Wikileaks and the Justice Department

The United States Department of Justice issued a subpoena for access to the Twitter account information of several people who have been linked to Wikileaks including Julian Assange. The move is an attempt at finding a legal rational to charge Assange with criminal behavior. Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of Iceland's Parliament and former Wikileaks activist, was one of the figures subpoenaed, and found out from the social networking site. She said the United States government ''wants to know about all my tweets and more since November 1st 2009.'' She added, ''Do they realize I am a member of parliament in Iceland?''

Along with Jonsdottir and Assange, the subpoena asks for the complete account information of two computer programmers, Rop Gonggrijp and Jacob Appelbaum, as well as Private First Class Bradley Manning, a United States Army intelligence specialist who is awaiting a military court martial for leaking information. The information the government is after includes addresses, screen names, telephone numbers, credit card numbers, and bank account numbers. The request does not, however, ask for the content of private messages sent via Twitter.

Spokeswoman for Twitter, Jodi Olson, said the company did not have specific comments, but that, ''to help users protect their rights, it's our policy to notify users about law enforcement and governmental requests for their information, unless we are prevented by law from doing so.''

Appelbaum and Manning are the only ones named in the subpoena that are citizens of the United States. As the others, Assange from Australia, Jonsdottir from Iceland, and Gonggrijp from The Netherlands, are not American citizens, there is a chance that diplomatic quarrels with allied nations may arise from the subpoena. The messages were sent by non-United States citizens while they were residing in countries other than the United States and, it could be argued, the United States laws are being used to suppress free communication.

In the United States' past, there have been very few leak prosecutions, and most have focused on the government employees releasing the information rather than journalists who received and published the information. There has never been a successful prosecution of someone who had leaked classified information who was not a government employee. Legal experts believe there are far too many practical and legal pitfalls that would thwart criminal charges from being brought up against Wikileaks volunteers.

A coalition called Digital Due Process made up of internet companies, communications carriers, and civil liberties groups have recently been lobbying Congress to protect the privacy of online user accounts. The group formed as the amount of subpoenas ordered by the government demanding communications has grown to thousands per year.

The Wikileaks Twitter is, however, still going strong, tweeting on Saturday, ''If the Iranian govt asked for DMs of Iranian activists, State Dept would be all over this violation of 'Internet freedom.'''