They have a toy, they’re increasingly abusing it, then trying to dodge from it being taken away.
The thing is nobody has to comply with 1509 summons, DHS has to go to court to enforce it. A lot of the fault is on a company that complies without just ignoring it.
You're not wrong, but companies such as Google make business decisions, not moral decisions. It's far easier and cheaper for them to comply, while there is basically no incentive for them to fight the summons. Especially given the current administration's proven record of taking retaliation against anyone who stands in their way.
If you want companies to behave in the interest of the general public, you need to create an incentive structure that supports that.
"In Fort’s case, Google did not comply with the summons for any of the accounts. The company responded to the DHS by saying it had not offered evidence of how it was related to a customs investigation."
> companies such as Google make business decisions, not moral decisions
The world is more complicated than that; they make both kinds of decisions and many decisions aren't clearly in one basket or the other. Humans don't biologically change to amoral creatures when they pull into the office parking lot (despite theories to the contrary or attempts to encourage it), nor are they absolved of human responsibility when doing things for which they are paid.
Of course then it's up to judge to determine if the request was valid or not.
From the space between the lines in the article, it seems pretty clear that Google denied the request, and its employees were the source for the claim being reported at all. Yes, they absolutely could be evil in principle. They appear to have been good in practice.
And in times of extremis like this, maybe it's important to call out those little victories and find allies where you can. Even if you happen to be a HN Apple stan.
Ehhh, seems to me a cloud provider that wants to back up my documents, communications, photos, passkeys etc has a very strong business case for ensuring the data is as safe with them as they would be in my own home.
This isn't uncommon - this is how NY deals with any compelling case involving their infringing gun control statutes. If a defendant has money and no other meaningful charges, they tend to just dismiss and moot the issue rather than risk a finding of unconstitutionality.
> The DHS also sought and obtained six months of phone records for Fort from T-Mobile, which included records for more than 10,000 calls and text messages. Fort was not notified the government was seeking the records until mid-July, when government lawyers produced them to her lawyers. Fort’s lawyers wrote in a filing this week they were “stunned” to see the government had unilaterally been able to obtain a log of her communications after a judge had warned them about obtaining records about a journalist.
...
> In Fort’s case, Google did not comply with the summons for any of the accounts. The company responded to the DHS by saying it had not offered evidence of how it was related to a customs investigation.
> A Google spokesperson said the company reviews each request for data it gets to ensure it is legal and pushes back when it is too broad or doesn’t follow the correct process.
Do they not get that we live under an authoritarian regime? The regime doesn't care about the law. They have been installing their own people at every level of government for years, taking over parts of the government, and granting themselves new powers. When eventually every powerful person in government is part of the regime, it won't matter what the law says. This isn't hyperbole, this is how they have been operating for 1.5 years.
This is what the beginning looks like. The end looks like Germany 1942.
We somehow let corporations just take the data that we all create every day and then sell it and make billions in profit.
I want that to change. I want to own any and all data I create interacting with anything anywhere, to be copyright by me, in an enforcable way. I should get paid for the data I generate. The problem is that as long as we, collectively, allow ads that spy on us in exchange for really nothing other than amusement and that pursuit of the next dopamine hit we get. I can't enforce agency and ownership of the data I create unless we, collecively, change the rules. We have the power to do that by voting for the candidates that speaks to the issues you care about. We also need to tell politicians what we want, because if we do not, nothing will change. I think the data we create should be automatically copyright of the person generating it, so I can make money from my data if I choose, or not to, if I don't.
Don't you want to own and make money from the data you create every single day?
At the end of the day this sort of wastefulness eventually attracts attention.
To cover 70.5 million seniors [1]. $17k per senior.
“Per person personal health care spending for the 65 and older population was $22,356 in 2020, over 5 times higher than spending per child ($4,217) and almost 2.5 times the spending per working-age person ($9,154)” [2].
80 million under 19 [3] at that rate comes to about $400bn. And most efficiency estimates would take at least a third off that when we eliminate redundant billing processes.
Given 6% of children lack health insurance, we could cover them for about $24bn. Less than Trump’s war in Iran has cost [4].
[1] https://data.cms.gov/summary-statistics-on-beneficiary-enrol...
[2] https://www.cms.gov/data-research/statistics-trends-and-repo...
[3] https://www.cms.gov/data-research/statistics-trends-and-repo...
