This news might come as a surprise to you regarding how much control White House exercises over your personal data. In recent public court document report it was revealed that The Justice Department used a secret search warrant to obtain the entire contents of a Gmail account used by a former WikiLeaks volunteer in Iceland, according to court records released to the volunteer this week.
The action was taken on Herbert Snorrason, who helped to manage WikiLeaks’ secure chat room in 2010 and this connection was the sole reason which entitled Feds to search Personal Mailboxes of Herbert’s Gmail account.
Snorrason got to know about the Documents & surveillance when he received the Message from Google regarding this. It should be noted that Google was vowed to not disclose this ongoing investigative data breach for last two years which was lifted recently & that made Google to notify Snorrason about the surveillance.
The search warrant was issued in October of 2011 & Google was asked to provide “contents of all e-mails associated with the account, including stored or preserved copies of e-mails sent to and from the account, draft e-mails, [and] deleted e-mails” to the US government, along with IP address records, and “all records or other information stored at any time by an individual using the account.”
The also obtained non-content metadata from the Twitter accounts of three WikiLeaks associates: Seattle coder and activist Jacob Appelbaum; Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of Iceland’s parliament; and Dutch businessman Rop Gonggrijp in January 2012. The feds also got metadata on Appelbaum from Google and the ISP Sonic.net under 18 USC 2703(D), a 1994 amendment to the Stored Communications Act that allows law enforcement access to non-content internet records, such as transaction information, without demonstrating the “probable cause” needed for a search warrant.
While mystery still surrounds the use of documents obtained from Google. It is not known whether they’re directly related to the trial of Bradley Manning — which is ongoing.