A 67-year-old retiree was targeted by the Department of Homeland Security after emailing a federal prosecutor featured in a news report to urge leniency in a high-profile deportation case.
Identified only as “Jon,” he told The Washington Post he was slapped with an “administrative subpoena” just hours after sending the email, kicking off a bizarre series of events that saw federal investigators show up at his door after the government used an arcane legal tool against him.
Jon, a U.S. citizen living in the Philadelphia area, said he’d been outraged by the case of a migrant facing deportation to Afghanistan, where the detainee claimed the Taliban would likely kill him. After reading a news report about the case that cited the lead prosecutor, he looked up the prosecutor’s contact information online and typed up a quick email urging him to reconsider the case.
“Don’t play Russian roulette with [this person’s] life,” he wrote. “Err on the side of caution. There’s a reason the U.S. government along with many other governments don’t recognise the Taliban. Apply principles of common sense and decency.”
Five hours later, he received a notification from Google. The tech company informed him it had “received legal process from a Law Enforcement authority compelling the release of information related to your Google Account.” The notice said a “subpoena” had been issued by the Department of Homeland Security.
Jon said he soon learned he hadn’t been hit with a typical subpoena that would require a court’s sign-off, but an administrative subpoena, which can quickly be issued by any federal agency without prior approval and is not subject to oversight.
The Post notes that Homeland Security is “not required to share how many administrative subpoenas it issues each year,” though experts believe thousands are sent out, perhaps even “tens of thousands.” Civil rights groups have sounded the alarm over the little-known legal tool increasingly being used to crack down on free speech under the Trump administration.
A couple weeks after receiving notice of the subpoena, Jon said, he and his wife were startled when local police showed up at their home with two Homeland Security investigators. They showed him a copy of the email he’d sent to the federal prosecutor and asked for his “side of the story,” he recalled.
The investigators were satisfied with his explanation that he’d simply been expressing his opinion after using Google to find the prosecutor’s contact information, he said, and they left without further action.
He said he was later shocked to learn that their visit came despite Google not granting DHS’ request for his online information, leaving him to wonder what tools they had used to track him down.
They had requested detailed information on his online sessions, associates IP and physical addresses, a full list of all the online services he uses, any usernames and email address, his credit card information, his driver’s license, and his social security number.
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told The Daily Beast the subpoena was “part of a criminal investigation,” without elaborating on the substance of that investigation. She added that Homeland Security Investigations “has broad administrative subpoena authority” to issue such subpoenas.
“There’s no oversight ahead of time, and there’s no ramifications for having abused it after the fact,” Jennifer Granick, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Post of the department’s use of these instruments.
“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,” she added.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Google for comment on this story.
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