EPIC files FOIA request seeking full FCC report on Google
Summary: The Electronic Privacy Information Center wants to see the full, unedited report the Federal Communications Commission published on its investigation of Google and possible violations of wiretap laws.
Context & Ripple Effects
This FOIA filing is the latest move in a years-long EPIC campaign against Google's privacy record: the group asked the FTC to investigate back in March 2009 and filed an emergency appeal in its Google privacy case in February 2012 after an earlier refusal. Now it is going after the regulator itself, demanding the unedited version of the FCC report on the wiretap-law inquiry.
The story travelled widely on the day — pickups at CNET, the Los Angeles Times and AllThingsD alongside ZDNet — reflecting how much attention the question of what the FCC found, and what its published report left out, was drawing.
First-order effects
- The FCC must now process EPIC's request under FOIA, forcing a formal decision on how much of its Google wiretap investigation report stays redacted.
- Google faces renewed scrutiny of conduct already probed by a federal agency, with EPIC positioning the withheld material as potentially material to its broader privacy complaints.
Second-order effects
- A fuller release would hand EPIC documentary ammunition for the FTC- and court-facing track of its campaign, raising the cost to regulators of closing such inquiries with heavily edited findings.
- Other privacy groups gain a template: when an agency publishes only a partial account of a tech investigation, a FOIA demand becomes the next escalation step.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, watchdog organizations will keep shifting from petitioning regulators to litigating against their disclosure decisions, making transparency about how agencies police large platforms part of the accountability mechanism itself.
The trend: Privacy advocacy against Google is escalating from regulatory petitions through appeals to forced disclosure via FOIA, with each refusal feeding the next legal move.