As a trial attorney for more than 40 years, I'd say these are examples of egregious illegal surveillance of American citizens by the current government:
1. A retired US citizen emailed a DHS attorney urging mercy for an asylum seeker he had read about. Five hours later he received an email from Google advising him the federal government had served Google with a subpoena demanding information about him. Then they followed up by knocking on his door. The federal government's concerted effort to intimidate citizens should concern every American.
2. NYT: https://archive.ph/W5FwO ICE’s New Surveillance State Isn’t Tracking Only Immigrants
A memo from a Department of Homeland Security official reviewed by CNN and sent to agents dispatched to Minneapolis last month asked them to “capture all images, license plates, identifications and general information” on “agitators, protesters, etc. so we can capture it all in one consolidated form.” And the official reportedly provided such a form, called “intel collection.”
3. Moreover, ICE officers have traveled to the homes of protesters. Not to arrest them, because they have done nothing illegal. Rather, ICE was trying to intimidate them by letting them know ICE knows who they are and where they live. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/us/minneapolis-ice-agents
My fault: the link I posted was cut off... full link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/us/minneapolis-ice-agents...
Egregious, yes. Concerning, yes. Illegal, I’m not so sure. As a fellow attorney, why do you think they are illegal?[1] Maybe they should be, but our jurisprudence since the 1960s (the “put down the dirty hippies” age) seems to treat the the 4th Amendment not as an expansive right to be left alone but as a narrow one that treats only one’s home as a privacy zone.
I found crim pro to be a very distressing and depressing course.
Also, that last link to The NY Times article is broken.
[1] To suggest that the Government doesn’t know what’s legal and what isn’t stretches credulity. They know; and they’re going to ride as close to that line as possible when motivated by their bosses.
Just off the top of my head all three examples I provided violate the First Amendment. It is Constitutionally prohibited for the government to track and gather information on citizens because they exercised their First Amendment rights.
Wait, we just jumped from the Fourth to the First Amendment. Not only did we change subjects, but it's difficult for me to understand how your examples implicate the First Amendment.
My post neither stated or implied the constitutional provisions. The easiest and clearest provision that has been violated is the Government gathering direct data to classify citizens based upon their expression of their First Amendment rights. That is very apparent in every single example in my post.
I'm not going to engaged with someone on HN debating legal principles regarding something so straight forward. And, as I said, this is off the top of my head. It's basic constitutional law which I haven't found necessary to research. After that sentence I googled McCarthyism and found that SCOTUS ruled in multiple cases that Senator McCarthy and his supporters violated the First Amendment rights of the citizens they accused of communism. I haven't read the opinions, but I am confident they ( and many others ) support the very basic principles I speak of.
Respectfully, this is all making me very strongly doubt your bona fides. There are many clues in the above comment that suggest you aren't who you claim to be.
>>To suggest that the Government doesn’t know what’s legal and what isn’t stretches credulity.
I neither make nor imply any such suggestion.
>>they’re going to ride as close to that line as possible
This administration has already overtly failed to comply with valid Federal Court Orders.