
Google says it fought gag orders in WikiLeaks investigation - coldcode
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/google-says-it-fought-gag-orders-in-wikileaks-investigation/2015/01/28/e62bfd04-a5c9-11e4-a06b-9df2002b86a0_story.html
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bediger4000
The reason for the gag orders: to keep the Federal Attorneys from getting a
pile of bad publicity. This flies straight in the face of any kind of
transparent government. If the Attorney's office gets a ton of criticism, then
they're probably doing something extremely unpopular. It's good to do
unpopular things in defense of minority opinions, given the USA's free speech
tradition, but if the criticism is large in volume, and it stings, which
apparently the twitter investigation criticism did, then the public outcry is
correct. The Feds shouldn't be doing this stuff. I conclude that the gag
orders are crap, and should be lifted. The Feds are doing stuff that might be
legal, but is in a larger sense immoral.

~~~
lkbm
Seems like the gag orders are "don't tell these suspects that we're monitoring
them". Seems quite legitimate and essential in ordinary cases. But we need a
robust court system that will restrict gag orders to legit things, rather than
suppressing dissent.

~~~
bediger4000
According to the text of the article, that's not true. The gag orders were to
prevent the attorney from getting bad publicity. I suppose that they wrote
"keep suspects in the dark" or the equivalent legalese in the motion, but the
real reason appears to be otherwise.

~~~
tedunangst
Is that a fact or an opinion? The "text of the article" that supports that
conclusion is a quote from Googles attorney, not an unbiased source.

~~~
bediger4000
After careful re-reading, I think you are correct. I didn't read closely
enough. The key paragraph is attributed to Google's lawyer.

However, the whole "twitter didn't get a gag order" aspect does support the
thesis that the Google gag order is to minimize criticism of the US lawyers.

Since the very same person (Jacob Appelbaum) appears to be the subject of both
Twitter and Google search warrants, the "we don't want to alert TERRORISTS!"
excuse for the gag order doesn't hold. Also, if it's a search warrant, and not
a CALEA-type on-going surveillance warrant, why would a gag order be imposed?
If Google has the data, they have to turn it over or face penalties, and I'm
sure they have a policy to fork over any legally-demanded data. They may have
a duty to their own consciences to contest the search warrants, but I'm sure
that they hand over data.

I can think of one other motive for such a gag order, and that's to minimize
the time that Appelbaum has to prepare a defense. That hardly seems fair,
given that the USA is supposed to have a level playing field with ALL CITIZENS
subject to the rule of law. I'd rather not think that the US Attorney, with
all the legal and monetary resources of the federal government at hand, would
stoop to cheap shots like that.

I think Gidari's conclusion, although an opinion, fits the facts as we know
them. The Google gag order was sought to contain or minimize criticism.
Assuming that seems to give the US Attorneys the benefit of the doubt, because
otherwise I'd think they were trying to cheat, which they, as officers of the
court have a moral duty to avoid.

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dudus

      > But the case represents “an amazing Catch-22,” he said. 
      > Google doesn’t “have the strongest right to challenge the 
      > scope or the reasonableness of the warrant. The only people 
      > who really have that are the targets of the warrant, and 
      > they don’t know about it. So essentially the government has 
      > carte blanche to get whatever they want.”
    

Shouldn't in cases like this the gag order go to the target of the warrant. I
imagine it could go something like this. Google hands the information and
inform only the target. The target can't publicize or inform anyone else, but
now have the knowledge and right to defend himself.

Not informing the target would restrict his ability to defend himself.

In a similar note, why even involve Google at all. Why not require the target
to hand the information.

Maybe the fact that the targets are in different countries a problem to this
approach.

~~~
sarciszewski
"why even involve Google at all"

"So essentially the government has carte blanche to get whatever they want"

I think your quote answered your own question.

~~~
higherpurpose
Yup. Going to the third party provider as if it owns _your data_ is a complete
bypass of the 4th amendment. To make an analogy it would be like the federal
government having to serve a warrant/court order/gar order only to your local
mayor to search your house without your permission.

