Report Shows ICE Is Demanding Subscriber Info It Has No Legal Right To With Self-Issued Subpoenas
from the snatch-it-baby-coz-I-can dept
Just because your service provider is willing to notify you of the government's (perhaps unexpected) interest in all your digital belongings doesn't mean there's someone standing between you and the government's flimsy piece of administrative paper.
A recent report by the Los Angeles Times -- based on notifications from service providers about government demands for data -- shows there's not much that can stop the government from obtaining a bunch of info with almost zero judicial oversight. Email notifications from Google shared with journalists show just how powerless end users are when confronted with government demands for data. Sure, notification is nice, but it's not all that helpful.
The government has almost unlimited power to make requests for data. The people they serve, however, are subject to demands that cannot possibly be met.
In one email The Times reviewed, Google notified the recipient that the company received a request from the Department of Homeland Security to turn over information related to their Google account. (The recipient shared the email on the condition of anonymity due to concern about immigration enforcement). That account may be attached to Gmail, YouTube, Google Photos, Google Pay, Google Calendar and other services and apps.
The email, sent from Google’s Legal Investigations Support team, notified the recipient that Google may hand over personal information to DHS unless it receives within seven days a copy of a court-stamped motion to quash the request.
The government -- in this case, ICE -- prints out an administrative subpoena, something that doesn't require judicial approval to send out to third parties storing user data. You, however, need to run to court to block it. And you need to do it in less than a week. The government says "give." And citizens are expected to find representation or just make the most of their Google searches for "quash" in less than seven days or their service providers will feel "compelled" to hand over all kinds of information to government employees engaging in self-approved fishing expeditions.
And, as if this barrier to due process entry wasn't enough, notification from service providers generally doesn't include handing over the underlying document. People are expected to approach federal courts with almost zero information in hopes of denying the government its request for information. And it's a lot of information -- at least in the case viewed by the LA Times.
The email from Google did not include a copy of the legal request. Upon requesting it, the recipient learned it was an administrative subpoena from the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency. ICE was looking for the names, email addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, street addresses, length of service such as start date, and means of sources of payment linked in any way to the Google account.
Where's my bulwark against encroaching government interests, you might ask? The answer will not surprise you. It's mainly you with the occasional assist from service providers. To be fair, some service providers are better than others at rebuffing data demands that arrive without judicial approval. But, for the most part, users are still on their own. According to its own transparency reports, Google hands over data 83% of the time. Facebook does it 88% of the time. Twitter is a relative rebel, handing over data at only a 59% clip.
If most of these requests were warrants and court orders, great. If not, there's still a lot of work that needs to be done. On the relatively brighter side, some users are at least being notified the government is coming for their bits and bytes.
That's where administrative subpoenas act as their own form of restraint on government overreach. To obtain a gag order that prevents notification of targeted users, government agencies generally must get a court order. Using their own in-house paperwork means they can't prevent service providers from notifying users of the government's interest. That doesn't mean agencies won't add bullshit boilerplate to subpoenas that implies it would be illegal to notify end users. They still will. It just means they can't do anything about it when tech companies let end users in on the government's attempted secrets.
And they can't do what ICE did here. ICE demanded a wealth of information with its administrative subpoena. These subpoenas can only be used to request basic subscriber information. The one seen by the LA Times goes far beyond those limits, requesting Google hand over emails addresses, names, phone numbers, and financial info.
Hopefully Google only turned over what ICE could legally obtain with its flimsy paperwork, if it decided it was obligated to turn over anything at all. But this shows what the government will try to do in the perceived absence of pushback. It knows no end users are capable of securing a court order quashing these subpoenas in seven days. And it knows it can't request the information it's requesting. But it will do it anyway because the odds are still in its favor and bypassing the judicial branch means no one's going to benchslap it for breaking the rules or deny its requests as overbroad.
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Filed Under: 4th amendment, administrative subpoenas, ice, privacy, subpoenas
Companies: google
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Ever think that GOOGLE shouldn't be keeping the data?
