The Department of Homeland Security is reportedly secretly demanding that technology companies hand over information about users who criticize the Trump administration.
In recent months, the Department of Homeland Security has used administrative subpoenas to seek identifiable information about individuals operating anonymous Instagram accounts that share posts about ICE immigration raids in their neighborhoods. These subpoenas are also being used to request information about people who have criticized Trump officials or protested government policies.
Unlike judicial subpoenas, which are granted by a judge after seeing enough evidence of a crime to authorize the search and seizure of a person's property, administrative subpoenas are issued by federal agencies, allowing investigators to seek a wealth of information about an individual from tech companies and phone companies without the oversight of a judge.
Administrative subpoenas cannot be used to obtain the contents of an individual's email, online searches, or location data, but they can request specific information about a user, such as when the user logs in, from where, and on what device the user logs in, and other identifiable information about the email address and who opened the online account. But administrative subpoenas are not backed by a judge's authority or a court order, so it is largely up to companies to hand over data to the requesting government agency.
Administrative subpoenas are not new. There is growing alarm that Trump administration officials are using these self-signed requests to seek specific information about people critical of the president's policies.
Bloomberg reported last week that the Department of Homeland Security investigated the identity of an anonymous Instagram account called @montocowatch. The purpose of this account is to share resources to protect immigrant rights and due process throughout Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. This comes amid a continued federal crackdown on immigration across the United States, sparking widespread protests and condemnation. Lawyers for the Department of Homeland Security served an administrative subpoena on Meta, demanding that it hand over the personal information of the account administrator because the company was not the Department of Homeland Security employee who claimed to have received information that ICE agents were being stalked.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the account owner, said there was no evidence of wrongdoing and that the police recordings, sharing those recordings, and doing so anonymously were legal and protected by the First Amendment. The Department of Homeland Security withdrew the subpoena without providing an explanation.
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The ACLU called the subpoenas “part of a broader strategy to intimidate people who document immigration activity or criticize government actions.”
Bloomberg reported that the effort to unmask the @montcowatch account is not an isolated incident, citing at least four other cases in which Homeland Security officials have used administrative subpoenas to identify operators of Instagram accounts that publish content critical of the government. Those subpoenas were also dropped after the account owner filed a lawsuit to block the effort.
Technology companies have recently published transparency reports detailing how much data governments are requesting. However, even though the two types of requests are fundamentally different, most companies do not disclose how many judicial and administrative subpoenas they receive in a given period of time.
In response to questions from TechCrunch, Meta spokesperson Frances Brennan would not say whether Meta provided the Department of Homeland Security with data about @montcowatch or was asked to provide information about the account in some other way.
A new Washington Post report on Tuesday revealed that an administrative subpoena was also used to request information from Google about American retirees within hours of sending important emails to Joseph Dernbach, the chief attorney for the Department of Homeland Security. Federal agents then visited the retiree's home and asked about the email.
The Post said the retiree attended last year's No Kings rally, regularly attends rallies and protests, writes critical of members of Congress, and was a critic of Trump during his first term, saying all of his actions are protected by the First Amendment.
The retiree received an email from Google within five hours of sending the email to a Department of Homeland Security lawyer named in an article about the case of an Afghan man the United States is trying to deport and whose email address is listed on the Florida Bar's website, according to the Washington Post. The email notified him that his account had been subpoenaed by the Department of Homeland Security.
The subpoena asked for the date, time, and duration of all of his online sessions, his IP address and address, a list of each service he used, and other usernames and identifiable information associated with his accounts, including credit card, driver's license, and Social Security numbers.
Two weeks later, Homeland Security officials showed up at his door to question him about the email he had sent to Dernbach, but the officials admitted they had not broken any laws.
Google spokesperson Katelin Jabbari told TechCrunch that the company resists subpoenas that are too broad or unwarranted “as in this case,” referring to the subpoenas mentioned in the Washington Post report.
In response to questions from TechCrunch, Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, declined to say why the U.S. is seeking information about people who have criticized the Trump administration or accounts that recorded ICE activity, or why the subpoenas were dropped.
“HSI has broad administrative subpoena authority to issue subpoenas under 8 U.S.C. 1225(d) and 19 U.S.C. 1509(a)(1),” McLaughlin said, referring to Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative division within ICE.
Not all companies are able to hand over data about their customers. For example, information that is end-to-end encrypted and can only be accessed by obtaining a person's phone or device. That said, many companies can still provide a large amount of information about their users, including where they log in, how they log in, and where they log in from, which could allow investigators to uncover the true nature of anonymous accounts.
End-to-end encrypted messaging apps like Signal have long claimed how little data they collect about their users. Messaging apps say they can't generate user data they don't need in the first place in response to legal requests that arise from time to time.
Reliance on U.S. tech giants is another reason why European countries and consumers are becoming less dependent on U.S. tech giants, as CEOs and executives of major U.S. tech companies have openly aligned themselves with the Trump administration.