"But in his prepared testimony, Richard Salgado, Google's director for law enforcement and information security, argued that such an exemption for civil agencies made no sense.
"The power to compel [Internet service] providers to disclose the content of users' communications should be reserved for criminal cases," he said. "Congress should be deeply skeptical of efforts to draft around the Fourth Amendment, which is what some governmental entities are asking it to do."
Federal agencies don't have to start by subpoenaing the target's Internet service provider, Salgado said; they can first subpoena the target. "This is, of course, how civil litigation routinely works," he said. "There is no reason to radically alter our civil litigation system simply because of the advent of cloud computing, which enables litigants to theoretically obtain the same data from service providers like Google."
If the target doesn't turn over the requested records, Salgado pointed out, the SEC and other agencies have a wide range of options, including getting a judge to financially penalize the target."