US efforts to get Twitter to hand over information on people connected to WikiLeaks

[Peter Lemkin]

Lawyers challenge US efforts to get Twitter to hand over information on people connected to WikiLeaks.

This revolution will not be tweeted

WASHINGTON - A US judge is to hear arguments next week about the US government's efforts to get Twitter to hand over information on the accounts of three people connected with WikiLeaks.

The hearing is scheduled to be held on February 15 in a federal court in Alexandria, Virgina, according to court documents unsealed on Tuesday.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and others have challenged the government's bid to get Twitter to turn over information about the Twitter accounts of the three WikiLeaks supporters.

The three are Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir, Jacob Appelbaum, a US computer researcher, and Rop Gonggrijp, a Dutch volunteer for WikiLeaks.

The EFF, ACLU and lawyers for the trio are seeking to overturn a court order the government obtained on December 14 requiring Twitter to provide the account information.

The court order was confidential, but a judge unsealed it allowing Twitter to notify the users and give them a chance to appeal.

"Twitter is a publication and communication service, so the information sought by the government relates to what these individuals said and where they were when they said it," EFF legal director Cindy Cohn said.

"It is especially troubling since the request seeks information about all statements made by these people, regardless of whether their speech relates to WikiLeaks," Cohn said.

Iceland's foreign ministry last month summoned the US ambassador in Reykjavik to express "serious concern" about the bid to obtain personal information about Jonsdottir, the Icelandic MP.

Jonsdottir, an early WikiLeaks supporter who distanced herself from the site a few months ago, is an active promoter of freedom of information and a member of the Icelandic parliament's foreign affairs committee.

The US Department of Justice has been pursuing a criminal investigation of WikiLeaks, which has obtained and published hundreds of thousands of secret US military reports and diplomatic cables.

[Bernice Moore]

Close encounter with the WikiLeaks secretive service
The Australian
Picture: AFP Source: AFP IRONICALLY, many people initially assumed that some international secret service was actually behind WikiLeaks; that the platform ...

[Magda Hassan]

http://www.scribd.com/doc/67742787/SEALE...Grand-Jury

[SEALED] Dockets concerning Birgitta Jonsdottir in the Wikileaks Grand Jury

[Magda Hassan]

US court orders target WikiLeaks volunteer's email

Updated October 10, 2011 21:43:42



The US government has obtained court orders to force Google and a small internet provider to hand over information from email accounts of a WikiLeaks volunteer, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The request included email addresses of people that Jacob Appelbaum, a volunteer for the whistleblower website, had corresponded with in the past two years, but not the full emails, 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 newspaper said Mr Appelbaum, 28, had not been charged with any wrongdoing.
The search engine giant Google declined to comment on the matter.
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 January 4, 2011, directed the company to turn over the IP addresses from which Mr Appelbaum logged into his Gmail account and the email and IP addresses of the users with whom he communicated dating back to November 1, 2009.
It is not clear whether Google fought the order or turned over documents, the newspaper said.
This year, micro-blogging website Twitter fought a similar court order to hand over details of the accounts of several WikiLeaks supporters, including Mr Appelbaum, as part of a criminal investigation launched by the US department of justice into the major leaking of confidential US documents.
Twitter has not turned over information from the accounts of the WikiLeaks supporters, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the investigation.
Mr Appelbaum is a developer for the Tor Project, a not-for-profit organisation that provides free tools that help people maintain their anonymity online, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Reuters
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-10/us...ls/3460048

[Ed Jewett]

Twitter, WikiLeaks and the US Justice Department


by Tom Burghardt

[TABLE="width: 100%"]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 2, align: left"]Global Research, November 13, 2011
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 2, align: left"]Antifascist Calling...
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

[Peter Lemkin]

The Human Rights Committee of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) has agreed to review the current injunction the US Department of Justice has launched against Icelandic MP Birgitta Jónsdóttir.

The case surrounds her and two other former Wikileaks volunteers. Last January, the US Department of Justice told Twitter to give them access to her account, in order to read her private messages. Birgitta fought the case, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Last March, a federal magistrate ruled in the US government's favour, which was confirmed again by federal court just days ago.

While Birgitta considers appealing the matter to the US Supreme Court, the IPU has ruled unanimously to examine her case.

The ruling argues in part that the injunction represents a possible serious breach of the right to privacy, saying in part:
... freedom of expression goes to the heart of democracy and is essential to members of parliament; without the ability to express their opinions freely, members of parliament cannot represent the people who have elected them; if they cannot receive and exchange information freely without fear of interference they cannot legislate and hold the government to account ... the national and international legal framework concerning the use of electronic media, including social media, does not appear to provide sufficient guarantees to ensure respect for freedom of expression, access to information and the right to privacy; the guarantees protecting freedom of expression and privacy in the"offline world" seem not to operate in the "online world"
The ruling recommends that the Secretary General communicate its concerns in this case to the parliamentary authorities in Iceland and in the US.