Comment by skybrian
12 hours ago
Apparently in this case, T-Mobile caved and Google didn't:
> 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.
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>Since when were private companies part of the Judicial Branch?
What part of GP's quote from the article gets you to "private companies are part of the judicial branch"? The judicial branch wasn't involved there, only the executive. All of us, private individuals or organizations, have the right to challenge any requests by the executive branch (and by the same token, unless forbidden by law we can also just voluntarily go along with its requests). The judicial branch can then rule on who is right. If the executive wants to force it then it can go to the judicial branch up front and get an actual for real warrant. If it wants to bypass judicial review, then it doesn't have the same legal force either.
Here, it asked T-Mobile and Google for a bunch of stuff on a journalist. T-Mobile said sure. Google said no, come back with a warrant.
>I don’t remember that part of the Constitution.
Might want to reread if it's been awhile for you.
I get what you're saying, but "the company reviews each request for data it gets to ensure it is legal" just sounds like something a judge should do, no?
4 replies →
An extremely cosy relationship between large corporations and a government.
I've seen this somewhere before and I can't quite put my finger on where I saw it.