Discussion
Google Broke Its Promise to Me. Now ICE Has My Data.
440bx: Promises are broken, policies are changed and political regimes vary. You need to make sure that you consider the future and not just now. And that means NEVER handing your data over in the first place.
sMarsIntruder: Sorry guys, but what’s the story here?Google not protecting users data? Seriously?
drowntoge: Yes.
ihaveajob: "Don't be evil" they used to say.
avazhi: > 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 protestAs somebody who got two degrees abroad, the idea of attending public protests/riots, particularly any directed against the governments that issued me my student visas, sounds like possibly the stupidest move I could have made. Not sure what bro was thinking here.As for google, surely we’re all aware by now that all these tech companies can be easily compelled by US law to do all sorts of shit with your data - notwithstanding guidance in their TOS to the contrary. No doubt in the TOS there’s a carve out for this.FAFO, as they say. Should have just studied and enjoyed the overseas experience.
pixel_popping: Huh, I don't think anyone expect Google to maintain privacy for them, Google deliberately leak 500K user info to various governments, every year [1].https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview
tosti: The stats are per half a year, so even more than that.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?
jauntywundrkind: It must really really suck to be a data-holder, that every single government out there views as some piggy bank, sitting there waiting to smash & grab.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!
malux85: I feel bad for both sides in this. Google can be put under so much pressure by the government, they are basically forced to do what they says; yes they can fight it, but if the government wants something badly, they will get it, they have powers (especially under the very broad definition of 'national security') to just get automatic compliance, using the same powers they can silence the companies from publishing anything about it too.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
diego_moita: Does anyone remember when western nations were freaking out that Huawei would handle everybody personal data to the Chinese government?Now, please tell me than American companies are better at privacy than the Chinese.Btw, some alternative email providers in truly democratic countries:* ProtonMail (Switzerland)* TutaMail, Posteo, Mailbox.org and Eclipso (Germany)* Runbox (Norway)* Mailfence (Belgium)
eaf7e281: American companies give data to the U.S.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.
josefritzishere: This is so wrong. What's the solution? Google class action lawsuit?
jmward01: Start actively divesting of Google where possible. There are a lot of 'Switching to 100% European cloud' stories hitting HN lately. The more things like this happen the more stories like that will be there. Google and US tech are becoming toxic at many levels and an appropriate response is to mitigate risk by going to other providers.
free652: >Switching to 100% European cloud'Yea, they are even worse. They would sell out in a sec once goverment is going after them.
epistasis: What is the basis for this claim?
jmward01: I do not feel bad for Google here and they are at fault. If they are in a tight bind now it is only because they have eroded the privacy safety buffer so thin over the past few decades that they are finally having a hard time walking the line. If they had been fighting for strong, clear, boundaries then this wouldn't be an issue. Instead they have pushed automatic TOS changes that let them do what they want when they want and ignoring privacy settings and selling info to anyone with no consequences. Yes, they are likely in a 'tight bind' right now but it is one that they set up for themselves.
j2kun: In that case, the US was worried about espionage, not violation of civil liberties.
jfoworjf: This story is the one that finally pushed me to leave google. I moved off my ~20 year old Google account and deleted everything off their services including almost a decade of Google photos. I cancelled my Google one subscription for extra space. I'm now self hosting what I can and paying proton mail for everything else. I refuse to allow a company that will hand over data at the request of an administrative warrant to hold my data.
fluidcruft: When did you find out about this? The timeline of this actually pushing you to do all that seems a bit unbelievable and difficult to take seriously.
wat10000: Maybe they read one of the articles written about this incident months ago.
microtonal: I feel bad for both sides in this. Google can be put under so much pressure by the government, they are basically forced to do what they says; yes they can fight it, but if the government wants something badly, they will get it, they have powersOr 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.
busterarm: It's this account's only comment and was only created right before posting. It has no credibility.
djeastm: They could just be very concerned with privacy.
PaulKeeble: They dropped that a long time ago, at least a decade ago. Which is really an odd thing to do, what company would think that not being evil was holding it back but Google clearly did.
