In May, companies including Apple and Facebook made headlines for fighting back against indiscriminate government data collection; their complaint wasn't even that the government was demanding so much information about the companies' customers, but that the companies were forbidden to let the users know of the government's interest in them.

And now Facebook is being threatened with contempt of court charges in New York over the similar argument.

On June 26, Facebook deputy general counsel Chris Sonderby posted an announcement in Facebook's newsroom about “Fighting bulk search warrants in court:”

Since last summer, we’ve been fighting hard against a set of sweeping search warrants issued by a court in New York that demanded we turn over nearly all data from the accounts of 381 people who use our service, including photos, private messages and other information. This unprecedented request is by far the largest we’ve ever received—by a magnitude of more than ten—and we have argued that it was unconstitutional from the start.

Of the 381 people whose accounts were the subject of these warrants, 62 were later charged in a disability fraud case. This means that no charges will be brought against more than 300 people whose data was sought by the government without prior notice to the people affected. The government also obtained gag orders that prohibited us from discussing this case and notifying any of the affected people until now.