WASHINGTON: The US Justice Department said on Tuesday it has reached an agreement with Alphabet Inc’s Google to settle a dispute with the search engine company over the loss of data in response to a 2016 search warrant.
The government said it was a “first-of-its-kind resolution” that would result in Google “reforming its legal process compliance program to ensure timely and complete responses to legal process such as subpoenas and search warrants.” “
“The Department is committed to ensuring that electronic communications providers comply with court orders to protect and facilitate criminal investigations,” said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Pollitt, head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “
He added that the settlement demonstrates the department’s “commitment to ensure that technology companies, such as Google, respond promptly and fully to legal processes to ensure public safety and bring perpetrators to justice.” Deliver,” he added.
Google said it has “a long track record of protecting our users’ privacy, including pushing back against government demands for user data, and this agreement in no way affects our ability or ability to do so.” It doesn’t change our commitment.”
The company told a US court that it spent more than $90 million on additional resources, systems and staff to implement improvements to its compliance program.
The Justice Department said it will hire an independent compliance professional to act as an outside third party on Google’s compliance upgrades.
In 2016, the United States obtained a search warrant in California for data held by Google related to an investigation into the criminal cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e, the department said.
The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit later ruled that search warrants issued under the Stored Communications Act (SCA) do not cover data stored outside the United States.
In 2018, Congress clarified that the SCA covered U.S. providers who chose to store data overseas, but the government said that “in the interim, data responsive to the warrant was lost,” the Justice Department said. said
Google will submit reports and updates regarding the compliance program to the Government, Google Compliance Steering Committee and Alphabet Board Committees.
