historically immigration and, especially, deportations is an area of law where the usual rule pertains. But free speech is the complete opposite, where for the past 100 years courts are much more scrutinizing; indeed, precedent in free speech case law requires explicit, deliberate, and fine-grained application of varying levels of scrutiny in each, individual case, a process which is quite exceptional even in cases involving constitutional powers and rights.
It's worth pointing out that prior to the modern legal era, free speech law was quite different, both nationally and at the state level. Regulations and applications of regulations that incidentally impinged upon speech, but which otherwise clearly derived from legitimate state powers, received very light of any scrutiny. Regulation of commercial activity, for example, usually would not be considered to violate free speech rights even if it prohibited certain speech outright, so long as enforcement was nominally directed at commercial activity per se.
The person who wrote the article was at a protest. I presume he was identified as being there via his cell phone. Then, being a visa holder, he was investigated for being a security risk. He evidently was not deemed to be one, his visa was not revoked, and he was not charged with anything.
BTW, I'd be spooked, too, if federal agents arrived at my door to question me.
Their 1st sentence said clearly bureaucrats or even leadership should not have broad discretion I thought. And they did not say criminal sanction. What did you think implied it?
This was a fallacious excuse for a fallacious analogy.
> Revoking a visa is not a criminal sanction and not a violation of your rights, as there is no right to a visa.
They mentioned inherent freedoms. They believed rights and laws are different seemingly.
> Your citizenship cannot be revoked.
Your citizenship cannot be revoked possibly. Others can.[2]
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.
Members of the military and their families stationed in a foreign country are required to behave as guests of the host country. This is not a joke and is not taken lightly by the command. Also, an officer who cannot control the behavior of his family is not fit to be an officer.
Maybe things have changed since I was a boy, but I hope not.
You can murder 20 people and not even go to jail if you are in the US army in an european base.
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidente_della_funivia_del_Ce...
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.
It's part of what makes it a democracy.
A core of democracy is a finite pool of voters, and infinite immigration and foreign protests are a direct threat to our democracy in a way that removing someone on visa isn't.
Yes, this case is a travesty, but that does not change the soundness of the advice.
When in Rome.
I couldn’t care less about a non citizen’s non existent free speech rights, nor would I expect to be provided rights exclusively afforded to citizens of a country in which I was visiting. Some of you guys have clearly never travelled outside your home countries.
Understanding these things made my life much easier.
The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and Stored Communications Act (SCA) requires service providers to disclose certain types of data (IP addresses, physical address, other identifiers, and session times and durations) in response to an administrative subpoena. The actual content of communications is excluded.
You'd get a real kick out some of the protests in Canada then.
For example, there's https://policies.google.com/terms/information-requests?hl=en...
"""When we receive a request from a government agency, we send an email to the user account before disclosing information. If the account is managed by an organization, we’ll give notice to the account administrator.
We won’t give notice when legally prohibited under the terms of the request. We’ll provide notice after a legal prohibition is lifted, such as when a statutory or court-ordered gag period has expired.
We might not give notice if the account has been disabled or hijacked. And we might not give notice in the case of emergencies, such as threats to a child’s safety or threats to someone’s life, in which case we’ll provide notice if we learn that the emergency has passed."""
I don't want megacorps to ignore our EU laws just like I don't want them to ignore US laws. They're not people, they don't get the right to disobedience.
What is the constitution worth if it is not or only selectively enforced?
It's like an overthrow of a democracy and total inaction against it
That is 100% it. If the people do not revolt against this (general strike), nothing will stop it. Democracy needs to be actively protected.
Yea, they are even worse. They would sell out in a sec once goverment is going after them.
How about making sure that your laws don't authorize ICE data requests? How about that?
The powers that be in the USA have signalled they won't tolerate foreigners protesting state department policy on their soil. This is obviously unconstitutional. But it won't be changed through lawfare.
I of course feel bad for the student here too, he should not be targeted for exercising his rights to peaceful protest.
But Google is not the enemy here, I would bet good money their hand is forced to comply and their mouth is silenced. The enermy here is the overreaching government and ICE
Or they could implement end-to-end encryption for many of their products and they wouldn't be able to give the government the data, even if they wanted to. But that would hamper them to analyze data for ad targeting.
The corporation has no feelings and I don't imagine the board members or shareholders are feeling bad about this.
It's still in the code of conduct
https://abc.xyz/investor/board-and-governance/google-code-of...
And it still doesn't mean a damn thing.
This is true, but only because Google is a horrific monopoly and is allowed to continue to be (and to grow) only by the grace of government. If they don't do what they're told, they won't be allowed to steal in the way that they are accustomed to doing.
I don't think that anybody who controls Google misses a moment of sleep over it, though. They're being "forced" to do it like a kid is being "forced" not to do their homework if you offer them candy. It's easy and lucrative to be passive.
The US is not in a full blown authoritarian regime. Big companies aren't failing to resist because they fear dire consequences. They're doing it because they don't care. If they think caving to the administration will result in $1 in additional profit compared to fighting it, that's what they'll do.
Big corporations are paperclip maximizers but for money. Treat them like you'd treat an AI that's single-mindedly focused on making number go up.
I think we need to expand CCPA so that the government cannot simply spy on you by claiming that “criminals” are near you. Even criminals should have their privacy protected or else they will just label everyone criminals.
It allowed analysts to:
- Watch and record a 30-square-mile area of the city simultaneously, in real-time.
- If a crime occurred, they could "go back in time" to see where a suspect came from. Ie. track a vehicle from its destination back to its source.
- Or they could follow a vehicle "forward" in time to see where it parked, identifying potential hideouts or residences.
Of course, it was recording everyone, not just criminals.
He is almost ashamed of his views because of the current climate but he didn't do anything wrong, apparently.
The author (in my opinion) needs to raise this with their own governments (UK is probably the one where they can get better action) to push for data sovereignty laws so that it's at least UK or Trinidad and Tobago that are the governments involved in investigating their data, via appropriate international warrants.
Expecting a company to hold its own promise (of notifying the user before it happens) sounds like a pretty minimal expectation, hard for me to imagine it being "too much".
Furthermore, how would data sovereignty affect whether Google holds its promise on notifying users?
> Expecting a company to hold its own promise (of notifying the user before it happens) sounds like a pretty minimal expectation, hard for me to imagine it being "too much".
I am saying that this expectation is unrealistic for a British/Trinbagonian citizen, given the political situation in the US right now. For a US citizen having the same issue (Google gave their data to the government without a safeguard), it would be realistic.
> Furthermore, how would data sovereignty affect whether Google holds its promise on notifying users?
The user could file a lawsuit in the UK about Google handing over their data without notification and proper jurisdiction. If Google UK employees were involved in handing over this data, they could be prosecuted and fined by the UK government.
Overall what I am hinting at is that this would incentivize Google to put in proper safeguards for non-US citizens. Currently they seem to be treated as a separate, non-protected category.
I'm merely saying that I'm skeptical that calling them out for breaking a promise is a useful path to go down. The alternate path (often proven to have been effective) is to pressure your non-US regulators into regulating them more. What I foresee is that this will either make Google follow more safeguards for everyone, or incentivize them to get out of non-US jurisdictions altogether.
It's even harder than people doing the same, because at the end of the day companies are a bunch of stuff that can be taken over and controlled by other people.
Weird to decide that you have to choose to be mad at one party or the other, and that getting mad at one party somehow indicates that you are less mad at the other party.
Weird to make this comment in response to perfectly valid criticism of Google by the EFF.
I think this is much more important than what big-tech do.