[Threeve303]

Technically if you’re being investigated and the companies hand over your info, you may not be a criminal at that point. You remember the concept we had for hundreds of years that people are presumed innocent until found guilty by a jury of their peers.

Also, for hundreds of years, police could not just nicely ask a third party to turn over all of your data, at least at the scale of something like the data google keeps on everyone.

I’m amazed by the number of people apparently just fine with this being the norm.

[DocTomoe]

People are fine with police overstepping as long as they aren't in the crosshairs.

Usually, even non paranoid people become staunch privacy advocates once they had to fight the system after their data was abused.

[PeterisP]

For hundreds of years police could just nicely ask a third party to turn over all your data - by simply going in and asking what they wanted to know - and proprietors often just did tell all they knew or had recorded. If the third party would refuse and police would demand that they comply, then they'd need a warrant, but nicely asking has always been an option during an investigation.

[deadbytes]

I am greatly opposed to mass surveillance, especially when justified by some immaterial bogeyman such as "stopping terrorism".

However in this case, illegal immigration is a legitimate problem in the US with actual statistics to prove so, and it seems that they are only targetting individuals that they actually suspect of being criminals.

If law enforcement has genuine belief that I am a criminal then why would I be opposed to giving them data to absolve myself?

And yes of course this has the potential to be abused, but is there any proof of this in the article? It seems like one specific individual was targetted, and they had the courtesy to notify them that this was happening.