Google was forced to hand over to the US authorities the correspondence of two Wikileaks volunteers

After receiving the classified court orders, Google transferred the data of the Gmail accounts of two former Wikileaks volunteers to the US authorities, Mashable writes . The targets were Smarie McCarthy and Herbert Snorrason, both from Iceland. McCarthy is an Internet activist and programmer who worked at Wikileaks until 2010. Snorrason helped manage Wikileaks chat for two months in 2010.

On Tuesday, Google sent them letters, informing them of court orders, which until May 2 were classified. These warrants do not contain official confirmation that they are related to the Wikileaks case, which is being investigated by a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, but everything points in this direction.

The investigation itself began in May 2010, the authorities acknowledged this fact at the end of the same year. As the journalist Alex O'Brien found out in March, it still continues.
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In the case of McCarthy, Google received a warrant on July 14, 2011 ( PDF ) with the requirement to transfer “records and other information” from McCarthy’s Gmail account. The information provided included a large amount of metadata, dated from November 1, 2009. In particular, among the data were the names and physical addresses associated with the account, the IP addresses of the computers from which they logged into the account. Also included was information related to the use of mail, such as who he communicated with, when, where from, and for how long.

As for the Snorrason account, Google received the same order, as well as a search warrant dated October 14, 2011. In accordance with it ( PDF ), the authorities received “saved copies of letters [...] draft letters, deleted letters, letters” and “source and destination addresses associated with each letter, the date and time when each letter was sent, and also the size and length of each letter. ”

As Snorrason wrote on his website , “Google was forced to transmit all the electronic correspondence associated with my Gmail account, every piece of information that they had about me, and everything that I uploaded to Google.”

And, most likely, this happened simply because he was connected, though not for long, with Assange. “I repeat this because I find it most remarkable: due to the fact that I spoke with Julian Assange, all the information associated with my account and stored in Google can be passed on to American prosecutors,” he wrote.

Despite the large amount of data transmitted by Google, McCarthy and Snorrason are not too worried : "Fortunately, none of us used our Google accounts for anything at least a little important."