Court Subpoenas Twitter to Surrender WikiLeaks Information

A U.S. court is reportedly ordering Twitter to turn over account information for WikiLeaks. A subpoena filed on December 14, 2010, and sent to The Associated Press, shows that the U.S. Department of Justice will receive the account data of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, and also that of suspected affiliate former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning. Records on other supporters and volunteers, including a member of Iceland’s parliament, were also requested.

The subpoena obtained by the Associated Press (News - Alert) said the information sought was "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation." Twitter was ordered not to disclose its existence to any of the targets. However, a second document, dated January 5, 2011, unsealed the court order. WikiLeaks said that the order had been unsealed because of legal action taken by Twitter.

The information that Twitter must turn over includes connection records, session times, IP addresses used to access its site, e-mail and physical addresses, private messages, phone numbers, and billing information for four account holders.

WikiLeaks, in response to the subpoena, objected to what it characterized as the harassment of individuals by the government. WikiLeaks claims that three of the four accounts in question belong to users who simply support the site. The Icelandic government also plans to counter the U.S. government’s action through diplomatic channels, in order to protect its parliament member’s privacy.

In late November 2010, WikiLeaks published 251,287 leaked U.S. embassy cables, the largest number of confidential documents ever released into the public domain. The cables date from 1966 until the end of February 2010, and they include confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries around the world and the U.S. State Department. Of the cables, 15,652 are classified Secret.

In the aftermath of the diplomatic cables leak, a so-called “hacktivist” group by the name of Anonymous launched attacks against sites that blocked WIkiLeaks access, such as Mastercard and Visa. The group largely used Twitter to organize the attacks.