[keernan]

Nice.

The government cannot collect and put the names of peaceful anti-government protestors into a government database; or show up at their homes when they violated no law; or the government issuing a subpoena to google for personal data about a man who wrote a one sentence letter to a DOJ prosecutor asking for leniency for the defendant in a case he read about.

These are all actions taken by the government in response to citizens expressing viewpoints the government did not like. You will never find more classic First Amendment fact patterns.

[otterley]

Then you haven't really studied 1A law in a long time, if you ever did. These fact patterns have not been well tested in court. They look similar to some cases, but are quite distinguishable, too. They might be 1A violations because of the chilling effect they could have on speech, but I'm not going out on a limb to say with certainty that they are; and I don't know any competent attorney who would.

> The government cannot ... show up at [people's] homes when they violated no law

This happens all the time. It depends on the purpose. Is it purely to harass someone, or is it to perform an investigation or for some other legitimate purpose? It's not prima facie unlawful.

You might find this poster to be instructive. It is very difficult under current law to prevail in a harassment case. https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Infographic_First-...

[keernan]

I have always been a civil trial attorney, much of the time before state Equity Judges ( generally more qualified than our law division judges ). It's been a very long time since law school ( admitted to the bar in 1977 ).

Having said that, my posts had nothing to do with the 'realities' of winning in court regarding the activities outlined. Rather my point is the activities are clearly unconstitutional by any conventional analysis by any qualified US attorney. Whether or not you could develop the requisite proofs is another matter entirely. But it is clear that the current administration is following the Orban playbook ( and of some South American authoritarian regimes ).

This is not 'business as usual' in any way, shape or form.

A US Citizen ( a retired lawyer if I recall ) read an article about a prosecution by the DOJ and the citizen emailed the prosecutor ( after getting his email from the judicial database ) and sent a short plea urging mercy for the asylum seeker. Five hours later he received an email from Google advising him the federal government had served Google with a subpoena demanding information about him. Then they followed up by knocking on his door.

There can be zero doubt that the subpoena upon Google violated due process. Being an administrative subpoena, there was no judge involved but due process ( eg probable cause ) is still required and - absent some wildly unimaginable set of unknown facts - there was clearly no probable cause here.

This administration is clearly in the process of gathering names of US citizens who hold beliefs Trump does not like. The larger question is what is Trump's intention in collecting such names? Based upon his actions in the past year, Americans shouldn't hold their breath hoping they are wholesome.

[otterley]

> the activities are clearly unconstitutional by any conventional analysis by any qualified US attorney. Whether or not you could develop the requisite proofs is another matter entirely

I assume that when you say "develop the requisite proofs," you mean "prevail in court." In Constitutional law, these are inseparable and an outcome of Marbury v. Madison. The Court says what the law is. If the Court's opinion is that the Government's behavior is permitted by the Constitution, then it follows that the behavior is Constitutional; and because our law relies on precedent, that interpretation is rather sticky. It does so happen that from time to time, we overturn precedent--and I hope we do, because we have some pretty bad law out there--but until then, we rely on it to predict the outcome of future cases.

> There can be zero doubt that the subpoena upon Google violated due process. Being an administrative subpoena, there was no judge involved but due process ( eg probable cause ) is still required and - absent some wildly unimaginable set of unknown facts - there was clearly no probable cause here.

Yeah, I agree. The problem is, without some sort of injury, there's likely no standing, and so the case will probably never see the light of day.