Google Broke Its Promise to Me - Now ICE Has My Data

Amandla Thomas-Johnson briefly participated in a pro-Palestinian protest at Cornell, and afterward became a target of US immigration authorities.

He subsequently left the US and moved to Canada and then Switzerland, but the situation didn't end there: in April 2025, ICE sent Google an administrative subpoena. The following month, Google handed over his account information to ICE, without notifying him beforehand.

The problem was Google's long-standing promise. The company had committed to providing prior notice before turning over user data in response to legal demands, a safeguard meant to give users a chance to challenge the request. But Thomas-Johnson was never given that opportunity.

Based on the subpoena it later obtained, EFF explains that the request targeted not just simple account information but material that could build a surveillance profile, including:

• IP addresses: can be used to estimate approximate location
• Physical addresses: can be used to track place of residence
• Other identifiers: can link an account to a real person
• Session times and durations: can track when and with whom someone communicated

EFF views this case as a matter of civil-rights-violating surveillance and deceptive practices, and has asked the attorneys general of California and New York to investigate Google.

The core point is clear: even when a student who engaged in political expression is not charged with a crime, the combination of state power and data from major platforms can easily reveal an individual's movements, residence, and communication patterns.