US committee demands Big Tech share private comms with EU officials

The U.S. Congress Judiciary Committee is pushing technology companies to provide access to all communications with European Commission officials that relate to the enforcement of EU digital rules. The committee sent letters Monday to 10 companies including Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Reddit, Rumble, TikTok and X. Chairman Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, said the companies are required to preserve and produce relevant communications, including these auto-deleting messages, with foreign censors under subpoenas issued in February. The letters cite comments from a senior EU official first reported by POLITICO that communications included messages set to auto-delete. The comments were made by the Commission's lead DSA enforcer, Prabhat Agrawal, in February to civil society groups, regulators and platforms. Agrawal said that following pressure from the U.S., his colleagues have started sending messages via Signal rather than email, and many now have messages set to auto-delete, with the auto-delete timings getting shorter. The committee said its subpoenas require that documents are not deleted or modified and that it expects full compliance. The EU law governing online content at the biggest tech companies is at the center of a fight between the EU and the U.S. over the limits of platform regulation. The committee has accused the Commission of censorship through its Digital Services Act on the basis that it harms the freedom of speech of Europeans and Americans while the Commission has strongly denied the accusations and said it is seeking to minimize risks to users.