US Government Issues Subpoena To Twitter For Wikileaks, Assange-Related Accounts

by Frances Martel | 12:54 pm, January 8th, 2011

» 12 comments

The noose around the necks of Wikileaks is now tightening at a rapid pace, with the United States finally getting overtly involved. Last night, Icelandic Parliamentarian and producer of Wikileaks’ “Collateral Murder” video Birgitta Jonsdottir stated she had just been notified that the US Department of Justice had sent Twitter a subpoena for all of her activity on Twitter– and that of Julian Assange, and anyone involved with Wikileaks.

Wikileaks fremeny The Guardian, who broke the story after Jonsdottir’s initial tweets, reports that Jonsdottir is doing everything she can to fight the subpoena, and has ten days to get the process in motion before Twitter is forced to hand over the information. While most of the information– tweets– is already public, this would also give the government access to her private messages on the network, which is what Jonsdottir has said she expects the government is after. She is also demanding a meeting with the US ambassador to Iceland, and is using all her weight as a member of the legislature to fight the release of her information. She tells the Guardian:

“It’s not just about my information. It’s a warning for anyone who had anything to do with WikiLeaks. It is completely unacceptable for the US justice department to flex its muscles like this. I am lucky, I’m a representative in parliament. But what of other people? It’s my duty to do whatever I can to stop this abuse.”

Meanwhile, over at Salon, Glenn Greenwald has uncovered the actual subpoena request (downloadable here) and astutely notes that, while Jonsdottir has been the loudest about the request, she is not nearly the only Wikileaks-related person whose information is being recalled. Also on the list, of course, is Julian Assange, but also other senior members of the organization, like spokesman Jacob Appelbaum and Rop Gonggrijp, and– if possible– suspected military leaker Bradley Manning. For all these entities, he explains, the government seeks “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.” Greenwald also questions– as Jonsdottir did over Twitter later– whether other social networking sites received similar subpoenas and remained mum about it.

The subpoenas finally confirm rampant speculation that the US Department of Justice is considering mounting a criminal case against Wikileaks for their work, though the targeting of people like Jonsdottir and Appelbaul, as Greenwald also points out, makes the search notably more sweeping. Jonsdottir’s involvement in particular, as she is only known to have worked on Collateral Murder and had a very public change of heart about Assange’s leadership, shows that it was not the diplomatic cables that pushed the Department of Justice to act– they’re investigating every move Wikileaks has made in the past couple of years. Also notable in the list of names is the absence of Daniel Domscheit-Berg (PKA Daniel Schmitt), the former Wikileaks spokesman who has moved on to establish the rival site Openleaks after either resigning from Wikileaks in disgust or being fired by Assange for contempt. Domscheit-Berg’s collaboration with the organization lasted much longer than Jonsdottir’s, despite ending much more explosively, though it is also possible that the Department of Justice is banking on old animus against Assange to turn Domscheit-Berg to their side. For now, all parties involved must simply wait for the legal process to unravel, and for the American government to open up about their search.

Birgitta Jonsdottir, Bradley Manning, Department of Justice, Glenn Greewald, Iceland, Jacob Applebaum, Julian Assange, Salon, The Guardian, Wikileaks

Harry Flashman

Oh, my…this is gonna be fun.

Funny, isn’t it, that those who leaked without hesitation and with puffed up bravado all the documents they did are now crying at the thought of their “private” tweets being made public? Leaks for thee but not for me, it seems.

Aside from the obvious irony, there is another question…..if what they did was so righteous, so legal, and so morally correct why are they concerned about someone exposing their communications about it? It’s not like they did anything sneaky or illegal.

Or is it?
Harry Flashman

One more point. She said:

“do they realize i am a member of parliamnet in iceland?”

Yeah, I’m pretty sure they do realize that you’re a member of parliament in a country with a population about the same as the city of New Orleans. I’m sure they’re shaking in their shoes.

And…if you hadn’t smugly decided to take them on, to discredit and attack them, they would never even have heard of you, would they? Sort of brought that spotlight on yourself.

