Government says DOJ subpoenaed Apple without authorization

DOJ demands for message and call data from Apple during the Trump administration, failed to obtain authorization, says the Office of the Inspector General in the current Biden administration.

It was previously revealed in 2021 that the Department of Justice under President Trump subpoenaed Apple for data concerning at least two House Democrats, their aides and families, in an investigation into alleged leaking of information. Now a report from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) says the DOJ's demands were issued without the required legal authorization.

The full OIG report also says that the DOJ did not have authorization for the gag orders that it imposed on both Apple and Google. It also reveals that the scope of the demands was wider than previously known, with the DOJ issuing 40 non-disclosure orders (NDOs) to the two companies.

NDOs, or gag orders, require authorization from the Attorney General before being imposed, and the DOJ failed to get this.

The Department also didn't "convene the News Media Review Committee to consider the authorization requests in the three investigations," says the OIG. For at least one of the three investigations, the OIG says the Department "did not obtain the required DNI [Director of National Intelligence] certification."

Reportedly, the DOJ also renewed most of its NDOs at least once. The renewals included one issued by the DOJ after the department had already concluded that the specified individual did not leak information.

"Given the important interests at stake, we were troubled that these failures occurred," says the OIG, "particularly given that only a few years had elapsed since the Department substantially overhauled its News Media Policy in 2014 and 2015 following serious criticisms concerning the Department's efforts to obtain communications records of members of the news media."

"Having once again revised its News Media Policy to address this most recent criticism," continues the report, "the Department must make every effort to ensure full and exacting compliance with its new policy in the future."

As originally reported in 2021, the OIG report says that the DOJ "did not receive any call detail records from Apple in response to this compulsory process." It did, however, get information such as whether there were Apple accounts for specified phone numbers.

Separately, the DOJ has filed an antitrust suit against Apple, accusing it of monopolistic practices. Apple has been attempting to get the courts to dismiss the suit.