https://theintercept.com/2026/02/10/google-ice-subpoena-student-journalist/ Skip to main content Support Us Support Us [ ] [Search] * Midterms * Justice * War on Gaza * Venezuela * Unmasking ICE * Chilling Dissent Support Us * Special Investigations * Voices * Podcasts * Press Freedom Defense Fund * Join the Newsletter * About * Contact Us * More Ways to Donate * Impact & Reports * Jobs * Become a Source * * * * * * * * * (c) THE INTERCEPT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Terms of Use Privacy * Midterms * Justice * War on Gaza * Venezuela * Unmasking ICE * Chilling Dissent * About * Support Us Google Fulfilled ICE Subpoena Demanding Student Journalist's Bank and Credit Card Numbers Amandla Thomas-Johnson didn't know how much information ICE requested in a subpoena until months later. Google never gave him a chance to fight it. [cropped] Jessica Washington February 10 2026, 12:00 p.m. Share * Copy link * Share on Facebook * Share on Bluesky * Share on X * Share on LinkedIn * Share on WhatsApp Signage outside the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, US, on Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026. Photographer: David Paul Morris/ Bloomberg via Getty Images Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, on Feb. 3, 2026, a day before the company announced yearly revenues of over $400 billion. Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images Google fulfilled an Immigration and Customs Enforcement subpoena that demanded a wide array of personal data on a student activist and journalist, including his credit card and bank account numbers, according to a copy of an ICE subpoena obtained by The Intercept. Amandla Thomas-Johnson had attended a protest targeting companies that supplied weapons to Israel at a Cornell University job fair in 2024 for all of five minutes, but the action got him banned from campus. When President Donald Trump assumed office and issued a series of executive orders targeting students who protested in support of Palestinians, Thomas-Johnson and his friend Momodou Taal went into hiding. Google informed Thomas-Johnson via a brief email in April that it had already shared his metadata with the Department of Homeland Security, as The Intercept previously reported. But the full extent of the information the agency sought -- including usernames, addresses, itemized list of services, including any IP masking services, telephone or instrument numbers, subscriber numbers or identities, and credit card and bank account numbers -- was not previously known. "I'd already seen the subpoena request that Google and Meta had sent to Momodou [Taal], and I knew that he had gotten in touch with a lawyer and the lawyer successfully challenged that," Thomas-Johnson said. "I was quite surprised to see that I didn't have that opportunity."[INS::INS] Most Read Pete Hegseth, US secretary of defense, arrives to speak at the Blue Origin manufacturing complex in Merritt Island, Florida, US, on Monday, Feb. 2, 2026. Hegseth heaped praise on Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin in a visit to the space venture's facility, recruiting another billionaire in his effort to reform government weapons buying and pressure traditional defense contractors. Photographer: Saul Martinez /Bloomberg via Getty Images Shipyard Bosses Forced to Pay Overtime to Get People to Stay for Pete Hegseth Speech Noah Hurowitz SHEBAA, LEBANON - JANUARY 21: Numerous students participate in a mine risk education event to raise awareness about the ongoing threat of landmines and unexploded ordnance left from past conflicts in Shebaa, Lebanon on January 21, 2026. Supported by the United Nations, these initiatives focus on clearing contaminated areas in southern Lebanon and educating civilians, especially children, about the dangers of remnants of war that continue to endanger local communities. The awareness session aims to reduce risks through interactive training, teaching participants how to recognize suspicious objects, avoid high-risk zones, and report potential hazards to authorities. (Photo by Ramiz Dallah/Anadolu via Getty Images) Pentagon Makes Largest Known Arms Purchase From Israel -- For Banned Cluster Weapons Dan Glaun The Washington Post headquarters in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. The Washington Post is reportedly poised to make deep staffing cuts, marking the latest retrenchment by the Jeff Bezos-owned newspaper. Photographer: Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images The Bloodbath at Washington Post Is All Jeff Bezos's Fault Eoin Higgins The subpoena provides no justification for why ICE is asking for this information, except that it's required "in connection with an investigation or inquiry relating to the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws." In the subpoena, ICE requests that Google not "disclose the existence of this summons for indefinite period of time." Thomas-Johnson, who is British, believes that ICE requested that information to track and eventually detain him -- but he had already fled to Geneva, Switzerland, and is now in Dakar, Senegal. [crop-Getty] Related Google Secretly Handed ICE Data About Pro-Palestine Student Activist The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is representing Thomas-Johnson, and the ACLU of Northern California sent a letter to Google, Amazon, Apple, Discord, Meta, Microsoft, and Reddit last week calling on tech companies to resist similar subpoenas in the future from DHS without court intervention. The letter asks the companies to provide users with as much notice as possible before complying with a subpoena to give them the opportunity to fight it, and to resist gag orders that would prevent the tech companies from informing targets that a subpoena was issued. "Your promises to protect the privacy of users are being tested right now. As part of the federal government's unprecedented campaign to target critics of its conduct and policies, agencies like DHS have repeatedly demanded access to the identities and information of people on your services," the letter reads. "Based on our own contact with targeted users, we are deeply concerned your companies are failing to challenge unlawful surveillance and defend user privacy and speech." In addition to Thomas-Johnson's case, the letter refers to other instances in which technology companies provided user data to DHS, including a subpoena sent to Meta to "unmask" the identities of users who documented immigration raids in California. Unlike Thomas-Johnson, users in that case were given the chance to fight the subpoena because they were made aware of it before Meta complied. "Google has already fulfilled this subpoena," an attorney for Google told Thomas-Johnson's lawyer, as The Intercept previously reported. "Production consisted of basic subscriber information." The detailed information requested in the ICE subpoena would all have been linked to Thomas-Johnson's Gmail account. Google did not respond to a request for comment. Lindsay