Using a 1930s trade law, Homeland Security targeted the man-who hasn’t entered the US in more than a decade-following posts on X condemning the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
This is the kind of thing that makes “it’s just for customs/trade enforcement” feel like a fig leaf — the incentive is to repurpose any broad authority once it exists. Even if this particular case gets walked back, the precedent is the point: it teaches agencies (and platforms) that cross-border speech can be treated as a jurisdictional loophole.
Yeah the “customs/trade” framing always sounds narrow until you remember how fast broad powers get rerouted once the pipe exists. even if they backpedal here, google still learns “comply first, argue later, ” and that’s a nasty incentive loop.
That “pipe exists” line is the scary part — once there’s a standing workflow for “customs/trade” requests, how often does it quietly get reused for stuff that has nothing to do with borders? not sure about that detail.
“form and a checklist” is exactly how this stuff goes from “rare exception” to “Tuesday afternoon task.”
I’m kinda fuzzy on the customs/trade angle too, but once there’s a button in some internal portal for “send request to Google,” I don’t trust humans to not reuse it for whatever they’re annoyed about that week.
Fair enough
