Google Kept WikiLeaks Data Handover Secret

Google handed over information on three WikiLeaks staff members to the US government - then kept it secret for three years.

WikiLeaks has written to Google boss Eric Schmidt complaining that despite receiving the warrants in March 2012, the search firm only revealed the order's existence to WikiLeaks last month.

Google waited until Christmas Eve - a quiet news period - to tell WikiLeaks that it had responded to a Justice Department demand for digital data including emails and IP addresses linked with three staff members.

Court orders are typically disclosed to their subjects when they are received, to give them a chance to challenge them.

The staff members targeted were Briton Sarah Harrison, who is the site's investigations editor, spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson and senior editor Joseph Farrell.

Google claims it could not reveal details of the warrants sooner due to a gagging order which had been imposed.

Google says the orders have now been lifted, but it did not say when.

Ms Harrison told The Guardian she was upset that the FBI had accessed her private emails.

She said: "Knowing that the FBI read the words I wrote to console my mother over a death in the family makes me feel sick.

"Neither Google nor the US government are living up to their own laws or rhetoric in privacy or press protections."

The court order was so wide it covered almost all communications sent or received by the trio.

It is believed to be part of an ongoing criminal investigation into WikiLeaks following its publication of hundreds of thousands of US secrets in 2010.