GolfPopper: And we all ought to have dropped them, then. (Most of us, myself included, did not.)
jmward01: Privacy, technology and actual freedom overlap massively. Stories like this making it to HN are important since many of the people working at Google that had interactions with this, either by creating the tech or being aware of internal policy changes, read HN. Additionally many founders and decision makers in companies read these stories because it hit HN. Knowing that Google will do this changes your legal calculations. Should I trust them to store my company's data? Will they honor their BAA requirements if they are ditching other promises they made?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.
smallmancontrov: The number of HNers who were earnestly arguing that this was the party of free speech indicates that this absolutely needs to be on the HN front page.> 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.
traderj0e: Democratic party is owned by Israel just as much, if not more.
bdhe: What facts would you point to, to argue that the Democratic party is "owned by Israel" more than the Republican party?
traderj0e: https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary?cycle=All&ind... is one
paulddraper: The author not say whether the subpoena prevented advance notification.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.
nostrademons: Note that there was a major press cycle about this in October / November of last year - a quick Google showed stories in the Guardian, The Intercept, and the Cornell Sun, as well as commentary on Reddit. Not inconceivable that they found about it last October and had six months to leave and de-Googlify.
caminante: > Note that there was a major press cycle about this in October / November of last yearFair point. However...the parent's comment is also fair because the article does a poor job of raising your point. I have to read your comment or click through an article.
eaf7e281: I still don't understand. Who gave ICE such power, and who is ordering them to do all this? To me, ICE's actions are similar to those of a private army.
dismalaf: Believe it or not, immigration authorities (like the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency) have the power to enforce immigration laws.The author isn't American.
MallocVoidstar: Google publicly promises not to do exactly what they did here. Why would this not be a story?
ifyoubuildit: I'm all ears if you've got someone that we can put in power that won't rat fuck us when it comes to privacy or civil liberties. Bonus points if they aren't just slightly less bad than the other guy.
smallmancontrov: Kamala was a lot less bad than Trump. It wasn't close.
orbisvicis: How was Amandla even identified? Stingray at the protest? Then how was the phone number linked to Google? Facial recognition at the protest? I guess his details are on file under terms of the visa? So then the government simply asks Google for all details on the individual by name? Either is pretty disturbing.
wmil: Cell carriers sell geofenced data about cell phones in an area at a given time to anyone. There's zero privacy.KYC laws mean that his carrier has his name and email address and the feds probably got that without anyone informing the customer.
john_strinlai: this is a fun story, but... its a story.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!"
dismalaf: Apple and Microsoft are also subject to US laws. It's not like any company can get around this.
selectodude: Democrats have so far not been led by the nose into bombing Iran and fucking up the global economy so I’m not sure how one can keep saying that with a straight face.
traderj0e: Both sides of Congress passed emergency weapons funding for Israel at the start of this war. Even if some Democrats are scoring political points complaining about it since it's during Trump's term and the war has become a stalemate, they're on board at the end of the day, like they were with Iraq. And during Biden's term, it was Gaza instead.
WalterBright: 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.
LastTrain: Some of them were identified by DNA left in the shit they took on Pelosi’s desk.
jfoworjf: As other comments say, it was a major story months ago. I started moving off around December. It's a long process to switch over all email accounts. I only recently got self hosted kubernetes set up for immich as a Google photos replacement and some other hosting needs but for the most part I am off google. I get probably 1-2 emails a week still going to Gmail but when I do I just switch those accounts to my new email. It will be a while before the old Gmail is deleted entirely unfortunately.I didn't mention it in op but I also moved to graphene os which tbh feels much better than android has recently.
pwg: "Don't be evil" was dropped after the DoubleClick acquisition completed their internal takeover of the old "Don't be evil" Google (Google purportedly purchased DoubleClick, in reality they 'did' purchase them, but then the old DoubleClick advertisers slowly took over old Google from the inside out).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.
drnick1: Kamala would have 100% failed to confront the Iranian problem head on.
pesus: Have you run into any serious complications doing that? I'm a bit worried that I've used my google account for so long and for many things that I might accidentally lock myself out of something important without it.
hexmiles: Personally, I deleted everything I could but kept the Gmail account for a couple of years with a forward to my new account, and after that, I also deleted it. Google Takeout is a very useful way to quickly create a backup of everything Google.
rootusrootus: Which immigration laws are they enforcing in this case? And are you also going to suggest that the Constitution does not protect foreign nationals inside the US?
dekhn: Where does Google publicly promise they don't do this?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."""
magicalhippo: I migrated away from my main email, it wasn't a Google mail but it was on the providers domain.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.
traderj0e: Wasn't even a warrant, right? They did this willingly.
pixel_popping: Google leak ALL the time without warrant, Apple as well.
traderj0e: When have they done this before?
pixl97: You're making a mistaken thinking power is given. Quite often in the US government organizations 'just do', and it's the power of the executive, judicial, or legislative to stop them.Unfortunately Trump is doing whatever he wants at this point and ignoring anyone that says otherwise.
soganess: Yeah, because the American ideal of our forefathers was FAFO?This is embarrassing to admit, but I miss the halcyon days when folks were still nominally pretending to be free speech warriors.
avazhi: I find the idea of a non citizen protesting and causing social unrest diabolical. Most international students, (whether studying in the US or Europe or Australia or Malaysia or indeed anywhere else) understand that their visa does not grant them the same substantive rights that citizens of a country get. That’s as it should be.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.
pesus: There is nothing in the constitution limiting the 1st amendment to only citizens.
traderj0e: None of those countries are interested in free speech, not even this particular kind of speech, especially Germany.
notrealyme123: They don't sack you from the street and put you in a Camp. At least not anymore.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.
