Twitter Accounts Subpoena

[★ Lynx]

[boingboing.net] detailed write up

 

The U.S. Justice Department has ordered Twitter to hand over data associated with multiple user accounts, in preparation for legal action related to Wikileaks.

 

"There are many WikiLeaks supporters listed in the US Twitter subpoena," Wikileaks stated over Twitter tonight.

 

Lol... "...O'er the land of the free". It's been amusing. I feel sorry for the thousands of innocent Americans who will now be placed onto another list for something as insignificant as their curiosity.

[NBVegita]

I do have to say, I'm not surprised.

 

Removing and or distributing confidential military or government documents is illegal.

 

Not to say I think it's right to subpoena all users who subscribe to it, but I'm not surprised that the U.S. government is going to start motions for legal action against wiki-leaks and it's constituents.

 

Honestly the only way I see them getting out of legal action is to relocate within a country that will not extradite them to the countries they are leaking documents of.

[★ Lynx]

Yeah, while I'm not surprised (I wouldn't expect more from any US Government), it bothers me how carelessly the US Govt. will disregard the civil liberties of thousands of its inhabitants for these "fishing expeditions" - we'll also have to bear in mind that the DoJ may have also contacted Facebook (who has >1.4mln Wikileaks fans) too with a similar subpoena, which could produce much more intricate data - placing US citizens once again onto another list. While one could argue that Wikileaks is an illegal organisation, you can also argue that not targeting specific illegal communications, but broadly sweeping millions of accounts/data trawling is also very wrong. You'd also need to consider the track record America (and England, probably being worse) has for keeping these documents secret (and not violating DPA).

 

Either way, it won't be long until FOX are calling all of their subscribers terrorists and defending these decisions, and I guess there's not much anybody can do either.

[NBVegita]

I agree with you there.

 

If the government would like to try and grandstand stating that it's illegal to read the confidential documents leaked, well that is just insane, but insane or not, before someone would fight it, they would have gotten all of the info you mentioned above.

 

The whole deal in general gives me an uneasy feeling.