The US government has found a frighteningly efficient way to keep tabs on citizens who criticize the government: just demand their personal data from Google.
According to recent reporting from the Washington Post, a 67-year-old retiree sent a polite email to an attorney for the Department of Homeland Security urging mercy for an asylum seeker facing deportation to Afghanistan. The man, identified only as Jon, had read about the Afghani native’s case, and his fear that he would be persecuted should he ever return to his home country.
“Don’t play Russian roulette with [this man’s] life,” Jon told lead DHS prosecutor, Joseph Dernbach, in the email. “Err on the side of caution. There’s a reason the US government along with many other governments don’t recognise the Taliban. Apply principles of common sense and decency.”
Five hours later, per WaPo, Jon received a response — not from Dernbach or the DHS, but from Google.
“Google has received legal process from a Law Enforcement authority compelling the release of information related to your Google Account,” it read. The email advised Jon that the “legal process” was an administrative subpoena, issued by DHS. Soon, government agents would arrive at his home.
The subpoena wasn’t approved by any judge, and it didn’t require probable cause. Google gave Jon just seven days to challenge it in federal court — not nearly enough time for someone without a crack team of lawyers on retainer. Even more maddeningly, neither Google nor DHS had sent him a copy of the subpoena itself, leaving Jon and his attorney in the dark.
“How do you challenge a subpoena you don’t have a copy of?” an attorney Jon consulted, Judi Bernstein-Baker, told WaPo.
As DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin told the newspaper in a statement, the law grants the department “broad administrative subpoena authority,” meaning legal demands from DHS officials don’t need to pass independent review.
“There’s no oversight ahead of time, and there’s no ramifications for having abused [administrative subpoenas] after the fact,” Jennifer Granick, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union — which is representing Jon pro bono — told WaPo. “As we are increasingly in a world where unmasking critics is important to the administration, this type of legal process is ripe for that kind of abuse.”
When uniformed DHS agents did show up at Jon’s front door weeks later, they grilled him for over 20 minutes, pointing to his mentions of “Russian roulette” and the “Taliban” as suspicious. In the end, the field grunts — who had been dispatched by an anonymous official in Washington DC — agreed Jon hadn’t broken any laws.
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