Privacy advocates want Google to stop handing consumer data over to ICE

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is asking the attorneys general of California and New York to investigate Google for deceptive trade practices, saying the tech giant fails to notify users before handing over their data to law enforcement agencies like ICE.

“For nearly a decade, Google has promised billions of users that it will notify them before disclosing their personal data to law enforcement,” the letter says. But it didn’t in the case of Amandla Thomas-Johnson, a former PhD candidate at Cornell University who says he received no notice that ICE had accessed his university email.

The EFF alleges that this isn’t an isolated incident, and that “through a hidden but systemic practice, Google has likely violated that promise numerous other times over the years.” The EFF says it has learned that Google sometimes sends data over without authorizing users “in order to save time and avoid delay with complying with a government demand.”

“This is the big question…