Conservative groups are clapping back against Google’s efforts to keep its secretive relationship with Apple under lock and key.
US District Judge Amit Mehta, who is presiding over the Department of Justice Antitrust Division’s landmark suit against Google, has ruled exhibits can be unsealed daily. But Apple and Google are allowed to contest what is unsealed — and in practice, that means very little thus far has seen the light of day.
Nonprofit groups — including representatives from American Principles Project and the Center for Renewing America — filed a motion Thursday in DC federal court to make all exhibits about Google’s relationship with Apple as well as top Apple executive Eddy Cue’s testimony publicly available.
“Although Judge Mehta is really trying to make sure that this case is as transparent as possible. Google and Apple still maintain their gatekeeping position over the information the public will get to see in this trial,” Joel Thayer, an attorney for the third party groups said.
“Google and Apple, in effect, can impose prior restraints on documents critical for the public to understand how it influences our elections, our children, and everyday lives. Worse, both companies have shown that they are willing to leverage its nearly endless resources to ensure these exhibits and transcripts never reach the public.”
The filing represents a growing frustration among antitrust advocates that a case they’ve been waiting years for — and believe could be the most important antitrust case since Standard Oil was broken up — is largely under seal.
“It’s very disappointing the public isn’t getting insight here,” Jon Schweppe, policy director at American Principles Project said. “We want to see the investigation and see the law upheld and it’s concerning when we can’t.”
Google and Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
It’s not just Google and Apple pushing for secrecy, it’s also Amazon, which got slapped with an antitrust suit from the Federal Trade Commission this week, sources add.
“The FTC is pushing the judge to let them ‘unredact’ information in the Amazon trial,” Luther Lowe, Senior Vice President of Public Policy at Yelp said. “This is part of a larger effort to keep people from looking under the hood… we are in uncharted territory in terms of opaqueness.”
The FTC has asked a judge to unseal redacted documents from its filings in 14 days unless Amazon moves to keep them secret.
As for Google, “It’s ironic that the company whose mission is to ‘organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’ is doing everything it can to suppress basic access to info about a trial where we all have skin in the game,” Lowe adds.
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