DHS abuses 1930s customs law in attempt to get data on Canadian from Google
DHS abuses 1930s customs law in attempt to get data on Canadian from Google
美国国土安全部滥用 1930 年代海关法，试图从谷歌获取加拿大公民数据
The Department of Homeland Security tried to obtain a Canadian man’s location information, activity logs, and other identifying information from Google after he criticized the Trump administration online following the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis early this year. 今年年初，在明尼阿波利斯发生联邦移民执法人员杀害蕾妮·古德 (Renee Good) 和亚历克斯·普雷蒂 (Alex Pretti) 事件后，一名加拿大男子在网上批评了特朗普政府。随后，美国国土安全部 (DHS) 试图从谷歌获取该男子的位置信息、活动日志及其他身份识别信息。
Lawyers for the man, who has not been named, are alarmed in part because they say that the man has not entered the United States in more than a decade. “I don’t know what the government knows about our client’s residence, but it’s clear that the government isn’t stopping to find out,” says Michael Perloff, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia who is representing the man in a lawsuit against Markwayne Mullin, the secretary of DHS, over the summons. 这名未透露姓名的男子的律师对此感到震惊，部分原因是他们表示该男子已超过十年未进入美国境内。代表该男子就传票事宜起诉国土安全部部长马克韦恩·穆林 (Markwayne Mullin) 的华盛顿特区美国公民自由联盟 (ACLU) 高级专职律师迈克尔·珀洛夫 (Michael Perloff) 表示：“我不知道政府对我们客户的居住地了解多少，但很明显，政府并没有停止调查的打算。”
The lawsuit alleges that DHS violated the customs law that gives the agency the power to request records from businesses and other parties. Perloff argues that the government is using the fact that big tech companies are based in the US to request information it would not otherwise be able to get. “It’s using that geographic fact to get information that otherwise would be totally outside of its jurisdiction,” he says. “I mean, we’re talking about the physical movements of a person who lives in Canada.” 诉讼指控国土安全部违反了赋予其向企业和其他方索取记录权力的海关法。珀洛夫认为，政府正利用大型科技公司总部位于美国这一事实，来索取其本无法获取的信息。他说：“政府利用这一地理事实来获取本应完全在其管辖范围之外的信息。我的意思是，我们讨论的是一个居住在加拿大的人的行踪。”
DHS and Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The demand for the man’s location data was included in a request DHS issued to Google called a customs summons, which is supposed to be used to investigate issues related to importing goods and collecting customs duties. 国土安全部和谷歌没有立即回应置评请求。对该男子位置数据的要求包含在国土安全部向谷歌发出的“海关传票”中，该传票本应仅用于调查与进口货物和征收关税相关的问题。
“It says right in the statute, it’s for records and testimony about the correctness of an entry, the liability of a person for duties, taxes, and fees, you know, compliance with basic customs laws,” says Chris Duncan, a former assistant chief counsel for US Customs and Border Protection who now works as a private-practice attorney representing importers and exporters. “And that’s all it was ever envisioned to be used for.” 曾任美国海关及边境保卫局助理首席法律顾问、现为代表进出口商的私人执业律师克里斯·邓肯 (Chris Duncan) 表示：“法规中明确写道，它是用于获取关于入境准确性、个人关税、税费责任以及遵守基本海关法律的记录和证词。这才是它最初被设想的用途。”
A customs summons is a type of administrative subpoena and is not reviewed by a judge or grand jury before being sent out. According to the complaint, Google alerted the man about the request on February 9, despite an ask included in the summons “not to disclose the existence of this summons for an indefinite period of time.” 海关传票属于行政传票的一种，在发出前无需经过法官或大陪审团的审查。根据诉状，尽管传票中包含“无限期不得披露此传票存在”的要求，但谷歌还是在 2 月 9 日通知了该男子。
Through his attorneys, the man told WIRED he initially mistook the notification for a joke or scam before realizing it was real. The summons, which is included in the complaint, does not give a specific reason for why the man was under investigation beyond citing the Tariff Act of 1930. 该男子通过律师告诉《连线》(WIRED) 杂志，他起初以为这封通知是恶作剧或诈骗，后来才意识到它是真实的。诉状中包含的传票除了引用《1930 年关税法》外，并未说明该男子被调查的具体原因。
The man’s lawyers contend that he did not export or import anything from the United States between September 1, 2025, to February 4, 2026, the time frame the government requested information about. Instead, the man’s lawyers allege, the summons was filed in response to the man’s online activities, including posts that he made condemning immigration enforcement agents after the killings of Good and Pretti in January. 该男子的律师辩称，在政府要求获取信息的 2025 年 9 月 1 日至 2026 年 2 月 4 日期间，他没有从美国进出口任何东西。律师指控，这份传票实际上是对该男子在线活动的报复，包括他在 1 月份古德和普雷蒂被杀后发表的谴责移民执法人员的帖子。
