this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
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There is no reason to honor these warrantless requests. The Bush Administration sent National Security Letters to them, demanding all this information without a warrant and threatening massive penalties if they told anyone. They had no legal basis to do such a thing, the constitution demands they get a warrant from a judge as laid out in the 4th amendment and calls anything in violation of the constitution to be illegal and unenforceable.
But the rot has been spreading for a half a century, the immune system of the Republic is haywire, we have autoimmune conditions, the immune system attacks healthy parts of the body.
America isn't a country of laws anymore. The supreme court rubber stamps anything the administration wants to do, and the administration "declines requests from the judiciary". You've got administration officials that don't know what Habeas Corpus means, suspending Habeas Corpus. You've got a military openly/brazenly committing war crimes on the international scene (blowing up unverified "narco boats"/civilians). You've got a paramilitary gestapo-like force quite literally shooting citizens in the streets, your own government aiming to terrorize its people -- which's the whole point of the violent Ice operations targeting blue states.
But yeah, sure, Google and the big tech bros who have been supporting Trump's actions throughout all of this will totally draw the line at disclosing data.
Nah, SCOTUS pushed back on Trump, first time around and this time as well. The administration had a solid run of Supreme Court wins for several months because they only brought cases they thought were slam dunks. Now that we're getting into meaty subjects like birthright citizenship, the justices look to stand firm. Too little, too late, I know.
I fully expect Google to give in anyway. The rule of law doesn't count for much anymore.
Oh yeah for sure, they have been for some time well before this administration as I understand it.
Facebook is even worse I believe. They allow the police and agents virtually unlimited reach into our lives without warrants. They don't even charge the government to comply with their demands. ATT used to charge the government a lot of money for wiretaps and the like, and made them get warrants. Facebook they just have to ask and they bend over backwards for them.
Maybe facebook and google are guilty on other fronts which makes them susceptible to betraying our freedoms here. Which is why you don't allow such consolidation in the first place but too late now our courts are captured as well as the regulators and they won't break up the trusts, not without a new muscular populist government on a full fledged campaign.