Imagine how messed up that would be. Yet, it's exactly what happens in the
digital world, and somehow we've learned to take it for granted. If it's your
data, the warrant should be served to you. As for terms of service and such of
online services that say once you upload your data to their cloud, then it
becomes "theirs", that's complete bull, and such a thing should be made
illegal.

~~~
zaroth
It just occurred to me, they figured out how to serve a complaint against your
property (civil forfeiture) so I'm actually half surprised they don't serve
warrants against the _house_ not the house's occupants. Or even better, just
serve the data itself; US Government versus 134,612 bytes of Data!

~~~
anonbanker
That's called _in rem_ [1] jurisdiction. I hope to see it happen with bytes of
data in my lifetime.

1\.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_rem](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_rem)

------
datashovel
IMO governments need to learn how to adapt to this new "information age".
That's not to say they need to try to find new ways to suppress information.
They need to allow public discourse to help them define their limitations.

~~~
charonn0
I don't think they can. The information age is rendering national governments
obsolete.

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benlower
(Any lawyers here who could weigh in?)

Could a company nullify gag orders if it was their policy to post ALL their
correspondence on their website? For example, AcmeCo gets a request from the
US Government to share information about one of AcmeCo's customers (e.g.
WikiLeaks). AcmeCo scans and posts this letter (as it does for _everything_ it
receives including its electricity bill) on its website. Could they then
circumvent the gag order this way? What would happen to AcmeCo?

~~~
sarciszewski
"Could a company nullify gag orders if it was their policy to post ALL their
correspondence on their website?"

Not a US-based company, because we have these nefarious things called National
Security Letters. The penalty for knowingly breaking the gag order with the
intent to interfere with an investigation is up to five years in prison.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter)

Do you know any business owners willing to go to prison for five years for one
of their users?

~~~
dublinben
How could you knowingly break a gag order, if an automated system publicly
posts all correspondence before anyone reads them?

~~~
declan
Because the correspondence comes:

(a) in the form of a valid court order hand-delivered to and served on your
CEO at his home at 6am by two very grim federal agents who don't really like
getting up this early, or

(b) if you're represented by counsel, it comes in the form of notification to
your attorney by the court clerk that a court order has been issued (or
perhaps notification from an AUSA if the clerk's office is slacking).

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harry8
If you're a google employee and you see a gag order and disagree with it you
almost certainly have the skills to leak it undetectably such that you can't
be prosecuted because there is no evidence.

I wonder, is that the right thing to do? How would you do it technically if
you thought it was? Who would you leak it to?

~~~
fpgeek
Even granting your premise that a Google employee could leak the gag order
undetectably (and I'm not confident about that, since the universe of people
to investigate would be relatively small), there would still be serious
repercussions to deal with.

At bottom, there's someone at Google in charge of overseeing the gag order. If
the gag order leaks and they can't figure out who's responsible, I'm pretty
sure they end up going to jail - if only because a court would have a hard
time telling the difference between genuinely not being able to find the
leaker and stonewalling / implementing a cover-up.

~~~
harry8
I'm less cynical. I don't think they can prosecute someone without evidence
beyond reasonable doubt. Every single google employee who has to act on the
order and be gagged by it has to see the order and verify its authenticity or
else their actions would be illegal. "it must be one of these 50 google
employees" might well be completely true, but not enough to prosecute any one
of them.

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noiv
Lots of greyed comments here. What's going on? Google fan-boys vs. NSA fan-
boys?

~~~
e12e
I'd mod you up for making an interesting point, but it'd interfere with the
meta-ness of your question being greyed out (a bit). I therefore leave you
down-modded so you can better make your point.

On this particular story there seems to be quite a lot of (random?) down-
modding. It'd be nice to hear if the admins could comment. From just looking
at the greyed out comments, it at least _seems_ different from the usual hn-
patterns?

~~~
_cudgel
It's not like the NSA or Google have the computing power to automatically have
their AI fight it out in the public sphere. Right? RIGHT?!?

------
mikebay
Hard to believe, when CEO is attending bilderberg meetings !!

