|
By Staff Writers, teleSUR
teleSUR
Monday, Jan 26, 2015
Wikileaks staff protested against what they consider an astonishing violation of privacy.
Wikileaks has demanded answers as Google revealed that it had handed journalists’ email content and contact lists to the U.S. government, three years after the facts, according to the Guardian.
The U.S.-based company explained that the move was only because of a secret search warrant emitted by a federal judge in March 2012. The three journalists were the investigations editor of WikiLeaks, British citizen Sarah Harrison; the spokesperson for the organisation, Kristinn Hrafnsson; and Joseph Farrell, one of its senior editors. Google revealed to Wikileaks “on Christmas Eve,” according to the Guardian, that it was asked to hand over, before April 2012, all the content of their emails, both sent and received, and deleted, as well as the drafts. The U.S. government also required all information available on their internet accounts, like their telephone numbers and bank accounts, and all their contacts.
Alexander Abdo, a staff attorney and privacy expert at the American Civil Liberties Union quoted in the Guardian's article, expressed his astonishment about the U.S. government request, “This is basically ‘Hand over anything you’ve got on this person’,” he said. “That’s troubling as it’s hard to distinguish what WikiLeaks did in its disclosures from what major newspapers do every single day in speaking to government officials and publishing still-secret information.”
The court order was allegedly part of the 2010 criminal investigation that the Unites States launched over Wikileaks after it released hundreds of thousands diplomatic cables, passed by military expert Chelsea Manning, revealing information on Washington's war crimes.
Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’ founder, said the search warrants were part of a “serious, and seriously wrong attempt to build an alleged ‘conspiracy’ case against me and my staff.” He said that the real conspiracy was “Google rolling over yet again to help the US government violate the constitution – by taking over journalists’ private emails in response to give-us-everything warrants”.
In a letter to Google's executive director, Eric Schmidt, Wikileaks questioned the fact that the U.S. company did not attempt to challenge the warrants in an appeal court, as Twitter had done in the past.
|
 Print This
|
Print This 