If you have to spy on these particular groups then you know you’re doing something wrong.
19 USC 1509 – dealing with customs imports
"In any investigation or inquiry conducted for the purpose of ascertaining the correctness of any entry, for determining the liability of any person for duty, fees and taxes due or duties, fees and taxes which may be due the United States, for determining liability for fines and penalties, or for insuring compliance with the laws of the United States administered by the United States Customs Service, the Secretary (but no delegate of the Secretary below the rank of district director or special agent in charge) may ... summon, upon reasonable notice ... any other person he may deem proper".
And of course, one could argue that it's important to just double check and determine (note it doesn't say suspect, just determine) if someone has entered the country legally, ever, and paid all import taxes, ever. In order to do that, you'd need to see a lot of records. And of course the result can be "nope, they're all good". You don't need to have a good-faith suspicion of these things, just that you have a need to determine these things.
How many laws like this are on the books? In the same way that LLMs are fantastic at finding bugs, what other bugs are in the U.S. Code or similar that LLMs could find? We've been living in a world for a long time where things like this wouldn't be exploited, or maybe even noticed, but now it feels like these vulns are being hoarded and used like software exploits.
One has to wonder whether all Trump voters wanted this. I don't think so.
They don't enjoy being kicked in the head, they agree that part is bad, but they experience joy knowing that people they don't like got kicked in the head.
A difficulty is coming up with a way to ensure your wealthiest donors don't get kicked in the head, they annoyingly may not accept that it's a fair price unlike voters - but you can often fiddle around this, we'll find a way. If that donor doesn't even live in the area affected by the policy, for example because he's a War Criminal who lives in a different country entirely, that's not a problem...
They voted for it. The GOP quite clearly spelled out the authoritarian desire well before the election.
Looks like they were wrong! Thankfully!
imagine two more years by 2028 what this nightmare is going to look like
even if the Dems get the Senate somehow it will barely slow them down
Bush admin was horrible with Iraq War and economy crashing but this is a whole new level of corruption
and I am starting to believe USPS is most definitely going to destroy voting by mail handing them the midterms anyway while supreme court slow-walks sorting it out if not making it 100x worse
Fascism happens slow at first, then all at once. Sadly, that’s where we find ourselves.
There may be other uses for an anonymous US company though.
They are the domestic terrorists, not Don Lemon.
And lose time and money, which they also likely don't have?
And as this is something that has already happened there isn't much else the person in question can do. Third parties always have option to just disclose information to whoever asks it, at most you can hold them accountable for it later if it was unlawful. And what accountability exactly means depends on what laws exists. If you want some real accountability for the people/companies involved in these kinds of decisions then get Congress to pass such laws (however impossible it might be).
It doesn't (yet) work that way.
I did. I'll still file a lawsuit if I'm forced to, but I gave up in the idea that it functions in any singificant way as to not declare the winner the party that has more capital.
“About a month after the judge’s ruling in late February, the government said it was withdrawing the request.
But officials hadn’t given up on getting the data.
Less than a month later, the DHS served Google with a different request for the YouTube information. This time, DHS utilized a different method that didn’t require approval from a judge, only a sign-off from a DHS official. It served Google an administrative summons citing an arcane provision of federal law – 19 USC 1509 – dealing with customs imports. The provision gives the DHS broad power to inspect records in order to determine whether duties and taxes are being correctly levied on imported items. It also instructed the recipients of the summons to keep it secret.”
With a gag order as a bonus! No judge required!
Granted someone does have to actually file a suit
Citation needed.
Diffusion of moral responsibility in complex organizations is not a new observation.
The Wikipedia article leans a bit too much on the psychology and not on the organizational design / decision architecture, but is still a good entry point:
Not sure what this means. I think you meant to write "fiduciary duty": the company's board have an affirmative legal obligation to act in the interest of stockholders, regardless of moral impact.
That's quite a statement.
> I think you meant to write "fiduciary duty"
No, our responsibilities go far beyond fiduciary duties. You can see what Google did in this case, for example, or Apple's extraordinary investment in engineering for privacy a "human right", per Apple - far more than its users grasp or could understand.
> the company's board have an affirmative legal obligation to act in the interest of stockholders, regardless of moral impact.
That's a theory of the ~1980s that people who suffer from its consequences still seem to latch onto - perhaps it's simplicity is appealing, maybe its algorithmic decision-making appeals to the IT world - but not true.
