Wikileaks Payback - Offensive and Defensive

[Magda Hassan]

Not co-incidentally, Birgitta is on the Icelandic parliament's NATO committee too. And she is a peaceful sort of person.

[David Guyatt]

US tells Twitter to hand over WikiLeaks supporter's messages

My God, is there no travesty they won't stoop to?

[Jan Klimkowski]

Yes - the US assault on the identity of the Twitter account is where the nature of Wikileaks - as a genuine whistleblowing operation, or a psyop, or a coopted and subverted whistleblowing operation, or whatever - becomes irrelevant.

Wikileaks is now being used by the global Volkland Security apparatus as an opportunity to shut down freedom of speech, the right to protest, and the duty to whistleblow.

[Peter Lemkin]

US tells Twitter to hand over WikiLeaks supporter's messages

My God, is there no travesty they won't stoop to?

Afraid not and the pace of and audacity [read illegality, unconstitutionality] of are increasing in what I believe one might describe as an asymptotic curve [ever increasing in rate of change].....these are dark times and still I sense no real push-back from the P/Seeple of the UK, USA or elsewhere. They are doing a better job in Iceland, at the moment.

I'm waiting for the order that all who downloaded the 'insurance' fill are to surrender them and are under investigation.....and lots more like that.....maybe even a slap on the hand of one of the papers [NYT] for their participation [lackluster and very much following the powers they really work for and serve as mouthpiece of Newspeak for]. Its going to be a bumpy ride the next few months and years.....I just can't believe how much has been lost in ten short years. Ten more like that and I don't believe you could find any essential difference with the police states of the past. Police states are internally self-justifying, once initiated.

[Magda Hassan]

DOJ subpoenas Twitter records of several WikiLeaks volunteers

By Glenn Greenwald

[my highlighting]

(updated below - Update II)
Last night, Birgitta Jónsdóttir -- a former WikiLeaks volunteer and current member of the Icelandic Parliament -- announced (on Twitter) that she had been notified by Twitter that the DOJ had served a Subpoena demanding information "about all my tweets and more since November 1st 2009." Several news outlets, including The Guardian, wrote about Jónsdóttir's announcement.
What hasn't been reported is that the Subpoena served on Twitter -- which is actually an Order from a federal court that the DOJ requested -- seeks the same information for numerous other individuals currently or formerly associated with WikiLeaks, including Jacob Appelbaum, Rop Gonggrijp, and Julian Assange. It also seeks the same information for Bradley Manning and for WikiLeaks' Twitter account.
The information demanded by the DOJ is sweeping in scope. It includes all mailing addresses and billing information known for the user, all connection records and session times, all IP addresses used to access Twitter, all known email accounts, as well as the "means and source of payment," including banking records and credit cards. It seeks all of that information for the period beginning November 1, 2009, through the present. A copy of the Order served on Twitter, obtained exclusively by Salon, is here.
The Order was signed by a federal Magistrate Judge in the Eastern District of Virginia, Theresa Buchanan, and served on Twitter by the DOJ division for that district. It states that there is "reasonable ground to believe that the records or other information sought are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation," the language required by the relevant statute. It was issued on December 14 and ordered sealed -- i.e., kept secret from the targets of the Order. It gave Twitter three days to respond and barred the company from notifying anyone, including the users, of the existence of the Order. On January 5, the same judge directed that the Order be unsealed at Twitter's request in order to inform the users and give them 10 days to object; had Twitter not so requested, it would have been compelled to turn over this information without the knowledge of its users. A copy of the unsealing order is here.
Jónsdóttir told me that as "a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee [of Iceland's Parliament] and the NATO parliamentary assembly," she intends to "call for a meeting at the Committee early next week and ask for the ambassador to meet" her to protest the DOJ's subpoena for her records. The other individuals named in the subpoena were unwilling to publicly comment until speaking with their lawyer.
I'll have much more on the implications of this tomorrow. Suffice to say, this is a serious escalation of the DOJ's efforts to probe, harass and intimidate anyone having to do with WikiLeaks. Previously, Appelbaum as well as Bradley Manning supporter David House -- both American citizens -- had their laptops and other electronic equipment seized at the border by Homeland Security agents when attempting to re-enter the U.S.

