U.S. Government Compels Google To Hand Over Wikileaks Volunteer's Gmail Data

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_hands_wikileaks_volunteers_gmail_data_to_us.php

by mcantelon • 15 years ago

175 77 15 years ago

chadp• 15 years ago

A good (but already known) reason to leave gmail.

yanw3• 15 years ago

How is it a gmail only problem? The government got a court order to force them, Google didn't hand it over willingly. It's the government who is at fault here and the shitty laws that enable it.

Abundnce10• 15 years ago

The article states that the government had a court order but didn't have a search warrant. It seems there is a loop in the system with the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. My questions is, did Google 'have' to give over his Gmail account information? Or do they just comply to make their lives easier?

wladimir• 15 years ago

Right, it is a good reason for leaving all US services, just singling out gmail would be unfair. Too bad so many major ones are hosted in the US (or at least by US companies). We really need a less centralized internet... Otherwise, when the US turns into a loony military dictatorship it takes us all with it.

inconditus• 15 years ago

This only makes sense if you get a server at an off-shore host for mail, instead of using major email providers.

JoshTriplett2• 15 years ago

You speak of "off-shore" as though it represents some magically lawless region. As useful as that might be for these purposes, it doesn't exist. Your server will exist in some country. That country will have laws; those laws may or may not favor you. That country may or may not wish to refuse a US court order. Most countries are on fairly good terms with the US, and unlikely to say "no" to a request for evidence based on what looks like a standard legal investigation. Many of the countries not on good terms with the US rank pretty high on the list of places not well known for respecting rights, least of all privacy. And on top of all that, keeping a server outside the US does not render you personally immune to a US warrant if you remain in the US.

(Most of the above applies for s/US/$country/g as well.)

You're likely better off hosting a mail server here in the US, not actually storing any mail on it, downloading the mail immediately to a local mail store on an encrypted disk, and using encrypted email to protect new mails. That still won't render you immune to prosecution, but you might consider the consequences of refusing to decrypt a server preferable to the consequences of revealing the contents of your email. Or not.

artursapek2• 15 years ago

Hotmail would probably have had to do the same. The guy chose Gmail over Hotmail so people should leave Gmail? That's horrible logic.

GermTheGeek3• 15 years ago

Now the question is: What major options do privacy advocates have apart from hosting their own mailservers?

yanw3• 15 years ago

The slow and often fruitfulness process of changing the law.

01PH• 15 years ago

Even if you host it yourself but at a regular hosting provider "they" might just confiscate your servers. Increasing email encryption usability might be the road out of this dilemma. Otherwise email encryption is going to stay within a very small circle of users.

GermTheGeek3• 15 years ago

When I said "Host your own" I meant on a physically secure box using full disk encryption.

But I do like the idea of encryption, GPG does this really well already but key distribution is still a problem.

Just an idea for a secure physical box: Throw in a external "always on" GPS receiver on the box and have it physically destroy the hard drive if it is outside of a certain area or if it detects a certain amount of movement (think someone removing it from a rack without disabling the service first). If your server was moved/confiscated it would ensure some safety. Just a tinfoil thought.

JohnTHaller• 15 years ago

GPG. It's easy to use and can even easily plug right into Thunderbird and Thunderbird Portable (USB).

zobzu2• 15 years ago

gpg

roel_v• 15 years ago

Not use email. Seriously, how many times do people have to get burned? Don't write anything down you don't want anyone to know about.

cookiecaper8• 15 years ago

Applebaum, a tor developer, is i am sure astute enough not to leave unencrypted mails on gmail. he is used to governmental abuse at airpoets etc., so i am sure he saw this coming.

bdr• 15 years ago

FYI it's "Appelbaum".

cookiecaper8• 15 years ago

Thanks. I typed that reply on my phone, so I don't remember if that was an autocorrect thing or if I just forgot how to spell it. Nevertheless, I appreciate the correction. :)

kragen2• 15 years ago

He can't prevent people from sending him unencrypted emails on Gmail, except by not using Gmail, nor can he force Google to delete them.

cookiecaper8• 15 years ago

If he's receiving random emails they are probably not important or sensitive enough to be valuable to the government. If he's receiving non-random emails that contain sensitive data, it should all be encrypted.

If you do get something important that is not encrypted, you can forward the mail to yourself as ciphertext.

You're correct that Appelbaum has no control over Google's retention procedures.

zobzu2• 15 years ago

tor developer didnt use tor ? odd.

mkjones• 15 years ago

Using tor wouldn't have helped anonymize his contact list.

donohoe• 15 years ago

The headline is a little disingenuous (technically correct, yes...) - especially if thats all anyone ever reads. Google didn't hand this over on a whim, rather:

  The contacts list and IP address data of Jacob 
  Appelbaum, a WikiLeaks volunteer and developer 
  for Tor was given to the U.S. government after 
  they requested it using a secret court order 
  enabled by a controversial 1986 law called the 
  Electronic Communications Privacy Act, according 
  to the Wall Street Journal. The law allows the 
  government to demand information from ISPs not
  only without a warrant, but without ever
  notifying the user.

