Posted by firefax 10 hours ago
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.
“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
FTFY
One has to wonder whether all Trump voters wanted this. I don't think so.
They voted for it. The GOP quite clearly spelled out the authoritarian desire well before the election.
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...
The incident in question involved Lemon and Fort participating in a anti-ICE protest that involved disrupting a church service, and then after getting arrested for disrupting the church service claiming that they were just journalists reporting on the protest and therefore their arrest was immoral and illegal.
I do actually think that pro-immigration-enforcement people want anti-immigration-enforcement people who participate in disruptive protests over the issue to get punished by the criminal justice system for this, in order to dissuade them from disrupting other people's private events; and further that they do not want "being a journalist" to be a mitigating factor for this kind of disruption. If you want the criminal justice system to treat disrupting other people's private events as a crime, even if they claim it's for a protest and that their status as journalists makes this ok, then you do in fact want the criminal justice system to investigate people who commit those acts of disruption.
The 4th amendment does not require a judge in the loop to decide if a search is unreasonable. This type of thinking leads to adding bureaucracy making law enforcement less efficient. Criminals benefit from having law enforcement's throughput minimized so they will campaign at every turn to make the government less and less efficient and require more and more procedures for an investigation so it all comes to a halt that way as long as they aren't most wanted 1-10 for a year they can get away with what they are doing.
It's dicey to say that because warrants are needed in the majority of places to search and individual.
By increasing efficiency and decreasing cost it allows for both higher quality, consistent, and wide spread law enforcement. I believe every part of the law enforcement and legal system needs to be systematically reevaluated finding ways to increase efficiency.
That is truly bananas. Whose AI? Trained on what data? We've had numerous studies show how AIs can be biased, and a police dept. is going to choose whatever AI "works best for them" — i.e., keeps most out of their way.
You can see Flock for examples here: despite requiring justification for searches, cops are entering things like "hehehe"[1]; the AI would similarly be given bad or falsified inputs.
> If there is an actual constitutional violation that that happens it can be resolved after the fact.
The entire point of the Constitution is to prevent exactly that. There is no resolution for violating someone's rights; you cannot merely go back in time and unviolate them. The point is to be free from unreasonable searches & seizures.
Your comments read like police have no ability to search without a warrant, which isn't true. If circumstances warrant it, a warrant from a judge is not required, and I'm sure a good number of people would argue that that's already true more often than it ought to be.
Part of the point of having a separate branch of government involved, too, is to prevent the first branch from just deciding "why, of course I'm right. What else would I be?", and to evaluate the facts separately (which the police cannot by definition do).
> I believe every part of the law enforcement and legal system needs to be systematically reevaluated finding ways to increase efficiency.
I'm all for increased efficiency, but AI is not that. "Slop, faster" is not the same "the correct action, while respecting the rights of the citizens, faster".
[1]: https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/tracking-alpr-c...
>We've had numerous studies show how AIs can be biased, and a police dept. is going to choose whatever AI "works best for them"
Violating the constitution means that evidence gets thrown out in court and the victims get financially rewarded. It is not in the police's interest to violate people's rights.
>the AI would similarly be given bad or falsified inputs.
And then those cops should be severely punished for intentionally violating people's constitutional rights.
>There is no resolution for violating someone's rights
There is already resolution for having your constitutional rights violated. You sue for damages and to have them stop violating your rights.
>no ability to search without a warrant, which isn't true. If circumstances warrant it
There are other situations where it doesn't warrant it which is what we are talking about here. Refer to TFA.
>Part of the point of having a separate branch of government involved, too
And I'm pointing out that this involvement is not needed by the constitution. Branches of government is an arbitrary degree of separation.
Victims get financially rewarded by the state and the officers involved receive no kind of punishment at all. It's not hard to see why incentives lead to this already being widespread, and that's just what we know about when it gets thrown out or overturned. There's a whole shady practice of parallel construction going on.