Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

U.S. seeks Twitter info on WikiLeaks' Assange, others

Saturday, January 8, 2011

WASHINGTON — A U.S. magistrate in Virginia has ordered Twitter to turn over to the Justice Department whatever information it has about five of its users, including WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Army PFC Bradley Manning, the one-time Baghdad-based intelligence analyst accused of unauthorized downloading of hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. government documents.

The subpoena was issued Dec. 14, but was unsealed Wednesday at Twitter's request so that it could notify the persons whose records had been demanded. In addition, to Assange and Manning, the subpoena seeks the records of Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of Iceland's parliament and a former volunteer for WikiLeaks. She made public the subpoena in an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian on Friday.

The subpoena seeks, in addition to IP addresses and other account information, "records of any activity to and from the accounts," including the size of files that may have been transferred to them or from them and when those transfers occurred. The subpoena requests the information beginning Nov. 1, 2009, while Manning was still working in Baghdad. He was arrested in May shortly after WikiLeaks posted a video taken from a U.S. helicopter as it fired on and killed two employees of the Reuters news agency in Baghdad.

In addition to Assange, Manning and Jonsdottir, the subpoena seeks the records of Rop Gonggrijp, a well known Dutch computer programmer whose surnname the subpoena misspelled as Gongrijp, and those of another WikiLeaks figure, Jacob Appelbaum, who is not identified by name, but whose Twitter username is used to identify the account. In addition to Appelbaum's ioerror handle, the subpoena seeks account information on usernames rop_g and birgittaj.

Late Friday, Appelbaum warned followers in a Twitter post not to message him privately — something Twitter allows — because "my twitter account contents apparently have been invited" to a grand jury reportedly considering the case in Alexandria, Va..

The subpoenas mark an intensification of the Justice Department's efforts to tie WikiLeaks and Assange to Manning, who is currently jailed at the Marine Corps base at Quantico, Va., facing charges that could send him to prison, if convicted, for 52 years. Pentagon officials have said that while prosecutors believe the files Manning is accused of downloading were passed to WikiLeaks, they have yet to establish a direct link between Manning and Assange. Without that link, it may be difficult to charge Assange with a crime in connection to the ongoing publication of the documents by the website.

Read The Guardian's account here.

The CNET.com website quotes Jonsdottir as saying that Twitter notified her of the order's existence and told her she has 10 days to oppose the request.

Read the CNET account here.

A PDF of the subpoena can be found here.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/08/106419/us-seeks-twitter-account-info.html#ixzz1ASrdyKZ0

.........What country is this ? ...