Thought I’d bring that up.
Judge Mental

“Also notable in the list of names is the absence of Daniel Domscheit-Berg (PKA Daniel Schmitt), the former Wikileaks spokesman …. [I]t is also possible that the Department of Justice is banking on old animus against Assange to turn Domscheit-Berg to their side.”

Or perhaps he’s already cooperating.
http://twitter.com/SailRabbits Magister

Apologies if I’m not noticing the link, but Greg Mitchell of “The Nation” has put together a link-filled timeline of this latest move.
http://twitter.com/SailRabbits Magister

ETA: After posting the timeline link, I looked at it again for the first time in a couple of hours.
Among the links is an interesting question the BBC is asking their site’s users;

“If confidential details of overseas Twitter users are disclosed to the US authorities, how keen will an international audience be to trust this or other American social networks in future?”
Judge Mental

Magister said:
ETA: After posting the timeline link, I looked at it again for the first time in a couple of hours.
Among the links is an interesting question the BBC is asking their site’s users;

Interesting question. This stuff isn’t generally available via civil subpoena without the subject’s consent.
bundesheer

Harry Flashman said:
One more point. She said:

“do they realize i am a member of parliamnet in iceland?”

Yeah, I’m pretty sure they do realize that you’re a member of parliament in a country with a population about the same as the city of New Orleans. I’m sure they’re shaking in their shoes.

And…if you hadn’t smugly decided to take them on, to discredit and attack them, they would never even have heard of you, would they? Sort of brought that spotlight on yourself.

Thought I’d bring that up.

Why are you so stupid? You don’t think the government should be questioned? Just sit on your fat ass and do nothing, because the gov can’t do wrong. They would never abuse their power, or make bad decisions. The TV tells me the government is good, so it must be true.
Harry Flashman

bundesheer said:

“Why are you so stupid? You don’t think the government should be questioned? Just sit on your fat ass and do nothing,”

I never said that. Governments need to be held accountable. That being said, there is no way you can convince me that the release of hundreds of thousands of pages of documents has any other purpose than to cause harm. Not to expose wrong doing or evil. To cause harm and embarrassment. Exposing anything that the US had actually done that was wrong and/or evil is just a bonus to those worms.

So…a politician on Shitsplat Island decides she’s the Great Avenger and wants to expose the evil United States (by the way, if it wasn’t for that EVIL America Iceland would have been speaking Russian sixty years ago) and now that she’s kicked the hornet’s nest she wants to tell the hornets to leave her alone.

Sorry for being so stupid that I look further than the end of my nose in this issue. By the way, my ass is not fat. It still fits in 34 jeans. But thanks for taking an interest.
Gasket

It’s just intimidation tactics. I hope these guys anticipated this and did not use the social media PM section to communicate with one another. Even I wouldn’t do that…when dealing with a powerful entity such as the US Government.
murphy0071

Everyone known the U.S. Senate and Congress and their corporate sponsors, particularly since W. , are trash and could care less about the welfare of the troops or the citizens and only want to line their pockets and have unlimited power. Wilileaks hasn’t exposed anything that isn’t common knowledge to anyone who keeps up on the Republican desire to destroy everything in their way to world domination.
disgusted

Amen!
http://twitter.com/SailRabbits Magister

I realize the Arizona situation has dominated pretty much all of media since a few hours after Frances filed this post, but this does seem like it could be a larger story with much more far-reaching implications.

For example, following up on the BBC’s rhetorical question: Neither Google or Facebook has commented about the subpoenas. The original DOJ requests ordered them to be silent, but Twitter asked for the court’s permission to notify their affected users, which would give them the opportunity to contest the order.

If it weren’t for Twitter’s proaction, we wouldn’t know of the subpoenas.

And because Google has physical locations in Russia, China and more than three dozen other countries, the service would also be governed by those country’s laws; What if Putin wanted some of our records? What if Columbia passed a law to fish for smuggling’s end-users?