In October 2025, a 67-year-old retiree from Philadelphia sent an email to the Department of Homeland Security pleading for basic decency in how they carried out a high-profile asylum case. Within five hours, Google informed him, via email, that DHS had issued a subpoena for the company to turn over personal information connected to his accounts. Not long afterward, federal agents appeared on his doorstep to question him in person. Neither judge nor grand jury ruled that a crime may have been committed; the government simply issued a unilateral administrative subpoena to Google to unmask the critic’s identity. In order to accelerate their mass arrest and deportation mandates, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Border Patrol, and other government agencies have supported their on-the-ground operations — raids, prisons and counter-protest measures — with warrantless subpoenas, the exploitation of a largely unregulated commercial data broker industry, and an aggressive dismantling of federal privacy firewalls, all designed to track down immigrants and citizen critics who defend them on social media. The federal government may rely on what large technology …