Google says it fought gag orders in WikiLeaks case

Google has fought all gag orders preventing it from telling customers that their emails and other data were sought by the U.S. government in a long-running investigation of the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, which published leaked diplomatic cables and military documents, an attorney representing the tech firm said this week.

The tech firm's challenges date to January 2011 and include an attempt to overturn gag orders accompanying search warrants issued in March 2012 for the emails of three WikiLeaks staff members, said the attorney, Albert Gidari, in an interview.

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, Gidari said.

In the latest instance, the three WikiLeaks staff members revealed this week that Google notified them on Dec. 23 that their emails 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.

"We are astonished and disturbed that Google waited over two and a half years to notify its subscribers," Michael Ratner, an attorney for the staff members, wrote in a letter Monday to Google chairman Eric Schmidt.

Google says it challenged the secrecy from the beginning and was able to alert the customers only after the gag orders on those warrants were partly lifted, said Gidari, a partner at the Perkins Coie law firm.

"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," he said, adding that the company's policy is to challenge all gag orders that have indefinite time periods.

The affidavits and applications underlying the orders are still sealed. The company said it is seeking to unseal them.

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.

According to Gidari, whose firm has represented both companies, 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.

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Google says it fought gag orders in WikiLeaks case