Gmail may hand over IP addresses of journalists | Hacker News Reader

Gmail may hand over IP addresses of journalists

wikileaks.org

56 pointskirubakaran14 comments

Great, love being reminded my local court system are a bunch of shills.

However, before you burst into flames, note:

To comply with the law, unless you provide us with a copy of a motion to quash the subpoena (or other formal objection filed in court) via email at legal-support@google.com by 5pm Pacific Time on September 16, 2009, Google will assume you do not have an objection to production of the requested information and may provide responsive documents on this date.

So Google is notifying them, and basically telling the account holders to give Google a reason to motion to quash the subpeona. Which is good.

Court system totally willing to issue subpoenas which would reveal identities over what I'm assuming to be a civil suit filed by corrupt property developers after they were exposed (please correct me if I'm wrong.)

Google not instantly turning over the data, and asking the account holders to provide an objection.

Still less evil™

p.s. edit: I would also like to add that the Wikileaks editorial says:

According to the notifying letter from Google to the journal, Google intends to hand over the requested records without defense and suggests that the Journal file a counter-motion with the Santa-Clara court itself.

which I think is actually false, according to my reading of the notice Google gave the account holders above. This would also indicate the headline is inflammatory/linkbait..

I find Wikileaks summaries are of extremely variable accuracy - they're well-intentioned but often prefer the most extreme-sounding interpretation of a document/story. I basically don't trust the summary pages at all, except in a 'why you might care!' way. Wikileaks itself, though, is pure gold.

If I understand correctly, there may be situations where you will not be notified.

"The government can get this information with no notice to you at all, and can also get a court order forcing your service provider not to tell you or anyone else."

According to https://ssd.eff.org/3rdparties/govt/subpoena

The important point that Wikileaks is making is that Google has created infrastructure to keep detailed and long-lasting records of their users, but are severely constrained by California laws. Something worth considering by all of us who use "cloud services".

Btw, I think Wikileaks accurately reported on Google's actions. YMMV.

Isn't it part of common law that you have to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?". If so, how can it be legal to withhold information (read sources, ip addresses etc) while under examination in a court?

This expression is just convention, not something legally meaningful. The next part of that expression is "so help you God", which you can't be legally required to say. In many courts, the affirmation is just "Do you promise to tell me the truth?"

As for "the whole truth", it's up to the other side's lawyer to ask you the right questions; if you answer all the questions truthfully while you're on the stand, that is your only legal obligation. (If the questions are directly about your crime, you also have the right to refuse to answer.)

Anyway, if everyone were legally required to confess to crimes they committed, nobody would do that, and then the crime would be not admitting to a crime. By not admitting to that, ... the cycle continues, and with no evidence, there is no case against you.

More or less. Unless someone at Google wants to go to jail, it's hard to get out of obeying a reasonably valid subpoena.

This isn't a legal doctrine. Its just part of the swearing in process during a trial.

More important is users "expectation of privacy"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy

As a journalist, with sources to protect, working for a publication whose very mission 'corruption fighting' is going to invite problems exactly like these, shouldn't you be using something other than Gmail?

I've never needed something like this but a quick search http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=secure+anon... leads me to believe there is a better solution.

Try this next time:

Anonymous Blogging with Wordpress & Tor

http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/projects/guide/

Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents

http://www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/handbook_bloggers_cyberdissidents...

But don't choose Gmail as your webmail provider?

I am not an expert in this.

But I think if you get a Gmail account with non identifiable information. Then access Gmail through Tor (There's a Tor plugin for Firefox) you've done enough to make it extremely hard to track you down.

You'd better make sure you do that from a 'virgin' machine then or your cookies or other signature information will give you away in a heartbeat.

Or my favourite: a virtual machine with a snapshot of it's state just after the install of all your necessary programs, HDD set to read only (like you can do in parallels) and used from there...

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