948382828528: You just get a gestapo raid if you call out the German regime for its lies.
traderj0e: Germany will literally fine you for viewpoints, including criticism of Israel. What happens if you don't pay?
gorgoiler: So much of this was backed up by Snowden, not just in the machinations of each of the CODENAMEX operations but also in the attitude that the TLAs felt entitled to implement them in the first place.There’s been some pushback since then, but nothing to give any confidence that CODENAMEY, CODENAMEZ, and many others have have sprung up.
goosejuice: We could and should have better privacy laws, though foreigners will always be subject to less protection.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.
tdb7893: One thing to note when talking about "foreigners" is that many rights in the constitution specify "persons". So citizens and non-citizens theoretically have equal rights from that standpoint. I agree in general but it's worth noting that he was supposed to have constitutional rights to speech and against unreasonable searches.
pixel_popping: 500k time a year: https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview
traderj0e: Those are supposedly ones where they legally had to comply. This case was different.
pixel_popping: No, they do it also for any sort of administrative, without warrant.
bigfudge: I'm not sure if you're joking and this is a backhanded compliment to Harris, or you're sincere in your belief that what Trump will negotiate is going to be better than the Obama deal he ditched in the first term.I hope you're joking!
quadrifoliate: Honestly, I think the author is expecting too much from companies that are under jurisdiction of the US Government, especially in the situation as of 2026. It is telling that when they say "federal government" in the article, they implicitly mean the US Federal Government and not those of the UK or Trinidad and Tobago.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.
wasabi991011: I don't see how your opinion matches the article.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?
marcosdumay: It's not anything close to minimal. Expecting a company to hold their promise against an authoritarian government is an extremely strong expectation.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.
Nuzzerino: If it helps you feel better, I voted for free speech and feel that the administration did not hold up their end of the deal. The FTC’s recent “debanking” letter to the payment processors is just theater until something changes. I’ll leave it at that.
paoliniluis: Agree. Google can't go against the all-mighty state. Just look at what Anthropic did and the effect of that action. There are billions of dollars at stake on government contracts that they can't afford to lose. Reminds me of Mullvad's ad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPzvUW8qaWY
izacus: The whole notion that Google (or Apple or anyone else) should ignore and flaunt the state is insane by itself.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.
daytonix: You should have been "all ears" during the election...
mothballed: Chase Oliver was the only non-writein person on my ticket that even bothered to put up much pretenses of running on a privacy and civil liberties ticket.
sam345: Knowing that Google will do what changes your calculation? Abide by the law? I would be surprised if Google's so-Called promise to notify the subject of the inquiry was not couched in terms of being subject to legal requirements.
hn_acc1: Tracfone burners for any protests?
convolvatron: an apropos bit from the NYT today: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.
jll29: That statement is true at face value. But if you look at how Eric Schmidt travels with government representatives, how rich and powerful BigTech is, and how much they individually and collectively spend on lobbying, then they could be a massive obstacle if they only cared.
izacus: You can follow the ideal of your forefathers by changing those abusive evil laws. Instead of demanding that foreigners risk their head in protest.
wredcoll: > The number of HNers who were earnestly arguing that this was the party of free speechDo you think any of them were sincere?
smallmancontrov: I work in this industry. I sample the same distribution in person. I don't think they were, I know they were.
hn_acc1: I'm seeing it in a lot of younger tech people. We had a NASA presentation at work about air quality and that forest fires are one of our biggest problems in CA. TWO separate people (from maybe 20-25 attending) brought up "do you think that if we managed our forests better, this could help?" (clearly talking about the crazy "raking the forests" Trump rhetoric). It blows my mind how "intelligent" people can be this stupid.
tokyobreakfast: > It blows my mind how "intelligent" people can be this stupid.Intelligent people don't post condescending, shallow dismissals.
mothballed: The Constitution uses the following in regard to protest in the first amendment Congress shall make no law ... abridging ... the right of the people peaceably to assemble It uses this same "right of the people" in the second amendment ... the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. In both cases, the right is restricted to "the people."Note in Heller and elsewhere it was determined "the people" are those who belong to the political class. Generally this is not those on non-immigrant visas or illegal aliens (those circuits are split on this). If you don't have the right to bear arms, clearly you are not "the people", 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.Note: Personally I do thing 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."
