WikiLeaks demands explanation after Google passes staff e-mails to US Government

After three years, Google revealed to WikiLeaks that it had passed on e-mails and other digital data belonging to three people from the staff. The information was supplied to the US Government under a secret search warrant issued by a Federal Judge it has been revealed.

WikiLeaks wrote to Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, to protest as Google only spoke about the search warrants last month after it had received them back in March 2012. 

In the letter, WikiLeaks said it is “astonished and disturbed that Google waited more than two and a half years to notify its subscribers, potentially depriving them of their ability to protect their rights to privacy, association and freedom from illegal searches”.

On Christmas Eve, Google said that it had responded responded to a Justice Department order to hand over digital data including all emails and IP addresses relating to the three WikiLeaks staffers. The subjects of the warrants were the investigations editor of WikiLeaks, the British citizen Sarah Harrisson the spokesperson for the organisation, Kristin Hrafnsson and Joseph Farrell, one of its senior editors.

 Google said it had been unable to say anything about the warrants earlier as a gag order had been imposed. Google maintained that the order had since been lifted, but they did not specify when.

The data grab is believed to be part of a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks that was launched in 2010 by the US departments of Justice, Defense and State. The investigation followed WikiLeaks’ publication, (initially in participation with international news organisations including the Guardian,) of hundreds of thousands of US secrets that had been passed to the organisation by the army private Chelsea Manning.

The warrants were issued by a federal judge in the eastern district of Virginia – the jurisdiction in which a grand jury was set up under the criminal investigation into WikiLeaks. The investigation was confirmed to be still active as recently as May last year.

The warrants cite alleged violations of the 1917 Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act – the same reasons used to prosecute Manning. The data seizures were approved by a federal magistrate judge, John Anderson, who later issued the arrest warant for the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’ founder and editor-in-chief, 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 in his view 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”.

Assange remains in asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, facing extradition to Sweden following sexual assault and rape allegations that he denies and for which he has never been charged.