Steve Bryant of eWeek.com’s Google Watch site says,
I was searching about in public court docs and found a warrant from last month that shows the feds searched Google. The doc relates a fascinating story about a dude in West Virginia who sent hate mail to the NAACP via Gmail, and how the FBI caught him. Very CSI: Mountain View. A cautionary tale for all the playah hatahs out there.
Here’s a snip from the text of Steve’s blog post:
The recovered records included the offending e-mail, registration information, session timestamps, and originating IP addresses for amgonow@gmail.com.
That e-mail address was used by a Randall C. Ashby II to send threatening speech from Weston, West Virginia to the Washington Bureau of the NAACP on May 22,2006. That act was a violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 875c (Interstate Communication of a Threat).
The email read:
You are no match for our numbers and our power. We will come out of the night and rise from the dirt to murder you in your sleep. Meet us on 6/6/06 to seal your fate. The end is at hand, accept your place at the foot of the true masters throne. The kingdom of god is for naught, Hell will rule the earth soon enough. We will meet you at the center of sin, Washington on June 6th or you can hide and die like the insignificant mortals you are. Christ is Dead.
According to court records, there is currently no legal action against Google pending in this matter. Google did not immediately return a request for comment.
However, documents obtained by Google Watch shed light on a fascinating tail of digital sleuthing.
Read the rest of it here.
Reader comment: Steve Bryant’s post is interesting for a number of reasons, one of which being the sleuthing trail it traces. But it’s worth pointing out that these kinds of requests from federal investigators are not uncommon, and this is not the first time Google has received one. BoingBoing reader SleepNoMore says,
I’m an attorney in New York, and this sort of thing happens quite frequently, in both civil and criminal actions. Civil parties can subpoena Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo for gmail, hotmail, or yahoo email account information, including any and all emails sent from a specific email address. As this practice is legally acceptable for civil actions, it would certainly seem reasonable to allow such requests (via valid search warrants) in the context of criminal cases involving real threats of violence or otherwise. Of course, defense attorneys can and do frequently challenge such requests and confidentiality and/or protective orders are often required before information is released. But this is certainly nothing new or surprising in the legal realm – Google and Microsoft must receive thousands of similar search warrants and subpoenas each day and likely have a separate legal department for dealing with such requests.