'Attack on journalism': WikiLeaks responds to Google's cooperation with US govt

[Menerva Lindsen]

Google’s willingness to surrender the private emails of WikiLeaks staffers to the United States government amounts to an “attack on journalism,” a representative for the whistleblower group says.
Kristinn Hrafnsson, an Icelandic journalist who joined WikiLeaks as the group’s spokesman in 2010, said he’s “appalled” that Google gave up his personal correspondence and other sensitive details to the US government in compliance with a search warrant served to the tech giant, apparently in an effort to bring charges against the anti-secrecy organization and its editor, Julian Assange.
“I believe this is an attack on me. As a journalist for now almost 30 years, I think this is an attack on journalism,” Hrafnsson said Monday at a press conference in Geneva, Switzerland.
Earlier that day, WikiLeaks announced that the Google accounts registered to three staffers – Hrafnsson, investigations editor Sarah Harrison and senior editor Joseph Farrell – had been the subject of federal search warrants served to the tech giant in March 2012.
And we willingly claim to live in the most free country in the world. I wouldn't call the 21 century "the century of information". I would call it the century of total control and censorship with the help of massmedia services...

 

[Sonny Clark]

Google’s willingness to surrender the private emails of WikiLeaks staffers to the United States government amounts to an “attack on journalism,” a representative for the whistleblower group says.
Kristinn Hrafnsson, an Icelandic journalist who joined WikiLeaks as the group’s spokesman in 2010, said he’s “appalled” that Google gave up his personal correspondence and other sensitive details to the US government in compliance with a search warrant served to the tech giant, apparently in an effort to bring charges against the anti-secrecy organization and its editor, Julian Assange.
“I believe this is an attack on me. As a journalist for now almost 30 years, I think this is an attack on journalism,” Hrafnsson said Monday at a press conference in Geneva, Switzerland.
Earlier that day, WikiLeaks announced that the Google accounts registered to three staffers – Hrafnsson, investigations editor Sarah Harrison and senior editor Joseph Farrell – had been the subject of federal search warrants served to the tech giant in March 2012.
And we willingly claim to live in the most free country in the world. I wouldn't call the 21 century "the century of information". I would call it the century of total control and censorship with the help of massmedia services...

The government has their corrupt hands in all the pies. There is no privacy, period. Free speech is a thing of the past. I posted yesterday on the Bill of Rights and our loss. The government wants to know everything about everybody, no exceptions. The government wants to be the only one with secrets and privacy.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

'...he’s “appalled” that Google gave up his personal correspondence and other sensitive details to the US government in compliance with a search warrant...'

A search warrant means sufficient evidence exists that a crime may have been committed, where a search is warranted pursuant to 4th Amendment jurisprudence. A warrant is neither an indictment nor an admission of guilt.

Moreover, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy when one willingly provides personal information to a third party, such as a wireless company or ISP.

'And we willingly claim to live in the most free country in the world. I wouldn't call the 21 century "the century of information". I would call it the century of total control and censorship with the help of massmedia services...'

Ignorant, hyperbolic nonsense.

We do live in the most free country in the world, the fact that the search was conducted authorized by a warrant is proof of that – in a less free country the search would have been conducted absent a warrant, without any compelling evidence of potential wrongdoing.

 

[Anathema]

Google was served with a warrant for the information. I'd be calling for the company to be shut down permanently by the Government if they had not supplied the required information. If the TERRORIST organization known as WikiLeaks wishes to be more anonymous, they can move to Europe and stop doing business in the United States. Until that happens, I do hope the US Government and anyone else they tick off makes the lives of WikiLeaks employees as unpleasant as humanly possible.

 

[hipeter924]

All emails are public sphere these days, and you have a higher likelyhood to keep a message private if you send it by regular mail to a post box. Rather than writing private stuff on a computer, try paper as it can't be hacked yet.