Google says it fought US govt's gag orders in Wikileaks email investigation case

Recently WikiLeaks criticised Google, alleging that the company waited two and a half years to notify members of the anti-secrecy group that it had turned over their private emails and other information to the US government. In a letter to Google, lawyers representing WikiLeaks said they were “astonished and disturbed” by Google’s actions relating to search warrants it received from federal law enforcement officials and asked for a full accounting of the information Google gave the government. “While it is too late for our clients to have the notice they should have had, they are still entitled to a list of Google’s disclosures to the government and an explanation why Google waited more than two and a half years to provide any notice,” read the letter from the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of WikiLeaks and addressed to Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and General Counsel Kent Walker. Now Google has said that it was under a gag order for three years and that it even tried to fight the order that prevented it from informing the Wikileaks staff about the surveillance. According to a Washington Post report, Google attorney Albert Gidari, said in an interview that “the company’s challenges date to January 2011 and include an attempt to overturn gag orders accompanying search warrants issued in March 2012 for the e-mails of three WikiLeaks staff members.” Gidari added that “Google’s long battle to inform its customers about the warrants and court orders has been fought largely in secret because of the court-imposed gags, hampering its effort to counter the impression that it has not stood up for users’ privacy,” says the report. Interestingly Google’s handling of the matter has been compared to how in contrast social-media site Twitter handled a similar request. In 2010, when US government asked for data from Twitter, the site quickly informed the Wikileaks staffs about the data request. Wikileaks in their letter had praised Twitter for its actions. However Gidari added that this was an unfair comparison because “prosecutors…were upset by the backlash that followed the disclosure of their court orders to Twitter.” According to Gidari, Twitter’s actions meant Google could no longer do something similar. As  far as Google and privacy are concerned, it has faced criticism in the past about how it has handled user data. But it seems in the Wikileaks case, the company tried hard to fight gag orders, but couldn’t do so. With inputs from Reuters