The problem/fault/remedy lies with the US gov, not so much the compelled company in this case.

guelo4• 15 years ago

You wanted them to put that in the headline?

artursapek2• 15 years ago

I doubt donohoe wanted to put that in the headline, I think he is suggesting the tone of the headline doesn't accurately portray what happened.

waqf• 15 years ago

It would have been easy to write a less disingenuous headline. For example, "U.S. Compelled Google To Hand Over Wikileaks Volunteer's Gmail Data."

angrycoder• 15 years ago

So you quoted part of the article to give more details to the headline. That is basically how the whole article/headline thing works.

carbocation• 15 years ago

I recall that the headline was worded quite a bit differently when the GP wrote their post. The headline has since been updated.

zohebv• 15 years ago

> Electronic Communications Privacy Act

Orwellian naming conventions are all the rage these days :-) Jerry Yang faced a lot of heat for doing pretty much the same thing in China. Google seems to reluctant to criticize the US government now, unlike, for e.g., the Chinese government.

PakG1• 15 years ago

EXACTLY the same thing. It's a really interesting point. When China does it, they're horrible. When the US does it, what is it? Is there a difference or not? The motivations are quite similar, and one probably can only look at whether the motivations of each country can be justified from a moral standpoint.

guelo4• 15 years ago

Maybe Americans should use European hosts and Europeans can use American ones. Does anyone know of any good international webmail providers, with SSL?

yaix• 15 years ago

They interchange all kinds of information. Maybe we should all use Icelandic hosts.

cookiecaper8• 15 years ago

My understanding is that using a non-domestic service would actually make it much easier to retain data under traditional espionage procedures. Perhaps this is incorrect. Clarifications welcome.

andrewcooke3• 15 years ago

it doesn't make any difference. you us citizens are being tapped just the same as all us evil foreign terrorists these days. https://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying

andrewcooke3• 15 years ago

runbox (http://runbox.com) are norwegian and were, when i looked a year or two ago now, the best alternative i could find.

guelo4• 15 years ago

I'm always disappointed when I go looking for European web services, why is that? Why can't they have a Hotmail counterpart? China has comparable duplicates of most American services, but Europe doesn't even try. It's weird.

RexRollman• 15 years ago

It fairness to Google, they fought this, and they are part of Digital Due Process, a group that is trying to get this law changed.

http://www.digitaldueprocess.org/

davidu• 15 years ago

I know Jake. I had the proud privilege of employing Jake. This is a fishing expedition, and an absolute abuse of the EPIC and PATRIOT acts.

The NYT filed a lawsuit yesterday to try to start getting some transparency into these matters -- even Congress is urging people to find out the truth: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111010/04043716279/nytime...

People can dislike Wikileaks all they want, but this is exactly why they exist. The raw information is not being released and they see fit to do so. When the USG has a law on the books that congress passed but the DoJ won't share their interpretation of what the law means, you know something is very very wrong. (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial )

sudonim• 15 years ago

From comments here, it looks like there aren't good options for secure email outside of the jurisdiction of the US government.

I've been interested in setting this up for myself. If you're interested, let me know on this form, and I'll begin looking into the issues of where to host, and what legal structures I'd need to set up.

https://ianap.wufoo.com/forms/do-you-want-secure-private-ema...

cookiecaper8• 15 years ago

If the US decides it wants access to your accounts, I don't think putting a server in another country will be enough to stop them.

The real answer to this and all other serious privacy issues is to use strong cryptography properly. There's no two ways about it. Anything that isn't encrypted before it sees a NIC should essentially be considered a public broadcast.

linuxhansl• 15 years ago

Would someone please remind me when Wikileaks was convicted or even accused of a crime?

That's right: Neither ever happened.

What is going on in this country? Is the desire to operate in the dark, to work behind the backs of the very people that this government represents so strong, that any organization shining light on this must be squashed?

RobertKohr3• 15 years ago

Interestingly www.torproject.org is currently down... I don't know if this is related.

RobertKohr3• 15 years ago

As is http://www.appelbaum.net/ (his website)

natch• 15 years ago

Dear Google,

There must be ways to protect user privacy that are better than collecting everything in a form that can just be handed over. Example: encrypt on the client side, with user-supplied, large, non-compromised keys, and don't ever inspect the data on the server. If you need to inspect data in order to serve relevant ads, do it on the client, and only send back enough information to tailor whatever ads are currently available. Maybe do the ad selection on the client too. If this doesn't work for one of your services, consider it for other services where it would work. Laws prevent you from providing service X without providing such-and-such a hook? Then don't provide service X. Provide a plugin framework instead, and let users bring their own service. Use your heads. Maybe use a bit of the compute power the client has available. You spun down a lot of your China presence because of stuff like this, supposedly. You should be able to take big steps anywhere, not just in China. You are smart. Figure. It. Out.

U.S. Government Compels Google To Hand Over Wikileaks Volunteer's Gmail Data

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