Meta’s analysis that it can avoid scrutiny by releasing a privacy invasive product during a time of political crisis is craven and morally bankrupt. It is also dead wrong.
2026-02-2715:09640112www.eff.org
In a big win for protesters’ rights, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit overturned a lower court’s dismissal of a challenge to sweeping warrants to search a protester’s devices and…
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In the past year, ICE and CBP have descended into utter lawlessness, repeatedly refusing to exercise or submit to the democratic accountability required by the Constitution and our system of laws. These violations must stop now.
ICE is using a Palantir tool that uses Medicaid and other government data to stalk people for arrest. This is exactly the kind of data privacy abuse that EFF has been warning about.
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Across ideologically diverse communities, 2025 campaigns against automated license plate reader (ALPR) surveillance kept winning. From Austin, Texas to Cambridge, Massachusetts to Eugene, Oregon, successful campaigns combined three practical elements: a motivated political champion on city council, organized grassroots pressure from affected communities, and technical assistance at...
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> The warrants included a search through all of her photos, videos, emails, text messages, and location data over a two-month period, as well as a time-unlimited search for 26 keywords, including words as broad as “bike,” “assault,” “celebration,” and “right,” that allowed police to comb through years of Armendariz’s private and sensitive data—all supposedly to look for evidence related to the alleged simple assault.
That's an insane overreaction and overreach. There's some quotes from officers during the protests that are particularly troubling, too.
The article links directly to the ruling: https://www.ca10.uscourts.gov/sites/ca10/files/opinions/0101...
I wonder how the Sargent and Judge who approved these searches feel. If they take their jobs seriously, I do hope that they are more critical of search warrant applications in the future.
By stronglikedan 2026-02-2717:322 reply > I wonder how the Sargent and Judge who approved these searches feel. If they take their jobs seriously, I do hope that they are more critical of search warrant applications in the future.
I guarantee they feel like they've been slighted because they take their jobs seriously, and from their perspective they should have been allowed to do what they did. Power corrupts the mind as much as the bank account.
Yup. To see this mentality on full display you just have to pull up videos of cops getting DUIs.
They all act like it's the most insulting thing in the world that they get pulled over. They all use their status as cops to try and get out of the ticket. The cops that pull them over always treat them in the softest and most deferential way imaginable. And I'm sure more times than there are videos for, these cops get away with DUI which is why they are so incensed when the arresting cop doesn't play along.
By bitexploder 2026-02-2720:001 reply The injury to their ego is tremendous. The ones that allow their authority to become their identity cannot mentally separate a challenge to this authority from a direct attack on themselves. To them it is quite literally the same thing and it is incredibly dangerous. It is how the authoritarian mind works, because to them it feels like survival.
Especially in the city of New York, I sincerely believe a police officer butting a reflective vest on the front dashboard of their illegally parked car is enough grounds for immediate dismissal/firing from the job and all retirement seized with no recourse. I don't know how we would make it legal but this is the kind of visible, petty corruption that makes people lose their respect for the system.
By tdeck 2026-02-2813:52 Folks should Google "PBA card". I was shocked when I read about that practice.
That seems a little over the top of a parking infraction... Maybe they should be summarily shot too.
I think the point is it's not the parking infraction: it's the attempt to get out of it by signaling that they are a police officer. I agree that kind of thing should be taken more seriously than the small offense it's trying to avoid (though maybe not quite so severely).
By ifh-hn 2026-02-288:10 I don't know, it depends on context and intent, like nearly all things. But this is put aside because most on HN immediately go: police == bad.
If the cop is illegally parked to get lunch, sure ticket them, and/or report them for discipline.
If the cop is attending an incident and that is the only place to park within a reasonable distance, then that's fine.
However the suggestion that irrespective of context and intent, and even for the first contrived example, the cop should lose their job and pension... Ridiculous.
How you went from "losing your government job and benefits due to corrupt behavior" and "well, may as well kill them!" is certainly interesting.
By awakeasleep 2026-02-281:581 reply Its a perfect demonstration of the topic in the thread: loss of privilege is equivalent to ending their life itself
By ifh-hn 2026-02-287:54 It's not interesting it's over the top ridiculous just like the comment I was replying to.
Just last week, two NYPD cops were indicted for evidence tampering for doing exactly that.
The indicted cops responded to an off-duty cop's DUI crash. They texted each other on their personal phones so as not to create a record. They positioned their bodycams so as not to capture the incident. At one point, one of the cops held the other's to make it look as if he was still standing there while he secretly called their supervisor. They then let the drunk cop drive away. Hours later, another officer found the car parked on the sidewalk. That officer did finally arrest him.
