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Committee hears bill to expand GBI administrative subpoenas for cyber-enabled threats including swatting
Summary
Representative Crow told the Judiciary Committee the bill expands limited administrative-subpoena authority so the GBI can quickly obtain subscriber records from electronic service providers in investigations of swatting, terrorist threats and related crimes.
Representative Crow presented House Bill 161, a proposal to expand existing administrative-subpoena authority used in child-exploitation and identity-fraud cases so the Georgia Bureau of Investigation can swiftly obtain subscriber information from electronic service providers for a broader set of computer- and communications-enabled offenses, including swatting, identity fraud, certain computer crimes, harassing phone calls and terrorist threats.
Sarah Lou and other GBI witnesses described practical limits investigators face when tracing electronic threats and said the bill is meant to speed identification of accounts and subscribers. "This bill would allow us to act with expediency for these threats ... and we would be able to identify through the assistance of our director's office ... simple subscriber information from these electronic service providers," Sarah Lou said, citing a recent multi-jurisdiction swatting case and saying the GBI handled more than 500 threats to life in the prior fiscal year.
Current procedures, witnesses said, require local warrants, grand-jury subpoenas or travel to the jurisdiction with a magistrate; those paths can be slow or unavailable (grand juries are not always in session). GBI testified an administrative-subpoena mechanism would permit attorney-general-reviewed requests for the limited categories of subscriber data (name, billing and subscriber identifiers, IP connection times and similar metadata) without immediate judicial sign-off, with the aim of quickly establishing identity and jurisdiction so investigators can halt further threats.
Committee members asked about safeguards, timing and defense access to materials. Defense representatives asked the committee to add language ensuring defense counsel receives copies of subpoenas in discovery; the defense proposal was limited to adding a discovery cross-reference and counsel said the GBI and sponsor had coordinated on that approach.
The committee did not record a final vote on the bill in the transcript; the chair said members would return to the measure at a later meeting because the committee lacked a quorum at the end of the day's business.
Clarifying details from the hearing: the bill would expand administrative-subpoena authority already used for child-exploitation and identity-fraud investigations to a set of additional code sections (the sponsor cited specific code section numbers in committee). Testimony emphasized the subpoenas would be limited in scope to subscriber identification and connection metadata rather than full content.
