WikiLeaks is going through the roof over Google, alleging the search company of violating the constitutional rights of its members after complying with an overbroad government request for the email content and all related information of three WikiLeaks staff.
In a letter sent to Google chairman Eric Schmidt, WikiLeaks' lawyer Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, says the open information organization is "astonished and disturbed" that Google took two and a half years before it notified three WikiLeaks members, whom Ratner describes as journalists and editors, about the government request seeking all of their email content, including sent and received emails, draft emails, and deleted emails, the source and destination of these emails, and the dates and times received.
The request also covered information about the Internet accounts of the three members, namely investigations editor Sarah Harrison, section editor Joseph Farrell, and senior journalist and spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson. This information included their phone numbers, IP addresses, the time and duration of their online activities, alternative email addresses, and even their credit card and bank account details.
Ratner says the warrant was issued in 2012 in conjunction with an ongoing government investigation on WikiLeaks concerning espionage, conspiracy to commit espionage, theft or conversion of property belonging to the U.S. government, and violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. However, Google only notified his clients on Dec. 23.
"Had Ms. Harrison, Mr. Hrafnsson, or Mr. Farrell been aware of such proceedings they could have intervened and protected their interests including their rights to privacy, association, and freedom from illegal searches," writes [pdf] Ratner in his letter.
For its part, Google says it was only able to reveal the warrant more than two years after because it had to comply with a non-disclosure agreement with federal investigators requiring it to keep government requests for data to itself until a certain period of time. A spokesperson for Google tells The Wall Street Journal that the company continues to "argue for surveillance reform which would enable us to be more transparent."
"Our policy is to tell people about government requests for their data, except in limited cases, like when we are gagged by a court order, which sadly happens quite frequently," says Google.
Speaking at a news conference in Geneva, Switzerland, WikiLeaks legal director Judge Baltasar Garzon acknowledges that Google may have been under a gag order, preventing it from disclosing information about the warrant to its Gmail subscribers. However, WikiLeaks is still furious at Google for not initiating any legal challenge to the broad warrant.
The anti-secrecy organization is challenging Google to provide WikiLeaks a list of all materials provided to law enforcement, a copy of the search warrant issued to Google, and all correspondences between Google and the Eastern District of Virginia relating to the request for information.
"While it is too late for our clients to have the notice they should have had, they are still entitled to a list of Google's disclosures to the government and an explanation why Google waited more than two and a half years to provide any notice," says Ratner.
Garzon says WikiLeaks members do not use Gmail to communicate about internal matters or with their sources, but the warrants "represent a substantial invasion of their personal privacy and freedom."
"Knowing that the FBI read the words I wrote to console my mother over a death in the family makes me feel sick," Harrison, who heads the Courage Foundation, says in an interview with the Guardian. "Neither Google nor the U.S. government are living up to their own laws or rhetoric in privacy or press protections."
