A Canadian critic of the Trump administration says the US government tried to unmask him—and he's now suing to stop it. Identified only as John Doe, the man filed a federal lawsuit Monday against Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin after Google alerted him that DHS had used an administrative subpoena to demand extensive data tied to his Google account, per the CBC. The plaintiff, who posts under a pseudonym on X, says he was "targeted with a summons seeking to find out who I am, where I live, where I go and what I read online" in what his lawsuit argues is "a transparent gambit to chill speech the government doesn't like."
"Not satisfied with trying to suppress speech at home, the Trump administration is now targeting dissenters abroad," says Michael Perloff, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of the District of Columbia, which, together with the ACLU's northern California offices, brought forward the complaint. The suit argues DHS is misusing a 1930 statute that gives the government authority to examine "records, statements and declarations" to enforce customs laws to suppress online dissent, including from people outside the US.
The subpoena reportedly followed the plaintiff's widely viewed posts condemning ICE enforcement operations and the killing of activists by federal officers, some of which tagged US government accounts. Recent reporting by the New York Times indicates Google, Meta, and other tech companies have received "hundreds of administration subpoenas" for information on users. In one case cited by the ACLU, Google received a summons for information about an American who had asked a government official to apply "common sense and decency" in the case of an asylum seeker. Google says it pushes back on "overbroad or improper" subpoenas, while declining to discuss John Doe's specific case.
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