Slashdot Mirror
Google Handed To FBI 3 Wikileaks Staffers' Emails, Digital Data
Ariastis writes Google took almost three years to disclose to the open information group WikiLeaks that it had handed over emails and other digital data belonging to three of its staffers to the FBI under a secret search warrant issued by a federal judge. WikiLeaks were told last month of warrants which were served in March 2012. The subjects of the warrants were the investigations editor of WikiLeaks, the British citizen Sarah Harrison; the spokesperson for the organisation, Kristinn Hrafnsson; and Joseph Farrell, one of its senior editors. When it notified the WikiLeaks employees last month, Google said it had been unable to say anything about the warrants earlier as a gag order had been imposed.
If I worked for Wikileaks, I think I'd be encrypting everything especially if it involved using a Google server.
"We have a 'secret' warrant. Give us what we want or YOU goto jail."
Damm google for not protecting users... It's all their fault!
Google had no choice under US law. If you want to bash something, bash the US govt. Out of all the big names in tech, Google is still the least evil.
See that Android phone in front of you, the one you say 'OK Google' to? the one with the camera and the face-unlock feature? Google owns your life, and if secret warrants can get Google to turn over data it has on you, then that device in front of you is nothing but a surveillance device.
How many cameras and microphones do you have in the room right now?
They pretend it's about the Swedish "rape" case, by which I mean consenting sex without a condom, for the Wikileaks founder. They hound him for YEARS on such silly charges, pretending that no, it's all very serious and no, they're not interested in extraditing him to the US to be tortured and broken.
And then the other shoe drops. And who is surprised.
At last check it is Microsoft who is fighting these sorts of things... even when significant penalties could be involved if they fail: http://www.zdnet.com/article/m...
Where is Google's backbone?
You can't fix bad government policy with better tech...
Where is Google's backbone?
I dunno, like 2013... http://www.wired.com/2013/01/google-says-get-a-warrant/
I mean, when Yahoo started demanding warrants everyone noted that it was "what Google was already doing" http://www.wired.com/2013/01/yahoo-demands-warrants/
So, Google has already been demanding search warrants for a very long time, and that's exactly what the FBI had!
Google had no choice under US law
Fuck man, stop giving us this shitty excuse!
Under US laws Google has to pay *A SHITLOAD OF TAXES* and what Google did?
Google shifted its money, via accounting, around the world, to Ireland, to Luxembourg, to many other tax havens, so that it doesn't need to pay those taxes
If Google can find ways to skirt around the US laws regarding taxes, don't you fucking tell us Google has no motherfucking choice but to comply to the motherfucking US laws and hand over whatever them fucking goons told it to
Triggered...triggered? Dont use that bullshit social justice lingo. You weren't triggered you dont have PTSD. At best you were annoyed
You mean they were just following orders?
They responded to a search warrant. The only thing that makes this search warrant different from other search warrants is that for some reason you think that emails of the accused person shouldn't be searched in this case. Your justification seems to be purely political. I don't think Google should fight specific search warrants on purely political reasons, Google itself might not have your political views and might not want to fight these search warrants at all, and last Google doesn't actually have any standing to fight these warrants. If there is something wrong with the search warrants, someone's lawyers will bring it up in court.
They were using PGP for internal emails, but couldn't when interacting with people outside the organization who didn't use it. There is also the metadata, which is at least as valuable as the content.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
PGP/GPG is much easier to use these days than it was in the 90's. Plugins exist for many mail clients that do the heavy lifting in the background.
Friends and family are surely tired of my tinfoil hat, they just do not seem to care about their privacy. Many say the "I have nothing to hide" line.
Trolling is a art,
The "I have nothing to hide" line frustrates me too.
The twitter-friendly response is, "Just because I have nothing to hide, it doesn't mean I'm happy with a webcam on my toilet."
The longer response is that the NSA is asking Google to record all of my searches, Comcast to record every website I visit at home, Verizon to record every place my cell phone goes and every cell phone call I make, and Voipo (my home phone service, similar to Vonage) to record the phone number on every home call I make. Even if I was comfortable with the government possessing that information without probable cause, it means a crooked law enforcement official, a disgruntled employee, or a criminal hacker can get a scary amount of private data about me from any one of those five sources and use it to stalk me or commit identity theft. If I am the only person with all of that data then the stalkers, the identity thieves, and the government have to hack my personal machines to get it.