US soldiers are more often than not the bad guys. Anyone outside the US knows this, and a number of people in the US also know it.

I did and only found that his involvement was discovered a posteriori with zero consequence. So I don't see a benefit. I thought maybe you knew something I don't.

My point remains unaddressed: laws apply to everyone. If you decide that it's ok for some people to not be subject to the law, then you better really trust them to not abuse this kind of power, and history is full of examples of why such trust is a bad idea.

These people had illegal activities and also happened to be journalists, they were not investigated for their journalism. Talk about being simplistic, geez. Also do tell me what good was achieved by spying on Roy Greenslade, I am not familiar with his story.

Ultimately laws apply to everyone or they are meaningless. Just like justice is for everyone or there is no justice at all. If you are fine with laws applying to all except the law enforcers, then you are not for a lawful society but for an authoritarian one, where the rulers are not accountable. The law is what makes everyone, rulers included, accountable. We lose more, as a society, by holding certain people less accountable than others, than by letting these people "protect" us without accountability.

Unless you're arguing that the end justifies the means of disregarding the law, this is irrelevant.

It's also a weird thing to argue. There is a rich history, in many countries, of law enforcement/defence/whatever agencies spying on journalists for bad reasons, and no history of spying illegally for good enough reasons. The only people arguing "they probably had a good reason" are apologists of authoritarianism.

You and the other poster might define "hate" differently and therefore disagree on a technicality. But the fact remains that people who voted for Trump are responsible for giving power to someone who wants to harm minorities. That's the important thing here. Focussing on the technicality is a distraction.

You are missing the point. The definition is irrelevant. The outcome matters. People who vote for Trump because he's an "economic genius" knowing that he will also oppress a certain minority, even if the oppression isn't what is motivating them, are responsible for the oppression of that minority. That's because actions matter. If you vote for a racist president then you are fostering racism and therefore you are racist; you telling yourself and others that it's not how you feel deep inside is irrelevant.

If StartPage has no AI, then there likely is a way to use Google without AI.

It likely depends on how you define "hate". But maybe the definition is not so important. Not everyone who supported Hitler in the thirties in Germany hated Jews, for some definition of "hate". The definition didn't make a difference back then either. The people who brought him to power and did not hate Jews are still responsible for the outcome of their support.

I prefer interoperability over integration. I have used Teams in different jobs. I have also used the Google tools (calendar, meet, mail, etc) with Slack. I much prefer the latter. I have had countless issues with external guests in meetings with Teams, but this has never been an issue with Meet. It's also easier on my CPU. You can start a Google Meet call from Slack. You can collaborate on a Google Drive document from Slack. You can update internal databases with information from Google calendar, which means you can develop internal tools that interoperate with it. As a bonus, these tools all work the same on all platforms and are not hoarding resources with sluggish responsiveness. If you have tried using Teams on Linux over the years, you know what I'm talking about. I believe Windows users also experience the poor responsiveness. A text message should not take seconds to appear after you press return, a group should not take seconds to be created, a username search should not take seconds to return a result when you have a few thousand users. Don't get me started on OneDrive and its weird idea that it shouldn't be easy to just see my files and directories the way I want to organise them.

Which use case can only work with Teams? I suspect this discussion boils down to old arguments, I think tools should do one thing and do it well, then interoperate.

This comment is out of touch with reality. GitHub was the most popular open source repository before Microsoft acquired it, and people don't like change. Microsoft is really good at making it hard or annoying to leave them, not necessarily due to the quality of their products. For example I don't think I have ever heard anyone say they like working with Teams, yet people find they're stuck with it because someone above them made a decision that was not based on technical merit.

How many relevant points can you add?

I don't think that's true. If they succeed, they will find new people to bully. Bullies can only exist in relation to their victims, and I believe ICE are bullies. They want to keep existing as such, so they'll always find something to bully. They are the "they" in "first they came".

You seem to imply that this is a contradicting argument, not sure why. Not every discussion is about contradicting each other, some are about iterative contribution to a topic by different people.

Yes, and racial segregation is less of an issue if you're white. What's your point though?