UPDATE: Three other points: first, the three named producers of the "Collateral Murder" video -- depicting and commenting on the U.S. Apache helicopter attack on journalists and civilians in Baghdad -- were Assange, Jónsdóttir, and Gonggrijp (whose name is misspelled in the DOJ's documents). Since Gonggrijp has had no connection to WikiLeaks for several months and Jónsdóttir's association has diminished substantially over time, it seems clear that they were selected due to their involvement in the release of that film. Second, the unsealing order does not name either Assange or Manning, which means either that Twitter did not request permission to notify them of the Subpoena or that they did request it but the court denied it (then again, neither "Julian Assange" nor "Bradley Manning" are names of Twitter accounts, and the company has no way of knowing with certainty which accounts are theirs, so perhaps Twitter only sought an unsealing order for actual Twitter accounts named in the Order). Finally, WikiLeaks and Assange intend to contest this Order.

UPDATE II: It's worth recalling -- and I hope journalists writing about this story remind themselves -- that all of this extraordinary probing and "criminal" investigating is stemming from WikiLeaks' doing nothing more than publishing classified information showing what the U.S. Government is doing: something investigative journalists, by definition, do all the time.
And the key question now is this: did other Internet and social network companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) receive similar Orders and then quietly comply? It's difficult to imagine why the DOJ would want information only from Twitter; if anything, given the limited information it has about users, Twitter would seem one of the least fruitful avenues to pursue. But if other companies did receive and quietly comply with these orders, it will be a long time before we know, if we ever do, given the prohibition in these orders on disclosing even its existence to anyone.

[Jan Klimkowski]

The information demanded by the DOJ is sweeping in scope. It includes all mailing addresses and billing information known for the user, all connection records and session times, all IP addresses used to access Twitter, all known email accounts, as well as the "means and source of payment," including banking records and credit cards. It seeks all of that information for the period beginning November 1, 2009, through the present.

Volkland Security on its jackbooted march.

[Peter Lemkin]

The information demanded by the DOJ is sweeping in scope. It includes all mailing addresses and billing information known for the user, all connection records and session times, all IP addresses used to access Twitter, all known email accounts, as well as the "means and source of payment," including banking records and credit cards. It seeks all of that information for the period beginning November 1, 2009, through the present.

Volkland Security on its jackbooted march.

UPDATE II: It's worth recalling -- and I hope journalists writing about this story remind themselves -- that all of this extraordinary probing and "criminal" investigating is stemming from WikiLeaks' doing nothing more than publishing classified information showing what the U.S. Government is doing: something investigative journalists, by definition, do all the time.
And the key question now is this: did other Internet and social network companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) receive similar Orders and then quietly comply? It's difficult to imagine why the DOJ would want information only from Twitter; if anything, given the limited information it has about users, Twitter would seem one of the least fruitful avenues to pursue. But if other companies did receive and quietly comply with these orders, it will be a long time before we know, if we ever do, given the prohibition in these orders on disclosing even its existence to anyone.

This is getting SERIOUS! I wonder now how many times other persons' and groups' google or other internet habits have been subpoenaed secretly. It started in the libraries and has spread to everything but your underwear....oh, forgot about the grope searches at the airport.... :wirlitzer:

[Peter Lemkin]

UPDATE III: Iceland's Interior Minister, Ögmundur Jónasson, described the DOJ's efforts to obtain the Twitter information of a member of that country's Parliament as "grave and odd." While suggesting some criticisms of WikiLeaks, he added: "if we manage to make government transparent and give all of us some insight into what is happening in countries involved in warfare it can only be for the good." The DOJ's investigation of a member of Iceland's Parliament -- as part of an effort to intimidate anyone supporting WikiLeaks and to criminalize journalism that exposes what the U.S. Government does -- is one of the most extreme acts yet in the Obama administration's always-escalating war on whistleblowers, and shows how just excessive and paranoid the administration is when it comes to transparency: all this from a President who ran on a vow to have the "most transparent administration in history" and to "Protect Whistleblowers."

In an interview with mbl.is Icelandic Interior Minister Ögmundur Jónasson said that at first sight the case of US authorities against Icelandic MP Birgitta Jónsdóttir seems to be "very odd and grave." He said that at this stage he can't express himself on the case but hopes to get information from Jónsdóttir.

Jónasson said: "Of course it is a very serious matter, if a demand has been put forward that she submit personal information to US authrities. She is an Icelandic member of Althingi and furthermore a member of the Foreign Relations committee of Althingi."

Jónasson continued: "The information from Wikileaks and others have only hurt people who work behind the scenes. I think that if we manage to make government transparent and give all of us some insight into what is happening in countries involved in warfare it can only be for the good."

[Peter Lemkin]

DOJ sends order to Twitter for Wikileaks-related account info
by Declan McCullagh

The U.S. Justice Department has obtained a court order directing Twitter to turn over information about the accounts of activists with ties to Wikileaks, including an Icelandic politician, a legendary Dutch hacker, and a U.S. computer programmer.

