By Don Terry | Tuesday February 10, 2026 | 4 min read
It starts with the Department of Homeland Security. But it is not hard to imagine where it could go next. If DHS can quietly demand someone’s personal data for speaking out, what’s stopping other agencies — the FBI, the CIA, the Pentagon or others — from doing the same? The system allows it, and every case that goes unnoticed makes this kind of intimidation feel normal.
The U.S. government has found a frighteningly efficient way to keep tabs on citizens who speak up: don’t arrest them, don’t charge them — just demand their data from Google.
That may sound alarmist until you look at what happened to Jon, a 67-year-old retiree whose story was recently reported by The Washington Post. Jon did something that should be unremarkable in a democracy. He read about an Afghan asylum seeker facing deportation and, worried that the man would be persecuted if returned to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, sent a polite email to a Department of Homeland Security attorney urging mercy.
“Don’t play Russian roulette with [this man’s] life,” Jon wrote. “Err on the side of caution. There’s a reason the U.S. government along with many other governments don’t recognize the Taliban. Apply principles of common sense and decency.”
Five hours later, Jon heard back — not from DHS, but from Google.
The company informed him that it had received “legal process” compelling the release of information related to his Google account. That legal process, Jon soon learned, was an administrative subpoena issued by DHS. No judge had signed off on it. No showing of probable cause was required. Jon was given seven days to challenge it in federal court, despite not being told what the subpoena actually demanded.
“How can you fight a subpoena if you haven’t even seen it?” asked Judi Bernstein-Baker, the attorney representing Jon. The mere idea that DHS could demand your personal data is enough to make anyone think twice before speaking out against the Trump administration.
This is not a loophole; it is a system working as designed. DHS officials openly acknowledge that the department has “broad administrative subpoena authority.” That authority allows officials to demand sensitive personal data without prior judicial oversight and with little accountability after the fact.
Jennifer Granick of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is now representing Jon, put it plainly: there is no meaningful check on abuse. In a political climate where identifying and “unmasking” critics has become a priority, this kind of power is an invitation to misuse.
Weeks later, uniformed DHS agents showed up at Jon’s home. They questioned him for more than 20 minutes, treating phrases like “Russian roulette” and “Taliban” as suspicious. Eventually, they conceded he had broken no law. But the point had already been made.
When Jon finally received a copy of the subpoena — 22 days after Google’s seven-day deadline — it demanded a sweeping set of information: IP addresses, location data, timestamps, financial details, even his Social Security number. All of it, over an email expressing concern about a deportation case.
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You don’t need mass arrests to chill speech. As Jon’s attorney Nathan Freed Wessler noted, it takes surprisingly little to make people think twice before speaking again. A knock on the door. A demand for data. The quiet understanding that criticism can trigger scrutiny.
Google insists that it reviews government demands and pushes back when they are improper. In this case, the company did delay compliance long enough for the ACLU to intervene — credit that matters. But DHS still found Jon’s address. The message to the public remains: even if you haven’t committed a crime, the government may still decide you’re worth watching.
This is how democratic norms erode — not with sweeping new laws, but with administrative tools used just aggressively enough to avoid public outrage. Today it’s DHS. Tomorrow it could be other agencies, other critics, other emails.
The real danger isn’t that everyone will be surveilled. It’s that enough people will fall silent.