NEW YORK: WikiLeaks exposes company that it had curved emails, pieces of information on WikiLeaks employees to American officials.
What makes this quite interesting, and aggravating to WikiLeaks, is how Google supposedly submitted this information way back in the spring of 2012, and not at a rather recent time. That means it had been two and a half years before Google confirmed the government request to WikiLeaks. The request was made by the FBI in March 2012, and asked Google to furnish all emails and information therein relating to the three WikiLeaks employees. Requested info included content of sent, received, and draft emails, the emails’ destination, IP addresses, and credit cards linked to the employees’ email accounts. It’s not clear yet how much data was forwarded to the government, but WikiLeaks is now demanding answers from Mountain View.
WikiLeaks said through legal counsel Michael Ratner that it is “astonished and disturbed” that Google had waited so long to admit that it had complied with the government request. The activist group is also miffed that the three employees – Joseph Farrell, Sarah Harrison, and Kristin Hrafnsson – weren’t able to defend themselves in a way that would have prevented their data from leaking out to the government. Google is legally barred from revealing the extent of its compliance with the request due to a court-imposed gag order on the company.
