This latest story doesn't seem to carry any "significant new information", which is a critical qualifier for a new HN thread.
The article's topic is the quote by the United States Attorney General on a cable news interview, and even that was made – and reported – last week when the topic was still active on HN. It's a detail in the overall story that has already had major coverage here. If there was an arrest or some other material legal action, that would likely warrant a new thread.
Edit: I updated the comment to remove the incorrect implication that there is any new information in the article at all.
> The only new information is a quote by the United States Attorney General on a cable news interview
This feels like an illustration of just how unhinged the US has become, that the _AG threatening a private citizen_ is not considered major news. The frog is, if not boiled, at least sous-vide'd.
You realise what bias hn has when you use hckrnews.com and are able to see what they remove. Not that I think hn has a stronger bias than other forums, but it is there.
For folks wondering why this is newsworthy, the Attorney General of the United States is threatening a US citizen with curtailing his protected speech.
Just a reminder for those who aren't aware: Apple typically makes you upload your government ID to publish apps. I used to be part of their developer program (although I never finished any of the apps I wrote) and was forced to upload mine. For those of you who think there's no problem with forcing everyone to go through the app store, here's just one more serious issue that creates. Now they can be subpoenaed for something that could otherwise have been done anonymously.
Correction: The developer has not been charged... yet.
If you dig into someone's past, you can probably find something, or make it look like there's something. Pay informants. Frame people for other crimes. Etc.
When a justice department doesn't believe in the laws they're supposed to uphold, they don't have to follow their own rules. They can send people through the judicial wringer by merely filing a complaint against them.
Agree one worrying idea is using rumors to discredit or just put pressure on the individual in question. Can simply monitor the individual and then report any odd behavior to friends, co-workers, etc. The result is the individual has to focus on these issues and will likely seize the behavior. No charges ever even need to be filed, and nothing is illegal on doing this activity.
> "We're working with the Department of Justice to see if we can prosecute them for that because what they're doing is actively encouraging people to avoid law enforcement activities and operations," Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem said to press, "and we're going to actually go after them and prosecute them... because what they're doing, we believe, is illegal."
There was a time when the Hacker part of Hacker News meant something. But now I look around and see faces like Shaun Maguire's, Dario Amodei's, millions of engineering man hours being poured into the "Salesforce for Killing People". What are we even doing here.
We are getting back to the original meaning of hacker from a millennium ago, one who chops, cuts, and hews apart, especially hacking apart our fellow man.
Oh puh-lease. The origins of the term hacker wrt computers is meant to mean somebody reckless without self-discipline. One of the earliest uses of it in print was to describe folks working in MIT's AI lab in the mid-70s. People working in a field on the fringes of respectability.
That was just as accurate a description back in that day as it was of the 80s-00s "hackers" that people associate with counter-culturalism and building cool shit. I remember what technologists were like in the 90s. The same amount of effort that went into building the world wide web went into insane shit like cryogenics. Y'all complain about the fringe ideologies of people like Musk and Thiel, but that's exactly who we're talking about when we're talking about old school hackers. That and a half dozen other fringe personalities with fringe ideologies.
If we were to talk about people working at the frindges of respectability, "Salesforce for Killing People" is exactly the kind of company that they would work for. Heck, back in those early decades your options were also research labs or defense industry...
We were never all one team of good guys with good intentions. I mean, a sizeable percentage of people in our industry have at some point worked for Meta...
This is what weaponization of the DoJ looks like. Under Bush 41 they would try to hide it to make it look like they weren't because of political fallout. But now they don't have to hide it anymore.
The DoJ is supposed to uphold the law, and not be criminals themselves.
There is an argument to be made that Waze helps white people avoid prosecution where as an anti-ICE app based on their current focus mostly does not. There is no point in pretending there isn't an explicitly racist goal in many of the administration's policy, even if it isn't the only thing that motivates them.
Readit News
ICEBlock, an app for anonymously reporting ICE sightings, goes viral
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44445646
ICEBlock, an app for anonymously reporting ICE sightings, goes viral - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44445646 - July 2025 (836 comments)
Trump officials want to prosecute over the ICEblock app
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44459075
1: https://hnrankings.info
The topic of the app's launch was on the front page for several hours last week and generated a huge discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44496729
This latest story doesn't seem to carry any "significant new information", which is a critical qualifier for a new HN thread.
The article's topic is the quote by the United States Attorney General on a cable news interview, and even that was made – and reported – last week when the topic was still active on HN. It's a detail in the overall story that has already had major coverage here. If there was an arrest or some other material legal action, that would likely warrant a new thread.
Edit: I updated the comment to remove the incorrect implication that there is any new information in the article at all.
Not disagreeing with the action just curious about the ambiguity in your comment
This feels like an illustration of just how unhinged the US has become, that the _AG threatening a private citizen_ is not considered major news. The frog is, if not boiled, at least sous-vide'd.
> "We are looking at him," she said on Fox News, "and he better watch out."
(Source: The submitted Apple Insider article, citing Wired, which as noted in the quote was citing Fox News.)
When the head of the DOJ publicly threatens someone, saying that she "goes after" that person is entirely accurate.
If you dig into someone's past, you can probably find something, or make it look like there's something. Pay informants. Frame people for other crimes. Etc.
When a justice department doesn't believe in the laws they're supposed to uphold, they don't have to follow their own rules. They can send people through the judicial wringer by merely filing a complaint against them.
That in itself is a punishment.
> "We're working with the Department of Justice to see if we can prosecute them for that because what they're doing is actively encouraging people to avoid law enforcement activities and operations," Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem said to press, "and we're going to actually go after them and prosecute them... because what they're doing, we believe, is illegal."
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The easier it is to pay off officials. The easier it is to escape juris diction. The easier it is to live the way you want, laws be damned.
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That was just as accurate a description back in that day as it was of the 80s-00s "hackers" that people associate with counter-culturalism and building cool shit. I remember what technologists were like in the 90s. The same amount of effort that went into building the world wide web went into insane shit like cryogenics. Y'all complain about the fringe ideologies of people like Musk and Thiel, but that's exactly who we're talking about when we're talking about old school hackers. That and a half dozen other fringe personalities with fringe ideologies.
If we were to talk about people working at the frindges of respectability, "Salesforce for Killing People" is exactly the kind of company that they would work for. Heck, back in those early decades your options were also research labs or defense industry...
We were never all one team of good guys with good intentions. I mean, a sizeable percentage of people in our industry have at some point worked for Meta...
The DoJ is supposed to uphold the law, and not be criminals themselves.
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There's not. But it attempts to thwart the administration's efforts into conducting raids.
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