Google handed over a trove of personal data about a student and journalist to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in response to a subpoena that was not authorized by a judge, according to a report by The Intercept.
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The search and advertising tech giant provided ICE with the usernames, physical addresses and a detailed list of services associated with the Google account of Amandla Thomas-Johnson, a British student and journalist who briefly attended a pro-Palestine demonstration in 2024 while attending Cornell University in New York.
Google also handed over Thomas-Johnson's IP addresses, phone numbers, subscriber numbers and IDs, as well as credit card and bank account numbers linked to his account.
The subpoena, which reportedly included a gag order, did not include a specific justification for why ICE was requesting Thomas-Johnson's personal data, but the student had previously said that the demand for his data came within two hours of Cornell informing him that the U.S. government had canceled his student visa.
See also: Department of Homeland Security demands data on Trump critics
This is the latest example of how the US government is using a controversial type of legal request, called an administrative subpoena, to demand that tech companies hand over the private data of people who have criticized the Trump administration. This has included anonymous Instagram accounts that share information about ICE presence and raids, as well as people who criticize or protest against Trump and his policies.
Administrative subpoenas are issued directly by federal agencies without the intervention of a judge. These legal demands cannot compel companies to hand over the contents of a person’s email accounts, web searches or location data, but they can request metadata and other identifiable information, such as email addresses, in an attempt to uncover the identity of the holder of a particular online account.
Unlike a court order, tech companies are not required to provide someone's data after receiving an administrative subpoena.
Last week, the digital rights group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, sent a letter to Amazon, Apple, Discord, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Reddit, demanding that the companies stop providing data to the Department of Homeland Security, which houses ICE, in response to administrative subpoenas.
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Thomas-Johnson told The Intercept that, “we need to think very seriously about what resistance looks like under these circumstances… where the government and big tech companies know so much about us, they can monitor us, imprison us, destroy us in various ways.”
