"Administrative subpoenas" have always been bullshit that mostly rely on there being no penalty for companies that hand over user information to anyone with a badge and then justify it with a five-hundred-page TOS document.

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linkregister 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Google, among most other tech companies, deny portions of administrative warrants. Here's a story about someone who was stressed out about their notification by Google (spoiler, Google decided to deny the government's request)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/02/03/hom...

edit: It appears that this outcome is an outlier and most admin warrants are honored. It is unfortunate to see the Washington Post decline in reliability like this.

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legitster 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Hence, why I wonder if this is specific their credit/banking products as part of Know Your Customer rules.

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tadfisher 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Google does not provide those products (not in the US, as far as I am aware), but they are a money transmitter in the same vein as Square/Block, Stripe, and Venmo [0]. They won't be directly subject to the Bank Secrecy Act, but they partner with the major payment networks (who have their own rules and their own partner programs with banks) as part of Google Pay and customer payment profiles.

But I don't think this matters much for this case, as DHS is not investigating financial crimes. This is about what discretion Google has to comply with administrative warrants, which is not settled law and isn't clearly spelled out in their own policy.

0: https://support.google.com/googlepay/answer/7160765?hl=en

	▲	legitster 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I just looked it up, and money transmitters are included in the Banking Secrecy Act as "Money Services Businesses". So yes, they have KYC obligations in the sense that they know where you are moving your money and are obligated to tell investigators. Unfortunately, KYC is used for much more than just financial crimes, and the precedent to comply is much more firmly established.

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legitster 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There is a case to be made that administrative subpoenas can be good. They save taxpayers money, they speed up investigations, and they free up the court for more important matters.

As with all things though, these agencies should not be self-regulated without civilian and judicial oversight.

	▲	ethanwillis 23 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Save taxpayers money? I don't think I've ever seen my taxes go down in any tangible way from all the supposed taxpayer saving initiatives over the years. Somehow we broke the "cheap, fast, good" metric and we don't even get "good" nor "cheap". I'd prefer good and what i'm paying regardless over some false "savings"
	▲	amanaplanacanal 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		They seem unconstitutional on their face, to me. Speeding things up because the Constitution makes it too hard is a bad idea.