Privacy advocates want Google to stop handing over consumer data to ICE

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has asked attorneys general in California and New York to investigate Google for deceptive business practices, saying the tech giant failed to notify users before handing over their data to law enforcement agencies like ICE.

“For nearly a decade, Google has promised billions of users that it would notify them before disclosing their personal data to law enforcement,” the letter said. But that’s not the case with Amandla Thomas Johnson, a former doctoral candidate at Cornell University, who says he received no notification that ICE had accessed his university email.

The EFF claims that this is not an isolated incident, and that “through a hidden but systematic practice, Google has likely violated this promise several other times over the years.” The EFF says it has learned that Google sometimes sends data without authorizing users “in order to save time and avoid delays in complying with the government’s request.”

“That’s the big question: whether they use our emails (at Cornell) to track us as well,” Thomas Johnson said. Cornell told Daily Sun.

At the time, a Google spokesperson told… sun “Our law enforcement subpoena processing processes are designed to protect users’ privacy while meeting our legal obligations.” The spokesman said that Google reviews “all legal claims to ensure their legal validity, and we reject those that are broad or inappropriate, including objecting to some of them in their entirety.”

Google said to sun Thomas Johnson’s subpoena requested basic information about the subscriber and did not include the contents of his email.

Thomas Johnson shared records with sun It explains that its information was accessed pursuant to the Federal Communications Act 18 USC 2703(c)(2), which “may require” communications providers to hand over users’ address, telephone number, dial-in records for “session times and durations,” and credit card or bank account number.

But EFF contends that administrative subpoenas like the one the Department of Homeland Security issued to Thomas Johnson are an abuse of power and a violation of his First Amendment rights. Furthermore, these subpoenas are not approved by a judge; Companies can refuse to comply with them and face no consequences for doing so.

“Google must commit to ending its deception and paying the price for its past mistakes,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in its letters to California and New York. The organization is asking states to investigate Google’s practices and is seeking injunctive relief, which includes civil penalties of up to $2,500 per violation in California.