Ten major tech companies ordered to hand over all communications with EU regulators
The US Committee on the Judiciary is demanding all communications from ten major American tech companies with so-called “foreign censors,” including the European Commission and EU Member States.
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US House Judiciary Committee demands all communications between ten major tech companies and EU regulators, including the European Commission and Member States.
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EU official allegedly told colleagues to use encrypted apps with auto-delete instead of email, which Chairman Jim Jordan claims was to evade US accountability.
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Tech giants including Meta, Apple, Google, and Amazon have already handed over thousands of documents showing alleged EU pressure on content moderation policies.
“The Committee on the Judiciary is conducting oversight of how and to what extent foreign laws, regulations, and judicial orders compel, coerce, or influence companies to censor speech in the United States,” the subpoenas say.
According to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Prabhat Agarwal, Head of the European Commission’s Enforcement Team for the Digital Services Act (DSA), told a group of European regulators that his colleagues have started sending messages via an encrypted app, rather than email.
Additionally, Agarwal allegedly ordered colleagues to set auto-delete for all messages, with the auto-delete timings getting shorter. Jordan claims that this served one purpose and one purpose only: to evade accountability by the United States.
That’s why the Committee on the Judiciary has issued subpoenas to ten major American tech companies, demanding that they send over all communications with the European Commission and EU Member States.
The tech companies, including Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Reddit, Rumble, TikTok, and xAI, have already sent thousands of internal documents and communications to the Committee.
“These documents show the extent of the European Commission’s global censorship campaign. The documents demonstrate how the EU coerced social media platforms to take down lawful speech, change their globally applicable content moderation policies, and impose onerous speech restrictions not only within the EU, but also on American speech,” the letters addressed to the tech companies say.
The Committee on the Judiciary also states that the European Commission has failed to offer a rebuttal for this alleged censorship campaign.
“Rather than reconsidering its censorship laws and changing its attitude towards free speech, the European Commission seems to be doubling down on its censorship efforts by attempting to hide them from the public,” the Committee concludes.
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