Google says it fought gag orders in WikiLeaks investigation

Google has fought all gag orders preventing it from telling customers that their e-mails and other data were sought by the US government in a long-running investigation of the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, which published leaked diplomatic cables and military documents.

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. In the latest instance, the three WikiLeaks staff members revealed that Google notified them on Dec 23 that their e-mails were the subject of search warrants -- almost three years after the broad warrants were issued by a magistrate judge in the Eastern District of Virginia. Google’s belated disclosure contrasts with the way in which Twitter, the microblogging platform, was able to quickly inform several of its customers in 2011 that the federal government had demanded their subscriber data in the WikiLeaks inquiry. Google’s delay was not the result of foot-dragging but of opposition from prosecutors who were upset by the backlash that followed the disclosure of their court orders to Twitter.