The man tells WIRED that watching members of the Trump administration “smear these two souls as terrorists was absolutely disgusting and enraging. People were being asked to disbelieve our own eyes so that the men responsible for killing two good Americans would go free.” 该男子告诉《连线》杂志，看着特朗普政府成员“将这两个灵魂抹黑为恐怖分子，真是令人作呕且愤怒。人们被要求不相信自己的眼睛，好让那些杀害两名善良美国人的凶手逍遥法外。”
The man says of his online activity, “I felt I needed to do something that would stand out and be seen by despairing Americans to show them they had support and that they were not alone.” 谈及自己的在线活动，该男子表示：“我觉得我需要做一些引人注目的事情，让绝望的美国人看到，告诉他们有人支持他们，他们并不孤单。”
The summons specifically asks for any records and other information related to “History of Account Suspensions or Violations of Terms due to Threatening or Harassing Language.” The complaint describes the man’s posts as “passionate and even sometimes off-color but never contain threats or incite violence.” 传票特别要求提供任何与“因威胁或骚扰性语言导致的账户封禁或违反条款记录”相关的记录及其他信息。诉状将该男子的帖子描述为“充满激情，有时甚至有些粗俗，但从未包含威胁或煽动暴力内容”。
As the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts have ramped up, DHS has used both customs summons and other types of administrative subpoenas to try to unmask users who are publicly critical of the agency or who attempt to track its agents’ activities. 随着特朗普政府加强移民执法力度，国土安全部一直在使用海关传票和其他类型的行政传票，试图揭露那些公开批评该机构或试图追踪其特工活动的用户的身份。
In March, after an anonymous Reddit user sued to stop DHS from obtaining their personal information through a customs summons, federal officials withdrew the administrative subpoena and issued a grand jury subpoena instead. It’s unclear how many people have been targeted as part of these efforts. 今年 3 月，在一名匿名 Reddit 用户起诉阻止国土安全部通过海关传票获取其个人信息后，联邦官员撤回了该行政传票，转而签发了大陪审团传票。目前尚不清楚有多少人成为了这些行动的目标。
In February, The New York Times reported that Google, Reddit, Discord, and Meta had received hundreds of administrative subpoenas during the previous six months. In March, a group of US congressmembers asked tech leaders for data on how many requests their companies have received and how they’ve handled them, but it’s unclear whether they received a response. 今年 2 月，《纽约时报》报道称，谷歌、Reddit、Discord 和 Meta 在过去六个月内收到了数百份行政传票。3 月，一群美国国会议员要求科技巨头提供有关其公司收到多少此类请求以及如何处理这些请求的数据，但目前尚不清楚他们是否收到了回复。
In April, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights nonprofit, sued DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement in an effort to obtain records about how many subpoenas the agencies have sent. Both tech companies and civil liberties advocates have been concerned about DHS’s use of administrative subpoenas for years. 4 月，数字权利非营利组织“电子前沿基金会”(EFF) 起诉了国土安全部和移民及海关执法局，试图获取这些机构发送了多少传票的记录。多年来，科技公司和公民自由倡导者一直对国土安全部使用行政传票的做法感到担忧。
WIRED previously found that agents issued customs summons, including ones for legitimate investigations into customs issues, more than 170,000 times between 2016 and mid-August 2022. The most common recipients of those requests included big tech firms and telecommunications companies. 《连线》杂志此前发现，在 2016 年至 2022 年 8 月中旬期间，特工们签发了超过 17 万次海关传票，其中包括针对海关问题的合法调查。这些请求最常见的接收者包括大型科技公司和电信公司。
In 2017, Twitter, which is now X, filed a lawsuit against DHS over what it alleged was an illegal customs summons that demanded information about who was behind an anonymous account that was critical of the first Trump administration’s immigration policies. DHS later withdrew its request, and the social media platform dropped its lawsuit in response, meaning a judge was never able to rule on whether the practice was actually illegal. That incident triggered an… 2017 年，Twitter（现为 X）对国土安全部提起诉讼，指控其发出的海关传票是非法的，该传票要求获取一个批评特朗普第一届政府移民政策的匿名账户背后的用户信息。国土安全部随后撤回了请求，该社交媒体平台也随之撤诉，这意味着法官从未能就这种做法是否真正违法做出裁决。那次事件引发了……