Passing it on to higher-ups would surely be proper corporate protocol, and wouldn’t they be the ones to suffer legal jeopardy or harassment, not Joe Night Clerk? I think most people would know that, too.

Did they, in fact, threaten or trick the motel staff or management? I would think that the staff is not personally in legal jeopardy from refusing to comply. It would be interesting to know how ICE obtained it. Especially in any voluntary action, you have to consider whether it violates other laws or duties, and if they weren’t legally compelled to do this t was voluntary. I’m no expert, but it seems increasingly common to have state laws that oppose or are stricter than federal laws, and you do have to be aware of all laws for your jurisdiction down to the county and city. getting an invasive request from the government, and fulfilling it regardless of consequences because you want to ‘help’ or consider them to be like Mom and Dad is first order thinking. I think we had an article on here earlier about ‘second order thinking’ that would cover that. If the police called and asked for my customer list, I’d check whether they had that authority and many other issues before turning it over. The concept of resisting government requests for information is well established. Isn’t it your duty to protect the privacy of your data and your customers regardless of who is requesting data? I thought companies like Twitter and Google routinely rebuffed requests for information from government agencies and opposed restrictive rules, e.g.

Motel 6 internet access code hack