A month ago, Google said it does not publicly address individual cases when it comes to government requests for customer data “to help protect all our users.”
But on Wednesday, Google changed course after being ripped for failing to notify WikiLeaks that three years ago, Google handed over data to federal authorities about three staffers of the secret-spilling site as part of the government’s espionage probe of the site and its founder, Julian Assange. The reason for the three-year delay, Google said, was because it had been under a gag order that it was fighting.
“From January 2011 to the present, Google has continued to fight to lift the gag orders on any legal process it has received on WikiLeaks,” Al Gidari, a Google lawyer told The Washington Post. He said the media giant’s policy is to always challenge indefinite gag orders. The gags on these were partly lifted, he said.
Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments