Google's Secret Warrant Fight Over DOJ Pipe Bomb Probe Revealed
Source: Bloomberg
June 18, 2026 at 2:50 PM EDT
Google waged a secret court fight against a US warrant demanding identities of hundreds of internet users who searched for the Democratic and Republican party headquarters in Washington before pipe bombs were planted there on the eve of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, newly unsealed records reveal.
The search giant had cooperated with earlier warrants in the probe, but Google protested that the US Justice Department’s 2023 demand was “grossly overbroad,” documents show. Complying would subject innocent people to government scrutiny based on politically-oriented searches in the aftermath of the divisive 2020 presidential election, the company argued.
The Alphabet Inc. unit ultimately lost and produced the names and other personal information to investigators. The records unsealed by a federal district court in Washington within the past month offer a window into how US authorities have used such digital dragnets in criminal investigations and how Google responded. The records also shed new light on the pipe bomb probe, which stymied investigators for years.
Warrants based on search engine queries raise the possibility of the government “rummaging around in our most intimate thoughts and questions and concerns,” said Andrew Crocker, surveillance litigation director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit privacy advocate that has opposed keyword search warrants. The government’s demands in the pipe bomb investigation were far more expansive than others he’d seen, Crocker said.
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-18/google-s-secret-warrant-fight-over-doj-pipe-bomb-probe-revealed?srnd=homepage-americas
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