"These police officers did their job. We should not be here today," said union president Patrick Hendry, who accused the DA of targeting the officers. "He needs to support officers instead of going after them. Enough is enough."
To their credit, these charges came based on a referral from NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau, though it was 4 years later.
Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/nyregion/nypd-dui-coverup...
By FireBeyond 2026-02-280:38 The famous case of the cops arresting the nurse for not performing a blood draw without a warrant after a car accident is much the same:
The other driver in the car accident was a drunk off-duty cop who blew a red light and hit the patient (who later died).
Cops simultaneously scrambled to the hospital to get a blood draw there, while also delaying the draw on their buddy for hours.
Cop who performed the arrest was fired. And later sued the department for unfair dismissal, IIRC.
By BLKNSLVR 2026-02-280:21 I've always treated most of those kind of videos as staged. I like the idea that that's how it goes down but, almost because it's cathartic, I don't trust that it's real footage, as opposed to, essentially, short film fiction.
> The cops that pull them over always treat them in the softest and most deferential way imaginable.
Without denying I have seen preferential treatment first-hand, you might take a step back and imagine...
You're dealing with someone who entered a career known for its machismo, where they received training on how to use physical violence, including training on shooting a weapon that could quite possibly be with them. This person has been drinking or is flat-out drunk, and it's only a matter of minutes before they realize how screwed they're about to be.
Treating them softly is what you SHOULD do.
We should be asking whether we are content to find ourselves in a world where that soft approach is considered the noteworthy exception.
By Ar-Curunir 2026-02-284:411 reply Drunk driving kills. Fuck this stupid shit.
What's stupid about using a soft approach, instead of a violent approach, to take away a driver's license from a drunk driver?
Why do police so frequently resort to violence that you're probably not surprised to hear bystanders in NYC were shot by cops pursuing a subway turnstile hopper? Let the implications of that sink in for a moment.
Why have I heard so many times about people losing their life after being pulled over for speeding?
> What's stupid about using a soft approach, instead of a violent approach
The options aren't soft vs violent.
The problem with the soft approach is it's all about giving the suspected impaired drive more chances to prove they aren't impaired. It's about avoiding removing them from the road, not avoiding a violent confrontation.
While cops shouldn't be dicks to everyone and they should always work to de-escalate, what they shouldn't do is let someone they think is impaired drive off. And that's what the "soft" approach is all about. It's about letting the arresting officer make excuses like "well, they don't seem THAT drunk" or "Well, they seem a little buzzed, but not that bad."
For a regular citizen, the cops would do a field sobriety test, a breathalyzer blow, and then arrest if it comes back high. That's what they should do for everyone they suspect is impaired.
If we wanted to argue for a softer approach, then I could see removing the criminal aspects of a DUI and instead just focusing on getting that person off the road and potentially revoking their license. But in no case should a cop let someone drive off that they suspect isn't fully sober.
By me-vs-cat 2026-03-0115:40 > [Letting someone they think is impaired drive off is] what the "soft" approach is all about. [...] But in no case should a cop let someone drive off that they suspect isn't fully sober.
You are reading more into the vague "softly" term than is present in this thread, instead of "respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> The options aren't soft vs violent.
That there is a spectrum instead of a binary choice is what I discussed, though maybe it's a regional language quirk: "What's stupid about using a soft[er] approach, instead of a [more] violent approach..."
I don't think this is particularly unique to cops. When you're trapped and cornered, you desperately resort to any possible approach to get out of it. Acting incredulous or indignant when you know you've messed up, with the small hope it will get you out of it, is a very common human thing.
> with the small hope it will get you out of it
That's the thing, with how much cops will put on the kids gloves if it's an officer I'm certain the hope isn't small that they'll get out of it. The videos you see of cops getting arrested they are almost always completely blasted.
By me-vs-cat 2026-03-0823:51 For videos with either kid gloves or being completely blasted, there's a reason those are the videos that go viral, and it's not because they're the typical average.
By formerly_proven 2026-02-2722:45 I doubt it, judges don't read warrant applications.
By onlyrealcuzzo 2026-02-2719:264 reply With enough data, you could appear guilty of almost anything.
> "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
~ Cardinal Richelieu (Cardinal and former Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of France)
By snowwrestler 2026-02-2721:111 reply This apocryphal quote was a statement about his overwhelming power (strong enough to hang people who have done no wrong), not on the mutability of the law. It is frequently mis-applied.
