DoJ subpoenas Twitter for records of WikiLeaks, Assange, associates

The Department of Justice has served Twitter with a subpoena for the Twitter account records of Wikileaks along with several users associated with the whistleblower site. Originally, the DoJ ordered Twitter to keep the subpoena quiet, but Twitter fought back legally and had the order unsealed.

The subpoena asks for records for Wikileaks chief Julian Assange, Pfc. Bradley Manning (widely is allegedly the person who leaked the Iraq, Afghanistan, and diplomatic cable info to the site), along with several WikiLeaks associates and volunteers, including Birgitta Jonsdottir, Rop Gongrijp, and Jacob Appelbaum, who filled in for Assange at a conference in mid-July. The records requested are from Nov. 2009 to present. The subpoena (.PDF) asks for the following, in addition to other information:

• e-mail addresses
• IP addresses
• residential and business addresses
• session times and connection records
• telephone numbers
• credit card information
• correspondence, including private messages

Rop Gongrijp posted the following email he received from Twitter:

Kessel, Jan-07 11:20 am (PST):
Dear Twitter User:

We are writing to inform you that Twitter has received legal process requesting information regarding your Twitter account, @rop_g. A copy of the legal process is attached. The legal process requires Twitter to produce documents related to your account.

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.

To respond to this notice, please e-mail us at .

This notice is not legal advice. You may wish to consult legal counsel about this matter. If you need assistance seeking counsel, you may consider contacting the Electronic Frontier Foundation or the ACLU .

Sincerely,

Twitter Legal

Birgitta Jonsdottir, for one, is attempting to fight the court order. She Tweeted:

Talked with the Icelandic minister of Justice - he is now looking into the case of demands of DoJ wanting my twitter details.

As noted, Twitter had been ordered to keep the order silent, but the order was later unsealed by Judge Theresa Buchanan in Alexandria, VA. As such, it's worth asking if other companies with huge treasure troves of information about all of us (Yahoo!, Facebook, Google) have similarly been subpoenaed, but did so quietly, unlike Twitter. It's hard to imagine Twitter being the only such Internet giant subpoenaed.

Salon.com, which exclusively obtained the subpoena linked above, notes the following:

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.

That may be true, but what is probably most frightening to the U.S. government, and other governments worldwide, is the ease with which such information can be leaked. There's no doubt that Wikileaks is a first example, and that the moves against Wikileaks serve as a warning to any future leakers.