Homeland Security is targeting Americans with this secretive legal weapon ...

[cliffside]

In October, a retiree emailed a DHS attorney to urge mercy for an asylum seeker. Then DHS subpoenaed his Google account and sent investigators to his home.

Full article/gift link

https://wapo.st/4rtfCw8

"He had decided that the America he believed in would not make it if people like him didn’t speak up, so on a cool, rainy morning in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Jon, 67 and recently retired, marched up to his study and began to type.

He had just read about the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s case against an Afghan it was trying to deport. The immigrant, identified in The Washington Post’s Oct. 30 investigation as H, had begged federal officials to reconsider, telling them the Taliban would kill him if he was returned to Afghanistan.

... Five hours and one minute later, Jon was watching TV with his wife when an email popped up in his inbox. He noticed it on his phone.
“Google,” the message read, “has received legal process from a Law Enforcement authority compelling the release of information related to your Google Account.”

.... That’s how it began. Soon would come a knock at the door by men with badges and, for Jon, the relentless feeling of being surveilled in a country where he never imagined he would be..."

[SunSeeker]

1. Horrifying...and utterly unconstitutional.

We're going to need a bigger Hague.

[nuxvomica]

2. Great article about administrative subpoenas

A real eye-opener for me. Thanks for posting!

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. His mother fought the previous regime:

Born in England to a Jewish family, he grew up hearing the story of how his mother, at 20, joined an intelligence service amid the Holocaust to help Britain fight the Nazis. In 1978, while he studied law and politics at Cardiff University in Wales, he organized a protest of the Soviet Union’s oppression of Jews, and he later traveled to the country to visit families who’d been ostracized. During a stay in Israel, he demonstrated against the movement to resettle the West Bank. In the mid-1980s, he supported mine workers in their bitter dispute with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

And the "of course you're not on a travel list", followed by their luggage being delayed the next time they travelled, with a "your bag was among those selected for physical inspection" note, is too much coincidence.