The quote is indeed about the law being a nose of wax, to borrow an old English phrase, and how with sympathetic enough courts almost any decision could be upheld. But it's nothing new, precisely the same crime can yield drastically different judgements depending on e.g. the defensive attorney's experience.
By onlyrealcuzzo 2026-02-2721:44 > e.g. the defensive attorney's experience.
Which is another way of saying the defense's wealth.
By snowwrestler 2026-02-2722:15 He was powerful enough to hang someone on a flimsy excuse, but not so powerful that he did not need a flimsy excuse. Right in that sweet spot.
By koolba 2026-02-2719:37 Particularly if you filter out the context when presenting the filtered data:
“Wish I could be there. I’d kill for such an opportunity. All the best and see you next time.”
By seanw444 2026-02-2719:38 "Show me the man, I'll show you the crime."
By radicaldreamer 2026-02-2717:542 reply If you think judges actually read warrants they sign, you’re very mistaken. Some judges are signing dozens of these a day in between other things on their docket.
"Ninety-eight percent of warrant reviews eventually result in an approval, and over 93% are approved on first submission. Further, we find that the median time for review is only three minutes, and that one out of every ten warrants is opened, reviewed, and approved in sixty seconds or less. [1]"
Mind you, this data only represents the state of Utah's electronic "e-Warrant" system. It would not surprise me is results were not too different across other states.
[1] https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-138/unwarranted-warra...
FISA warrants were even more incredible, with well below 1% rejection rates.
And then hilariously people would say that this is just evidence that the warrants are all written extremely carefully and conservatively.
By dragonwriter 2026-02-281:47 > FISA warrants were even more incredible, with well below 1% rejection rates.
That's potentially much less incredible, and in any case not directly comparable, because its the final, not on-first-submission, rate, and also doesn't count applications withdrawn after a preliminary rejection that allows modificaitons but before a final ruling. It only counts the share of those that get a final ruling where that is an approval.
> I wonder how the Sargent and Judge who approved these searches feel. If they take their jobs seriously, I do hope that they are more critical of search warrant applications in the future.
Cops often hate the people. They see the people as their enemies. Retaliation is commonplace. Their goal is to arrest people, not actually achieve peace and justice. DAs and judges are often similar. We've seen cases where highly respected DAs have continued to prosecute people they knew were innocent.
This sort of thing is not a case of particular cops or DAs or judges not taking their job seriously. This is cops or DAs or judges thinking that they have a totally different job than they really should have.
Cops often have the view that if they weren't allowed to be special and do things that are crimes for others, then society would collapse in a huge bloodbath. They tend to believe they are the 'thin blue line' between civilisation and barbarism, the front in a war against the unbridled animalism of the uncouth masses.
By UncleMeat 2026-02-283:28 I have been told, by a cop, that the exclusionary rule should be eliminated. This is the thing that says that evidence obtained in violation of the 4th amendment cannot be used against you in court. Their argument was that the cops know who the bad guys are and should just be allowed to throw them in prison. End of story.
By jalapenos 2026-02-283:55 The stupidity of this is that cops literally used to not exist. People used to have to arrest people themselves and drag them to a magistrate and then prosecute them themselves. Didn't mean society was mad max.
Doubt you'll find many cops who'll know that though.
By bmitc 2026-02-285:11 > If they take their jobs seriously
There's about 0% that's true. Judges and even police are politicians now.
By ck2 2026-02-2717:59 "constitution-free zone"
a phrase that should be impossible but due to wild corruption of the people who write law, it does
all of Florida, all of Maine are in a "ha what constitution" zone
https://www.aclumaine.org/know-your-rights/100-mile-border-z...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/04/bill-rights-border-fou...
By shevy-java 2026-02-2720:37 So, this is not surprising in that many courts have found a similar result. That is, the amendments usually protect the freedoms; sometimes regular folks extend it to far (e. g. government having zero possibilities which is also not true - see Audit the Audit channel and others). But one thing that is interesting is that these public departments, be it cops or some civil institution (but usually police departments), still try it. The idea is that many people will comply rather than dare resist. I think this is an institutionalized level of abuse. A common person should expect these government representatives to KNOW the law. The only reason these representatives still try to it to go to court, is because they WANT to break the law. This should become illegal. It wastes time, money, resources, by public representatives. The court system should change; the assumption that everyone is a legal body, SHOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE WHEN A GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVE KNOWS THAT SOMETHING IS AGAINST THE LAW and they still try to go for a court proceeding. That is deliberate abuse. Why do taxpayers have to pay for that?
