WASHINGTON — An online privacy group is asking a federal court to order the release of all communications between Google Inc. and a former Justice Department official who now works for the Internet search company.

Jane Horvath was Justice’s chief privacy and civil liberties officer when Google fought a broad request for information by the department.

In a suit filed Tuesday in the U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Electronic Frontier Foundation says Justice violated the Freedom of Information Act by withholding records it requested about Hovrath and Google.

In 2006, the Justice Department sought the text of every term entered into Google’s search engine during a one-week period. Google largely succeeded in resisting the request, which was eventually scaled back to 5,000 random searches, the EFF said.

Horvath was “publicly critical” of the initial request’ scope, the EFF said.

Google announced that it hired Horvath as a senior privacy counsel in August 2007.

“Google has an unprecedented ability to collect and retain very personal information about millions of Americans, and (Justice) and other law enforcement agencies have developed a huge appetite for that information,” David Sobel, senior counsel for EFF, said in a release. “We want to know what discussions DOJ’s top privacy lawyer had with Google before leaving her government position to join the company.”

The foundation is seeking all correspondence, e-mail and other communications between Horvath and Google. The group said it filed a FOIA request seeking the information more than six months ago, as Hovrath was preparing to leave. EFF said Justice hasn’t responded to the FOIA request. Responses are required within 20 working days.

A Justice spokesman said the department had no comment on the matter.