Birgitta Jónsdóttir, one of 63 members of Iceland's national parliament, said this afternoon that Twitter notified her of the order's existence and told her she has 10 days to oppose the request for information about activity on her account since November 1, 2009.

"I think I am being given a message, almost like someone breathing in a phone," Jónsdóttir said in a Twitter message.

The order (PDF) also covers "subscriber account information" for Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private charged with leaking classified information; Wikileaks volunteer Jacob Appelbaum; Dutch hacker and XS4ALL Internet provider co-founder Rop Gonggrijp; and Wikileaks editor Julian Assange.

Appelbaum, who gave a keynote speech at a hacker conference last summer on behalf of the document-leaking organization and is currently in Iceland, said he plans to fight the request in a U.S. court. Appelbaum, a U.S. citizen who's a developer for the Tor Project, has been briefly detained at the border and people in his address book have been hassled at airports.

The U.S. government began an criminal investigation of Wikileaks and Assange last July after the Web site began releasing what would become a deluge of confidential military and State Department files. In November, Attorney General Eric Holder said that the probe is "ongoing," and a few weeks later an attorney for Assange said he had been told that a grand jury had been empaneled in Alexandria, Va.

The order sent to Twitter initially was signed under seal by U.S. Magistrate Judge Theresa Buchanan in Alexandria, Va. on December 14, and gave the social networking site three days to comply. But on Wednesday, she decided (PDF) that it should be unsealed and said that Twitter is now authorized to "disclose that order to its subscribers and customers," presumably so they could choose to oppose it. (Salon.com posted a copy of the documents on Friday.)

A wide-ranging court order
Buchanan's order isn't a traditional subpoena. Rather, it's what's known as a 2703(d) order, which allows police to obtain certain records from a Web site or Internet provider if they are "relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation."

The 2703(d) order is broad. It requests any "contact information" associated with the accounts from November 1, 2009 to the present, "connection records, or records of session times and durations," and "records of user activity for any connections made to or from the account," including Internet addresses used.

It requests "all records" and "correspondence" relating to those accounts, which appears to be broad enough to sweep in the content of messages such as direct messages sent through Twitter or tweets from a non-public account. That could allow the account holders to claim that the 2703(d) order is unconstitutional. (One federal appeals court recently ruled that under the Fourth Amendment, a 2703(d) order is insufficient for the contents of communications and search warrant is needed, although that decision is not binding in Virginia or San Francisco.)

A Twitter representative declined to comment on any specific legal requests, but told CNET: "To help users protect their rights, it's our policy to notify users about law enforcement and governmental requests for their information, unless we are prevented by law from doing so."

Buchanan's original order from last month directed Twitter not to disclose "the existence of the investigation" to anyone, but that gag order was lifted this week. Twitter's law enforcement guidelines say "our policy is to notify users of requests for their information prior to disclosure."

It's unclear why Buchanan changed her mind. Twitter didn't immediately respond to questions, but the most likely scenario is that its attorneys objected to the 2703(d) order on grounds that the law required that account holders be notified, and that the broad gag order was not contemplated by Congress when creating (d) orders in 1986 and could run afoul of the First Amendment.

Also unclear is how long Twitter stores full IP addresses in its logs; Google, for instance, performs a partial anonymization after six months.

Jónsdóttir was a close ally of Assange and supported efforts to turn the small north Atlantic nation into a virtual data haven. A New Yorker profile last year, for instance, depicted Jónsdóttir as almost an accidental politician whose self-described political views are mostly anarchist and who volunteered with Wikileaks.

At one point, the profile recounted, Assange was unshaven and his hair was a mess: "He was typing up a press release. Jonsdottir came by to help, and he asked her, 'Can't you cut my hair while I'm doing this?' Jonsdottir walked over to the sink and made tea. Assange kept on typing, and after a few minutes she reluctantly began to trim his hair."

Jónsdóttir even invited Assange to a reception -- this was before last year's series of high-profile releases -- held at the U.S. ambassador's residence in the capital of Reykjavik. "He certainly had fun at the party," Jónsdóttir told the U.K. Telegraph. "He went as my guest. I said it would be a bit of a prank to take him and see if they knew who he was. I don't think they had any idea."

But after Assange became embroiled in allegations of sexual assault, which have led to the Swedish government attempting to extradite him from the U.K., Jónsdóttir said the organization should find a spokesman who's not such a controversial figure.

"Wikileaks should have spokespeople that are conservative and not strong persons, rather dull, so to speak, so that the message will be delivered without the messenger getting all the attention," Jónsdóttir said at the time. Although she said she did not believe the allegations, she suggested that Assange step aside, which he did not do.

