Google Agrees To Boost Compliance Program in DOJ Legal Battle

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  • The case fuels debate over whether US tech com­pa­nies should turn over data held on sys­tems out­side the country
  • A com­pli­ance mon­i­tor will ensure Google ful­fills its legal obligations

The US Depart­ment of Jus­tice and Alpha­bet Inc.’s Google filed a joint stip­u­lat­ed agree­ment on Tues­day to close a dis­pute ongo­ing since 2016 in Cal­i­for­nia fed­er­al court.

US Dis­trict Judge Richard See­borg signed the res­o­lu­tion in which Google admit­ted to a loss of data in response to a 2016 search war­rant. The gov­ern­ment agency sought data relat­ed to a crim­i­nal probe into the cryp­tocur­ren­cy exchange BTC‑e.

Under the agree­ment, Google must reform and upgrade the com­pli­ance pro­gram that han­dles respons­es to legal demands such as sub­poe­nas and search warrants.

Google has report­ed­ly already spent over $90 mil­lion on addi­tion­al resources, sys­tems and staffing to improve its legal process com­pli­ance pro­gram, as stat­ed in the press release.

The tech giant will also be required to bring on an inde­pen­dent com­pli­ance pro­fes­sion­al, serv­ing as an out­side third par­ty, to assess Google’s adher­ence to the agree­ment and ver­i­fy the accu­ra­cy of its update reports. These reports must be sub­mit­ted to the gov­ern­ment, the Google Com­pli­ance Steer­ing Com­mit­tee and the Audit and Com­pli­ance Com­mit­tee of the Alpha­bet Board of Directors.

“The war­rant under­ly­ing this agree­ment was sought in con­nec­tion with a sig­nif­i­cant crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion,” said US Attor­ney Stephanie Hinds for the North­ern Dis­trict of Cal­i­for­nia, refer­ring to a now defunct BTC‑e.

The exchange has been shut down since July 2017, after the arrest of key staff mem­bers who were charged with being involved in mon­ey laun­der­ing schemes. Alexan­der Vin­nik, the alleged Russ­ian oper­a­tor of BTC‑e, was sen­tenced to a five-year prison term by a Parisian court in June 2021. 

“This agree­ment will help to ensure that, mov­ing for­ward, Google will main­tain the tech­ni­cal capa­bil­i­ty and resources nec­es­sary to com­ply with law­ful war­rants and orders, such as the one at issue in this case, that are crit­i­cal to fed­er­al crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions,” Hinds added.

A Big Tech dilemma

The war­rant was issued under the Stored Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Act (SCA) statute that requires tech com­pa­nies such as Google to dis­close cus­tomer com­mu­ni­ca­tions if there is prob­a­ble cause.

The DOJ claimed that Google failed to turn over data stored out­side the Unit­ed States.

How­ev­er, when the US Court of Appeals for the Sec­ond Cir­cuit ruled in 2017 that for­eign-held data couldn’t be reached under the SCA, Google only pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion stored in the Unit­ed States, accord­ing to the DOJ. 

The legal bat­tle over the war­rant between Google and the gov­ern­ment car­ried into 2018, when Con­gress clar­i­fied the SCA did in fact require US providers to report any data stored abroad.

The Depart­ment of Jus­tice said that “in the inter­ven­ing time, data respon­sive to the war­rant was lost.”

The press release not­ed that this agree­ment does not pro­vide the US gov­ern­ment with access to Google user data.

Even as Google’s com­pli­ance costs are on the rise, its ad rev­enue has gone the oth­er way, drop­ping 2% to $7.1 bil­lion in the last quar­ter as adver­tis­ers slashed budgets.


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  • Ornel­la Hernandez

    Block­works

    Reporter

    Ornel­la is a Mia­mi-based mul­ti­me­dia jour­nal­ist cov­er­ing NFTs, the meta­verse and DeFi. Pri­or to join­ing Block­works, she report­ed for Coin­tele­graph and has also worked for TV out­lets such as CNBC and Tele­mu­n­do. She orig­i­nal­ly began invest­ing in ethereum after hear­ing about it from her dad and has­n’t looked back. She speaks Eng­lish, Span­ish, French and Ital­ian. Con­tact Ornel­la at [email pro­tect­ed]

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