Nash, a professor at Cardozo Law and a former staff attorney with ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project, said that by not giving prior notice, Google deprived Thomas-Johnson of his ability to protect his information. "Your promises to protect the privacy of users are being tested right now." "The problem is that it doesn't allow the person whose personal information is on the line and whose privacy may be being invaded to raise challenges to the disclosure of that potentially private information," Nash said. "And I think that's important to protect rights that they may have to their own information." Tech companies' data sharing practices are primarily governed by two federal laws, the Stored Communications Act, which protects the privacy of digital communications, including emails, and Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, which prohibits unfair or deceptive trade practices. "Under both federal law and the law of every state, you cannot deceive consumers," said Neil Richards, a law professor at Washington University St. Louis who specializes in privacy, the internet, and civil liberties. "And if you make a material misrepresentation about your data practices, that's a deceptive trade practice." Whether or not corporations are clear enough with consumers about how they collect and share their data has been litigated for decades, Richards said, referencing the infamous Cambridge Analytica lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that the company misled Facebook users about data collection and sharing. We're independent of corporate interests -- and powered by members. Join us. Become a member Join Our Newsletter Thank You For Joining! Original reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you. Will you take the next step to support our independent journalism by becoming a member of The Intercept? [ ] I'm in Become a member By signing up, I agree to receive emails from The Intercept and to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. Join Our Newsletter Original reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you. I'm in Google's public privacy policy acknowledges that it will share personal information in response to an "enforceable governmental request," adding that its legal team will "frequently push back when a request appears to be overly broad or doesn't follow the correct process." According to Google, the company overwhelmingly complied with the millions of requests made by the government for user information over the last decade. Its data also shows that those requests have spiked over the last five years. It's unclear how many of those users were given notice of those requests ahead of time or after. Richards said that cases like these emphasize the need for legal reforms around data privacy and urged Congress to amend the Stored Communications Act to require a higher standard before the government can access our digital data. He also said the federal government needs to regulate Big Tech and place "substantive restrictions on their ability to share information with the government." It's hard to know exactly how tech companies are handling our personal data in relation to the government, but there seems to have been a shift in optics, Richards said. "What we have seen in the 12 months since the leaders of Big Tech were there on the podium at the inauguration," Richards said, "is much more friendliness of Big Tech towards the government and towards state power." From Dakar, Thomas-Johnson said that understanding the extent of the subpoena was terrifying but had not changed his commitment to his work. "As a journalist, what's weird is that you're so used to seeing things from the outside," said Thomas-Johnson, whose work has appeared in outlets including Al Jazeera and The Guardian. "We need to think very hard about what resistance looks like under these conditions... where government and Big Tech know so much about us, can track us, can imprison, can destroy us in a variety of ways." Update: February 10, 5:54 p.m. ET This story has been updated to reflect that Thomas-Johnson's legal team still does not know the full extent of the information that Google provided to ICE. Share * Copy link * Share on Facebook * Share on Bluesky * Share on X * Share on LinkedIn * Share on WhatsApp IT'S EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT. What we're seeing right now from Donald Trump is a full-on authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government. This is not hyperbole. Court orders are being ignored. MAGA loyalists have been put in charge of the military and federal law enforcement agencies. The Department of Government Efficiency has stripped Congress of its power of the purse. News outlets that challenge Trump have been banished or put under investigation. Yet far too many are still covering Trump's assault on democracy like politics as usual, with flattering headlines describing Trump as "unconventional," "testing the boundaries," and "aggressively flexing power." The Intercept has long covered authoritarian governments, billionaire oligarchs, and backsliding democracies around the world. We understand the challenge we face in Trump and the vital importance of press freedom in defending democracy. We're independent of corporate interests. Will you help us? ( ) $15 (*) $25 ( ) $50 ( ) $100 ( ) $5 ( ) $8 (*) $10 ( ) $15 ( ) One Time (*) Monthly Donate IT'S BEEN A DEVASTATING year for journalism -- the worst in modern U.S. history. We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government's full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump's project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking. In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow. That's where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026? We're independent of corporate interests. Will you help us? ( ) $15 (*) $25 ( ) $50 ( ) $100 ( ) $5 ( ) $8 (*) $10 ( ) $15 ( ) One Time (*) Monthly Donate [editor-in-] I'M BEN MUESSIG, The Intercept's editor-in-chief. It's been a devastating year for journalism -- the worst in modern U.S. history. We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government's full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump's project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking. In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow. That's where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026? We're independent of corporate interests. Will you help us? ( ) $15 (*) $25 ( ) $50 ( ) $100 ( ) $5 ( ) $8 (*) $10 ( ) $15 ( ) One Time (*) Monthly Donate Contact the author: [cropped] Jessica Washington jessica.washington@theintercept.com @jessica_m_wash on X Related MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA - FEBRUARY 05: Observers film ICE agents as they hold a perimeter after one of their vehicles got a flat tire on Penn Avenue on February 5, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. 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