Private companies and other entities often receive subpoenas from federal law enforcement containing vague, boilerplate nondisclosure provisions that can carry threats of legal consequences for noncompliance
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., called for an investigation into decades-long abuses of authority by federal law enforcement agencies to coerce silence from subpoenaed private companies and on federal courts to protect the public from misleading demands for secrecy related to government surveillance.
In a letter to Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS), John Roberts, and Acting Comptroller of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), Orice W. Brown, Wyden and Jayapal requested action to address federal agencies’ abuse of subpoena powers to surveil Americans. It has been the routine practice of federal law enforcement agencies to demand secrecy from companies that have received government subpoenas for customer records. But under federal law, only courts have that power. The agencies may not gag recipients of subpoenas, except in a few limited circumstances in which a court order is granted.
“While these secrecy demands carry no force of law, their coercive effect is extremely successful,” Wyden and Jayapal said. “This leaves customers entirely in the dark about government incursions into their personal data.”
Unfortunately, this practice has become institutionalized across multiple agencies including: Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE), Drug Enforcement Association (DEA), and Department of Justice (DOJ).
ICE frequently makes boilerplate requests for indefinite silence through its administrative subpoenas, including its customs summons and immigration subpoenas. For example, on July 8, 2025, Harvard University received three immigration subpoenas from ICE regarding international students with boilerplate requests for silence. The next day, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a press release celebrating the same enforcement action it had just directed Harvard to keep secret.
DOJ has also treated extra-legal gag requests as standard operating procedure, regularly instructing the recipients of grand jury subpoenas not to disclose the government’s demands. DOJ’s letters often include boilerplate language demanding recipients to “not disclose the existence of this subpoena or the fact of your compliance for a period of 90 days… Any such disclosure could seriously impede the investigation being conducted and, thereby, interfere with the enforcement of the federal criminal law.”
As a result of these brazen abuses of authority, Wyden requests that the GAO initiate a comprehensive audit of the DOJ, DHS, and their relevant component agencies –including DEA, ICE, and HSI–regarding the use of non-disclosure language in subpoenas.
The text of the letter is here.
A web version of this release is here.
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