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krabjiem
cheap PR

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antocv
Google is good, not evil, they have fought for our rights, bravely and
invented new genious technologies and social processes to protect our civil
rights and society. Google is good, Google does what is in best interest for
its users. Google stands up against an intrusive government. Being a user of
Google services is supporting freedom and democracy. Google fights againt
censorship and for open society.

Public announcment by Good Google.

------
doctorshady
I like how any questioning of Google's integrity is being shamelessly
downvoted here.

~~~
tonfa
Well, one of the target of the warrant is also supporting Google here:
[https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/560575339450347520](https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/560575339450347520)
[https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/560579349460815872](https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/560579349460815872)

~~~
harry8
Nope, nothing there supports google. He's claiming to have played them to use
their resources in support of his interests. He's not endorsing them at all.
(Maybe he would or has elsewhere but not there).

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ForHackernews
Really interesting to read this in the context of David Drummond's statements
a few years ago:
[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2013/jun/19/googl...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2013/jun/19/google-
chief-legal-officer-david-drummond-live-q-and-a)

~~~
lern_too_spel
Why is it interesting? It's since become clear that Google was not in cahoots
with the NSA, just like Drummond said.

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username223
> In the fall of 2011, Google was able to tell Appelbaum that the government
> had sought data such as the IP addresses of the people he e-mailed with,

Google needs to store your plaintext email so it can make money by showing you
ads, but its data retention policies are both unnecessary and outrageous.

------
kwagmeyer
Google was a premium partner in the Prysm NSA program. According to the first
leaks, Google along with Facebook, Skype and Apple were the first to sign up
to the NSA spying programs as partners.

All along they're trying to paint themselves as victims of the spying, which
is ridiculous really...but I guess they can still fool a large population.

~~~
sarciszewski
The NSA was also wiretapping the connections between Google's datacenters, so
they were victims of the NSA too.

(Until we know more about their relationship with the NSA, I also don't
condemn them for the PRISM allegations.)

~~~
ForHackernews
I acknowledge there's a moral and ethical distinction there, but I dispute
that there's any pragmatic difference: If you use Google services, your data
is compromised, period.

It doesn't really matter whether the NSA or GCHQ are tapping Google's
datacenters, paying off low-level employees, operating under a legal court
order, or benefiting from the enthusiastic help of Google executives. The end
result is the same: You cannot trust cloud services.

~~~
fixermark
The question has never been "Can you trust cloud services?"

It's "Can you trust them more than the alternatives?"

Yes, you can almost certainly keep your private data more secure in a system
you build and monitor yourself(1). Until an NSA or GCHQ-level entity takes
interest in you, and uses a 0-day exploit on your system or just physically
walks in with a warrant and steals your physical media. How is that
functionally different from "If the NSA / GCHQ takes interest in you, they can
have the cloud service provider hand your data over?" And that's before you
add the overhead of maintaining, securing, and physically protecting your own
systems.

(1) Note that even this step is a huge hurdle for most people; "You cannot
trust cloud services" basically tells those people "Don't use the Internet."

~~~
throwaway2048
There is a massive, massive difference between automatically slurping all data
coming in and out of a cloud provider, and going after somebody with a
targeted exploit or physically seizing machines.

~~~
tubbs
I'd rather make them go through the trouble of getting my data physically then
just typing

    
    
      grab * -ss 834-29-1293
    

or whatever they do.

~~~
sarciszewski
Is 834-29-1293 your actual SSN? :\

~~~
maxerickson
834 was never used as an area number:

[http://www.socialsecurity.gov/employer/ssns/HGJune2411_final...](http://www.socialsecurity.gov/employer/ssns/HGJune2411_final.txt)

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mindslight
No Google, "fighting" a restriction on speech isn't doing exactly what you're
told and asking a corrupt court for permission to do otherwise. It involves
loudly publicizing the corruption and giving the thugs an uphill battle. Until
you do this (or radically change your products to be oblivious to users'
information in the first place), you're a de facto arm of the surveillance
state.