lm411: How does one feel bad for a corporation, especially of this size? Double so for one that quite literally removed "Don't be Evil" as its motto and from its code of conduct.The corporation has no feelings and I don't imagine the board members or shareholders are feeling bad about this.
miltonlost: You found that after the first administration, in the end, he had earned your vote for Free Speech?
daveguy: Some people weren't paying much attention to "politics" until Dumpty started going full crazy. Still unclear exactly when that started.
sam345: Is that really what you're concerned about that somebody would ask a soft ball question about proposed solutions? Why is questioning the buildup of brush a crazy idea? It's been a mainstream concern for years. I really don't think it's healthy for any inquiry to propose a particular mindset and shut down alternative thinking. It doesn't seem very scientific or intelligent to me.
wredcoll: It's pretty pathetic when the best argument you can make is a whataboutism that isn't even equivalent.
smallmancontrov: If "led by the nose into bombing Iran" isn't being "owned by Israel," what is?
traderj0e: It totally is. Democrats got led into Israel's wars too. Interestingly the support was different, like Trump got money from the Adelsons and Biden from pro-Israel lobbies.
vel0city: > Democrats got led into Israel's wars too.Which ones?
eurleif: The linked Google policy states:>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.
FireBeyond: [delayed]
htx80nerd: No one cared about ICE or deporting until Orange Man Bad won in 2016.I lived in Austin TX during this time and there was never a single anti-ICE or anti-deportation protest until Cheeto won.Obama had kids in cages. Obama deported people. But he is a (D) so it's no big deal."Free thinking liberals" are wildly subject to what CNN , AP News and Reddit says.
mplanchard: a) The kids in cages garnered significant press, public sympathy, and protestb) 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
Ardren: > While ICE “requested” that Google not notify Thomas Johnson, the request was not enforceable or mandated by a courtSounds 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?
titanomachy: What do you mean? Eventually notifying him seems like the one thing Google did right here.
WalterBright: If you are invited to visit someone's home, and you go, and say nasty things to the homeowner, you'll be tossed out despite your right to free speech.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.
marcosdumay: Restricting the protest rights of non-citizens is an extremely heavy-handed policy.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.
WalterBright: They have a right to protest. They don't have a right to a visa. The State Department has broad authority to revoke visas.
smallmancontrov: Migrating is such a good feeling. You don't have to do it all at once, either: I migrated to fastmail over the course of several years. Each time google did something that got my blood pressure up I went into my password manager and migrated another account. In aggregate it was a hassle, but these days I almost miss the feeling of being able to do something in response to stinky actions from google.
sam345: I don't think fastmail is going to help you. They are subject to legal requirements too and probably American jurisdiction also despite what their particular position is. https://www.fastmail.com/blog/fastmails-servers-are-in-the-u.... People love to hate Google but they're just doing what any corporation subject to law is going to do.
smallmancontrov: So they were weaponizing immigration law to deport pro-pali students? Care to back your feelings up with some facts?
fwip: Not that far off from the truth. A number of college students who were protesting for Palestine had their college enrollment suspended, and lost their visas, effectively being deported. Which, yes, the university made that decision, but it didn't come without influence from the government.
FireBeyond: Which universities?With such a small sample size, you have a whole lot of confidence saying "well, the Dems encouraged them".
pjc50: > And are you also going to suggest that the Constitution does not protect foreign nationals inside the US?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.
yellow_postit: I use Fastmail and the main difference I notice is less effective spam filtering — it’s good but not as great as Gmail was.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.
soganess: A country is not a house. Conflating the legal framework of a nation-state with the etiquette of a private living room is a category error. As John Locke demonstrated when refuting the patriarchal theory of government, political power is fundamentally distinct from household authority. A private home is governed by the unilateral property rights of an owner; a republic operates via constitutional law and public rights.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.
WalterBright: Analogies are never perfect.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.
wahern: The maxim, "a government of laws, not of men" means state power should be exercised according to consistent principles and policy even beyond the letter of the law, not at the whim of bureaucrats or even leadership. Because it's generally impossible to draft laws to enumerate every possible scenario, contingency, and condition, statutes tend to nominally grant powers broader than for the purposes intended, even when there's no intent for them to be applied beyond the original purpose. For practical and procedural reasons courts typically only safeguard this principle by looking to whether the law nominally grants a power to do something, rather than if the power is rightfully exercised under a more wholistic and detailed interpretation of the laws, but the principle is still enshrined in US organic law, and in jurisprudence generally. Courts often do scrutinize exercises of state power to determine whether they violate this principle, but which applications are scrutinized tend to be a function of contemporary political debates and a courts ideological makeup.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.
pjc50: What they meant is "freedom to say slurs", not "freedom of LGBT books in school libraries"
