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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.
Legality of tax evasion schemes is flaky, moreso - it's quite hard to nail corporations for it, because they follow the letter of the law and game the system in order to minimize their taxes. Now telling FBI off and refusing to comply with a court order is entirely different game - penalties can range up to total halt of all services google provides on US soil and confiscation of every tangible item feds can get their hands on. You want change - go whine at government for insilling the rules not at corporations playing by them.
They pretend it's about the Swedish "rape" case, by which I mean consenting sex without a condom.
Sigh. First off, it's just as easy to extradite someone to the US from the UK as it is from Sweden. If the US wants him, there's no need for them to somehow persuade the Swedish authorities to extradite him first on their behalf.
Second, sex without consent is rape. If someone agrees to have sex with you on condition that you use a condom, then they haven't consented to condom-less sex. And condom-less sex with a promiscuous stranger risks such nasties as HIV. Whether this happened, we don't know. But the Swedish authorities have the right to carry out an investigation.
Overall, my feeling is that WikiLeaks is an important public service, but that Julian Assange is a bit of an arsehole.
First off, it's just as easy to extradite someone to the US from the UK as it is from Sweden.
Sweden has helpfully allowed the US to extradite two people without going through the usual legal procedures. That is to say, they didn't debate the matter in court: they just grabbed them off the street, bundled them into an airplane and flew them out of the country within a few hours. The only reason their lawyer even knew this was happening is because he was in the middle of a phone conversation with one of them when he was grabbed. The two of them were flown to Egypt, where they were tortured. (Or, just possibly, were treated with perfect humaneness by the Egyptian government, and concocted an elaborate lie about being tortured. And if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.)
To my knowledge, there is no similar case of anyone being abducted from the UK with the consent of the UK government. If I had earned the enmity of the US, I'd feel much safer in the UK than in Sweden.