A Ballard Spahr lawyer and a corporate executive for Microsoft said the U.S. Department of Justice is too often relying on secret subpoenas to seize electronic data, a maneuver the department used to evade its own procedures to subpoena journalists.

The comments came during a House Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday as lawmakers dig into the circumstances of the Trump-era Justice Department’s use of secret subpoenas to target news organizations and politicians in leak investigations.