LONDON: Whistleblowing site WikiLeaks has alleged that IT giant Google is providing the emails and electronic data of its senior staff to the America.
Google has already been issued warrants by the US Department of Justice, which is investigating WikiLeaks for publishing hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic files.
WikiLeaks said the allegations against it point to a far broader investigation into its activities than the US authorities have previously indicated. Alleged offences range from espionage to theft of US government property and computer fraud and abuse, it said. “Today, WikiLeaks’ lawyers have written to Google and the US Department of Justice concerning a serious violation of the privacy and journalistic rights of WikiLeaks’ staff,” the site said in a statement.
WikiLeaks said that Google could and should have resisted complying with the warrants, as well as immediately informing those whose data it handed over.
The warrants demanded emails, contacts and IP addresses relating to the Google accounts of investigations editor Sarah Harrison, section editor Joseph Farrell and spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson. “We want to know why the three journalists were not notified of being spied (upon),” Harrison said at a press conference in Geneva.
The information was handed over to the US authorities on April 5, 2012, but Google did not inform the WikiLeaks staff until December 23, 2014, according to documents obtained by AFP. WikiLeaks has been targeted by the US authorities since its release in 2010 of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and 250,000 diplomatic cables.
