The company behind the encrypted communication smartphone application Signal was given what it considers an overbroad subpoena for customer records and an unnecesary gag order earlier this year, and a court now has allowed the documents demanding the information to be released.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the company and published the request Tuesday, says the case shows authorities demand more customer information than is authorized by law and unconstitutionally squelches public objections.

Open Whisper Systems, it turns out, had hardly anything to offer the federal grand jury that issued the subpoena in the Eastern District of Virginia, and the Justice Department agreed that an initial one-year gag order could be partially lifted.

The company said it could offer only the date of account creation and last connection date – and for only one of two phone numbers requested.

Signal allows users to privately place phone calls, send text messages and participate in group chats, and its maker says in a blog post Tuesday that in addition to keeping little information about users, "[a]ll message contents are end to end encrypted, so we don't have that information either."

The subpoena, however, sought “any and all subscriber account information and any associated accounts to include subscriber name, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, method of payment, IP registration, IP history logs and addresses, account history, toll records, upstream and downstream providers, any associated accounts acquired through cookie data, and any other contact information from inception to the present.”

In a court filing on behalf of the company, the civil liberties group says "not all of those types of infomation can be appropriately requested with a subpoena" and that the government needs a court order or search warrant for records not listed in 18 U.S.C. § 2703(c)(2), which says:

(2) A provider of electronic communication service or remote computing service shall disclose to a governmental entity the—

(A) name;

(B) address;

(C) local and long distance telephone connection records, or records of session times and durations;

(D) length of service (including start date) and types of service utilized;

(E) telephone or instrument number or other subscriber number or identity, including any temporarily assigned network address; and

(F) means and source of payment for such service (including any credit card or bank account number),

of a subscriber to or customer of such service when the governmental entity uses an administrative subpoena authorized by a Federal or State statute or a Federal or State grand jury or trial subpoena or any means available under paragraph (1).

ACLU staff attorney Brett Max Kaufman says in an email that the request was overbroad in asking for toll records that contain metadata about a target's communications, "to which the government is not entitled under the statute when it comes to internet providers."

Kaufman says "there are also questions about what it means when it asks for upstream and downstream providers, associated accounts via cookie data, and contact information, as there is no plain entitlement to that information by subpoena under [the Electronic Communications Privacy Act]."

In a blog post, Kaufman writes that the subpoena is the only one of its kind received by Open Whisper Systems, but that “there are many more like it, hiding in the filing cabinets in the U.S. attorney’s offices across the country" and that the quick government agreement to drop the gag order shows unjustifiable secrecy has become a default.

This is the only data we had and were forced to turn over. We'll make all future government requests available here: https://t.co/SVZqTrdEsg pic.twitter.com/zd27UR4x8E — Open Whisper Systems (@whispersystems) October 4, 2016

U.S. Magistrate Judge John F. Anderson's Sept. 29 ruling allowing release of redacted records did not allow for identification of the targets.

Though the request targeted the Signal app, the technology company also provides encryption technology for WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and the new service Google Allo. The company's website features endorsements from whistleblower Edward Snowden and leading technology experts.

"The documents released today make clear that the government is using wide-ranging secrecy orders in routine fashion, but it is the government’s burden in every case to justify secrecy under the First Amendment standard," Kaufman says by email. "Technology companies like Signal have a critical role to play in the public debate about government surveillance, and the government should not be using overbroad gag orders to prevent those companies’ participation in that debate."