In Leak Investigation, Tech Giants Are Caught Between Courts and Customers

On Friday, the Justice Department’s independent inspector general opened an investigation into the decision by federal prosecutors to secretly seize the data of House Democrats and reporters. Top Senate Democrats also demanded that the former attorneys general William P. Barr and Jeff Sessions testify before Congress about the leak investigations, specifically about the subpoena issued to Apple and another to Microsoft.

Fred Sainz, an Apple spokesman, said in a statement that the company regularly challenges government data requests and informs affected customers as soon as it legally can.

“In this case, the subpoena, which was issued by a federal grand jury and included a nondisclosure order signed by a federal magistrate judge, provided no information on the nature of the investigation and it would have been virtually impossible for Apple to understand the intent of the desired information without digging through users’ accounts,” he said. “Consistent with the request, Apple limited the information it provided to account subscriber information and did not provide any content such as emails or pictures.”

In a statement, Microsoft said it received a subpoena in 2017 related to a personal email account. It said it notified the customer after the gag order expired and learned that the person was a congressional staff member. “We will continue to aggressively seek reform that imposes reasonable limits on government secrecy in cases like this,” the company said.

Google declined to comment on whether it received a subpoena related to the investigation on the House Intelligence committee.

The Justice Department has not commented publicly on Apple turning over House Intelligence Committee records. In congressional testimony this week, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland sidestepped criticism of the Trump administration’s decisions and said the seizure of records was made “under a set of policies that have existed for decades.”

In the Justice Department’s leak investigation, Apple and Microsoft turned over so-called metadata of people who worked in Congress, including phone records, device information, and addresses. It is not unusual for the Justice Department to subpoena such metadata, because the information can be used to establish whether someone had contact with a member of the media or whether their work or home accounts were tied to anonymous accounts that were used to disseminate classified information.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/11/technology/apple-google-leak-investigation-data-requests.html