In a blog post, Gonggrijp disclosed the e-mail that Twitter sent him, which said: "Please be advised that Twitter will respond to this request in 10 days from the date of this notice unless we receive notice from you that a motion to quash the legal process has been filed or that this matter has been otherwise resolved."

Gonggrijp noted that the Justice Department misspelled his name, and speculated that other Web companies and e-mail providers may have received similar requests and quietly complied. "It appears that Twitter, as a matter of policy, does the right thing in wanting to inform their users when one of these comes in," he said.

[David Guyatt]

WikiLeaks demands Google and Facebook unseal US subpoenas

WikiLeaks demands Google and Facebook unseal US subpoenas
Call comes after revelation that US has tried to force Twitter to release WikiLeaks members' private details

Peter Beaumont
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 8 January 2011 15.36 GMT


'Free Julian Assange' protestors demonstrate in central London before the WikiLeaks founder's court hearing in December. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA
WikiLeaks has demanded that Google and Facebook reveal the contents of any US subpoenas they may have received after it emerged that a court in Virginia had ordered Twitter to secretly hand over details of accounts on the micro-blogging site by five figures associated with the group, including Julian Assange.

Amid strong evidence that a US grand jury has begun a wide-ranging trawl for details of what networks and accounts WikiLeaks used to communicate with Bradley Manning, the US serviceman accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of sensitive government cables, some of those named in the subpoena said they would fight disclosure.

"Today, the existence of a secret US government grand jury espionage investigation into WikiLeaks was confirmed for the first time as a subpoena was brought into the public domain," WikiLeaks said in a statement.

The writ, approved by a court in Virginia in December, demands that the San Franscisco-based micro-blogging site hand over all details of five individuals' accounts and private messaging on Twitter including the computers and networks used.

They include WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Manning, Icelandic MP Brigitta Jonsdottir and Dutch hacker Rop Gonggrijp. Three of them Gonggrijp, Assange and Jonsdottir were named as "producers" of the first significant leak from the US cables cache: a video of an Apache helicopter attack that killed civilians and journalists in Baghdad.

The legal document also targets an account held by Jacob Appelbaum, a US computer programmer whose computer and phones were examined by US officials in July after he was stopped returning from Holland to America.

The court issuing the subpoena said it had "reasonable grounds" to believe Twitter held information "relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation".

It ordered Twitter not to notify the targets of the subpoena an order the company successfully challenged.

The court order crucially demands that Twitter hand over details of source and destination internet protocol addresses used to access the accounts, which would help investigators identify how the named individuals communicated with each other, as well as email addresses used.

The emergence of the subpoena appears to confirm for the first time the existence of a secret grand jury empanelled to investigate whether individuals associated with WikiLeaks, and Assange in particular, can be prosecuted for alleged conspiracy with Manning to steal the classified documents.

The US attorney general, Eric Holder, has already said publicly that he believes Assange could be prosecuted under US espionage laws. The court that issued the subpoena is in the same jurisdiction where press reports have located a grand jury investigating Assange.

It has been reported that Manning has been offered a plea bargain if he co-operates with the investigation.

The emergence of the Twitter subpoena which was unsealed after a legal challenge by the company was revealed after WikiLeaks announced it believed other US Internet companies had also been ordered to hand over information about its members' activities.

WikiLeaks condemned the court order, saying it amounted to harassment.

"If the Iranian government was to attempt to coercively obtain this information from journalists and activists of foreign nations, human rights groups around the world would speak out," Assange said in a statement.

Jonsdottir said in a Twitter message: "I think I am being given a message, almost like someone breathing in a phone."

Twitter has declined to comment, saying only that its policy is to notify its users where possible of government requests for information.

The specific clause of the Patriot act used to acquire the subpoena is one that the FBI has described as necessary for "obtaining such records [that] will make the process of identifying computer criminals and tracing their internet communications faster and easier".

The subpoena itself is an unusual one known as a 2703(d). Recently a federal appeals court ruled this kind of order was insufficient to order the disclosure of the contents of communication. Significantly, however, that ruling is binding in neither Virginia where the Twitter subpoena was issued nor San Francisco where Twitter is based.

Assange has promised to fight the order, as has Jonsdottir, who said in a Twitter message that she had "no intention to hand my information over willingly".

Appelbaum, whose Twitter feed suggested he was travelling in Iceland, said he was apprehensive about returning to the US. "Time to try to enjoy the last of my vacation, I suppose," he tweeted.

Gonggrijp praised Twitter for notifying him and others that the US had subpoenaed his details. "It appears that Twitter, as a matter of policy, does the right thing in wanting to inform their users when one of these comes in," Gonggrijp said. "Heaven knows how many places have received similar subpoenas and just quietly submitted all they had on me."