Now Mother Jones has learned that the targeted accounts do include Americans—a revelation that calls the validity of the subpoena into question. The First Amendment protects the right to speak anonymously, and in cases involving Americans, courts have often quashed subpoenas seeking to discover the identities and locations of anonymous internet users. Earlier this year, a different federal judge quashed Chevron's attempts to seize documents from Amazon Watch, one of the company's most vocal critics. That judge said the subpoena was a violation of the group's First Amendment rights. In this case, though, that same protection has not been extended to activists, journalists, and lawyers' email metadata.

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"Chevron is trying to crush, silence, and chill activism on behalf of the people they screwed over," the activist argues. Michelle Harrison, an attorney for EarthRights International, tells Mother Jones that her clients aren't comfortable going on record about the subpoenas they've received, because "Chevron's dogged pursuit of anyone that dares speak out against them is regrettably having precisely the chilling effect we warned the court it would."

Advocates for the plaintiffs in the Chevron case say that subpoenaing the email records is the company's latest nuclear tactic to win a lawsuit it keeps losing. Chevron was ordered to pay $9 billion in damages in 2011 and to issue a public apology. After the company refused, a judge ordered the damages to double. The Supreme Court has declined to hear Chevron's appeal. The extortion case is set to go to trial on October 15, after Kaplan—whom the Ecuadorean plaintiffs once asked to be removed from the case—refused to delay it.

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"I think if the NSA scandal has taught us anything, anyone who says that 'it's just metadata' doesn't know what metadata is—if I want to spend the night at my friend's house and use his computer, that's my business," Cardozo says. "And if Judge Kaplan thinks seizing metadata is routine, he doesn't know how powerful it can be." The activist adds, "It's a slippery slope. Once one thing is granted, it will only be easier to ask for more."