US Intensifies Spying on People

english.farsnews.com

TEHRAN (FNA)- Feds can clandestinely obtain information from people’s email and cellphones without a search warrant.

The US government has forced Google Inc and a small Internet provider to hand over information from email accounts of a WikiLeaks volunteer, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

The US request included email addresses of people that Jacob Appelbaum, a volunteer for the campaigning website, had corresponded with in the past two years, the newspaper said, citing documents it had reviewed.

Internet provider Sonic said it fought the government order legally and lost, and was forced to turn over information, the company’s chief executive, Dane Jasper, told the newspaper.

The legal action was “rather expensive, but we felt it was the right thing to do,” Jasper told the Journal.

Google, the world’s No.1 Web-search engine, declined to comment on the matter, the Wall Street Journal said.

WikiLeaks last year angered the US government by making public tens of thousands of secret US files and diplomatic cables that embarrassed Washington, as well as a classified video of a contested American military operation in Iraq.

The Google order dated Jan. 4, 2011, directed the search giant to turn over IP address from which Appelbaum logged into his Gmail.com account and the email and IP addresses of the users with whom he communicated dating back to Nov. 1, 2009.

It isn’t clear whether Google fought the order or turned over documents, the Journal said.

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