Jacob Appelbaum
“Google released another legal disclosure notice related to the United States government’s ongoing grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks,” Kevin Gosztola writes at Firedoglake.
Google recently told Jacob Appelbaum, who has worked with WikiLeaks, that Google was ordered by the U.S. government to provide data from his account to federal investigators.
From Firedoglake:
Google’s full legal disclosure to Appelbaum consisted of 306 pages of documents. He did not post the disclosure in its entirety but shared screen shots of parts of the disclosure through his Twitter account.
On April 1, the government apparently determined there was some information that could be disclosed to Appelbaum.
The government seems to confirm in legal documents that it does not consider WikiLeaks to be a journalistic enterprise. It also writes, “The government does not concede that the [redacted] subscriber is a journalist,” referring to Appelbaum.
Nevertheless, the government broaches the issue and insists “newsmen” may be subject to grand jury investigations of this intrusive nature.
“Google Reveals It Was Forced to Hand Over Journalist’s Data for WikiLeaks Grand Jury Investigation” [Firedoglake]
Applebaum’s tweets on Google’s disclosure follow.