What use has it? Corporate / gov't has the same purpose: SPYING FOR CONTROL.
NO, at corporate-loving Techdirt GOOGLE's collection and long-term storing of every bit of data it can grab -- without any permission at all from anyone through javascript on literally nearly every site, and from which it easily gains billions -- is NEVER even hinted at as THE PROBLEM.
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Re: Ever think that GOOGLE shouldn't be keeping the data?
[And where are your citations?]
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Re: Re: Ever think that GOOGLE shouldn't be keeping the data?
Here's one: anyone new can read through "AC Unknown" comment history and find GAPS of 15 and 43 months. But of late, it's become ardent defender of the site -- well, with trivial one-liners like this: it doesn't risk any more, might lapse into medievalish techno-babble, which would reveal that "AC Unknown" is yet another sock-puppet of Timothy Geigner.
This is just least possible effort to make it look as though I've been answered, by mere idiot boilerplate.
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Re: Re: Re: Ever think that GOOGLE shouldn't be keeping the data
And where might your citations for that idiotic claim be? You do realize that not everyone can come on this site 24/7 to post, or did that thought go flying out of your brain housing group?
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Objection - you're assuming that the unfiltered garbage pit Brainy Smurf uses for a brain actually has thoughts. Gonna need some proof on that claim.
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Re: Re: Re: Ever think that GOOGLE shouldn't be keeping the data
...medievalish techno-babble...
Said the pot.
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Re: Ever think that GOOGLE shouldn't be keeping the data?
Yet again, "Resend" got all in without changes (though added a bit to punch up). What use is your mysterious system? (The one that PaulT claims is known in "great detail" by everyone but ME.) -- All I can do is complain that the plain HTML input form doesn't honor its open promise. -- Though did in Maz's prior piece, went in first click! -- And another point is the random result!
Your system just stinks. And Techdirt won't even acknowledge my complaints, because might slip up and indicate whether an Admin watches the site and okays the "hiding", or other secrets.
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Re: Re: Ever think that GOOGLE shouldn't be keeping the data?
So, do you scream at your monitor every conspiracy you type out? Or, better yet, how often do neighbors call police thinking you are trying to kill someone?
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Re: Re: Ever think that GOOGLE shouldn't be keeping the data?
Do you limit your orgasams to 1 per post?
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Re: Re: Ever think that GOOGLE shouldn't be keeping the data?
Comment on the article. That comment which was about the article is plainly here. Yet you engage and persist with your ridiculous fantasies to pollute threads, while failing to answer in the actual discussion you started. Get real.
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Re: Ever think that GOOGLE shouldn't be keeping the data?
Uh, subscriber info about accounts isn't "vacuuming up info". It's what is required to have... accounts.
I am not enamoured with the whole tracking business, but that mostly isn't what we are talking about here.
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Cost vs Gain
It costs ICE nothing to send out claims and even if those claims are refused or shot down in court it's not like they face any actual punishment for trying to grab more than they're legally allowed so they have no reason not to demand everything they can think of.
As with many cases of abuse of the system and/or power if you want to change it then engaging in such abuses needs to have real, noticable consequences. Members of the public face hefty fines if not get thrown in prison if they break a serious enough law, government agencies and employees should face similar risks for violating the law and the punishments need to be personal so individuals in those agencies have a reason to care rather than just being able to shrug off any fines as 'just another thing the taxpayers are footing the bill for'.
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Re: Cost vs Gain
Or better yet, pass a law to get rid of the administrative subpoena entirely.
Discipline, fines, and jail will merely create a cast of characters while DHS rotates in new ones to do their bidding.
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It's not surprising, when you consider that ICE has been enforcing copyright on behalf of lobbyists and trolls.
They've learned that all you need to fleece people for their information is to look intimidating and sound legitimate. That's all it takes to bully the data out of the weak abs unsuspecting.
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