Even now, when such things are at historical extremes, corporations take into account other issues. Not long ago, DEI and ESG were widely accepted and practiced.
It's easy for a company to build privacy-related features, if those features help sell products. But you are kidding yourself if you think Apple is willing to sacrifice billions of dollars for a "moral good".
I'm not saying (publicly traded) companies never act morally. I am saying that given a choice, they will always choose profits over morality.
> Not long ago, DEI and ESG were widely accepted and practiced.
And how much difference did they actually make? Studies show not much. It's performative posturing to improve the company's image in pursuit of profits, not a real moral stand. How does Raytheon putting a rainbow in their advertising for one month a year help anyone? And as soon as they feel the cultural tide shift, they drop those policies like a hot potato.
> That's a theory
Not a theory. It's literally the law.
It's entirely possible to still satisfy those requirements by building a sustainable and moral company. The shareholders get to vote, if they don't like it they'll make that clear.
I think you don't understand what this phrase means. In a publicly-traded company, "the interest of the shareholders" does not mean "whatever the shareholders want"; it means "whatever is best for the company." That means money.
It may be possible to be both profitable and moral; but if it isn't, the fiduciary duty obligates corporate officers to choose the profitable path rather than the moral one.
The easy way of looking at this is that there beyond complying with the law, there is no general obligation for companies to behave morally, but there is a general obligation to behave profitably. So it's not hard to see why they make they choices they do.
> It's entirely possible to still satisfy those requirements by building a sustainable and moral company.
It is, but it's a lot easier to be not sustainable and not moral.
In fact, corporate officers are routinely sued (or even criminally prosecuted) for failing to advance specifically the company's interests. Trying to "spin" general moral good as a net positive for the company when it negatively impacts share price typically does not sway a jury.
https://www.iod.com/resources/governance/fiduciary-duties-fo...
It's confusing because "fiduciary" sounds like you have to optimize for the mercenary interests of shareholders, but that is not true. Not every corporation is founded to turn a profit; what do you think the fiduciary duty looks like for a nonprofit?
The general obligation for the company to behave morally comes from two places: specific laws and the fact that its employees want to sleep at night. These are more powerful than a lot of people want to give credit for.
What is that based on? I'd say there are certainly obligations for both.
The fact that some ignore those obligations - either obligation, for example when corrupt management stuffs its own pockets - doesn't make them less.
It's based on the (US) law. Corporate officers failing to advance the interests of the company can be prosecuted civilly or criminally.
There is no analogous legal obligation to act morally or in the interest of the general public.
https://www.iod.com/resources/governance/fiduciary-duties-fo...
Let me quote what you were claiming:
> the company's board have an affirmative legal obligation to act in the interest of stockholders, regardless of moral impact.
Yet now you're saying yourself:
> failing to advance specifically the company's interests
You silently swapped the "stockholder's" interests - which is what this thread, and the oft mentioned "fiduciary duty", are about - for the "company's" interests. In this legal context, these are two very different things.
And then if you actually read the duties they list (i.e. the ones to the company, not the shareholders) and the breaches they talk about, it's stuff like self-dealing, conflicted transactions, usurping corporate opportunities, securities law violation. This has nothing to do with making business decisions in order to prioritize short-term shareholder value.
As I said in the GP, Apple's engineering investment in privacy is far beyond what customers understand and what helps sales. Lots of companies simply add the word 'privacy' to their marketing and do nothing about it that has an impact ('we use 256-bit encryption to protect your data!' seems popular on websites).
> And how much difference did they actually make? Studies show not much.
Which studies?
It is not, which is why you've failed to show that law, or indeed any cases in the last 50 years of companies having been successfully sued for such a thing.
It's honestly so obvious that this couldn't be the law that I can't assume good faith here. It's completely untenable as a principle, it wouldn't be possible to run a business if it were the law. Imagine what that law would look like. Would it be short term profit maximization? Would it be long term? What would that term be?
You're literally saying that there's a law that would ask judges to decide whether business decision X maximizes Y-term profit. A child could see how that would be impossible. It's asking for a fortune teller on a subject that is inherently very volatile. The whole point of running a business is believing that you can make decisions that you think are right to succeed. If this were real, you'd genuinely see companies running from the US because it'd be untenable to run a business there.
This is the worst case of FUD I've seen on HN bar none, because it's one person being so persistent about a complete myth.