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House Judiciary Committee Demands Alphabet’s Compliance With Subpoena Pertaining to Alleged Collusion With Federal Government On Speech Censorship

ByAlki David

May 10, 2023
Alphabet’s CEO Sundar Pichai

The House Judiciary Committee has called out Alphabet’s CEO Sundar Pichai by issuing a subpoena demanding the tech giant to cooperate with an investigation to determine the extent to which the federal government colluded with Alphabet to censor Americans’ speech online. The committee has deemed the compliance of Alphabet to be insufficient, which only produced a meager 4,049 pages of material, most of which have redactions.

Despite Alphabet’s assertion of privilege, the committee has noted that no applicable privilege is evident. Thus, Alphabet needs to provide the committee with documents without any redactions or omissions. Moreover, the use of a “reading room” to turn over documents prevents and frustrates the committee’s understanding and use, violating the terms of the subpoena without the committee’s consent.

The committee also requires Alphabet to provide access to “responsive communications with other social media platforms related to content moderation,” as well as “responsive documents in custody of its subsidiaries,” and “responsive communications with the Global Disinformation Index and other third-party entities.” The committee is also demanding material from various messaging applications, including those from email to Slack, to Microsoft Teams, Signal, WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram, among others.

Furthermore, the committee demands access to “internal communications” among Alphabet employees that allude to any Executive Branch communications, whether public or non-public, that relate to the moderation, deletion suppression, restriction, or reduced circulation of content. Meanwhile, the subpoena from the committee comes in the aftermath of the Twitter Files’ release, revealing communications between Twitter employees that Elon Musk took over on the platform.

In conclusion, the House Judiciary Committee has made a bold move to bring Alphabet into the line of fire, calling for alleged collusion with the federal government to censor Americans’ free speech online. With further investigations still ongoing, the future of tech giants’ compliance with these investigations has become a topic of concern.

By Alki David

Alki David — Publisher, Media Architect, SIN Network Creator - live, direct-to-public communication, media infrastructure, accountability journalism, and independent distribution. Born in Lagos, Nigeria; educated in the United Kingdom and Switzerland; attended the Royal College of Art. Early internet broadcaster — participated in real-time public coverage during the 1997 Mars landing era using experimental online transmission from Beverly Hills. Founder of FilmOn, one of the earliest global internet television networks offering live and on-demand broadcasting outside legacy gatekeepers. Publisher of SHOCKYA — reporting since 2010 on systemic corruption inside the entertainment business and its expansion into law, finance, and regulation. Creator of the SIN Network (ShockYA Integrated Network), a federated media and civic-information infrastructure spanning investigative journalism, live TV, documentary, and court-record reporting. Lived and worked for over 40 years inside global media hubs including Malibu, Beverly Hills, London, Hong Kong and Gstaad. Early encounter with Julian Assange during the first Hologram USA operations proved a formative turning point — exposing the realities of lawfare, information suppression, and concentrated media power. Principal complainant and driving force behind what court filings describe as the largest consolidated media–legal accountability action on record, now before the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court. Relocated to Antigua & Barbuda and entered sustained legal, civic, and informational confrontation over media power, safeguarding, and accountability at Commonwealth scale.