U.S. to WikiLeaks: Hand over your Tweets! Gov't subpoenas website

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You can bet the Twittersphere will be abuzz about this one: The U.S. government is reportedly subpoenaing WikiLeaks' Twitter account.

The U.S. District Court in Virginia said it wanted the whistleblower website's personal information, including user names, addresses, connection records, payment details and telephone numbers.


Authorities demanded information for every account registered to the WikiLeaks and its boss, Julian Assange.

Twitter is also being ordered to hand over information for other accounts, including those of Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army private suspected of leaking the documents, a Dutch hacker named Rop Gonggrjp and Icelandic lawmaker Brigatta Jonsdottir, who volunteered for WikiLeaks.

U.S. officials are contemplating possible charges against WikiLeaks and its boss, Julian Assange for revealing hundreds of thousands of top-secret documents.

Assange slammed the court order on Saturday.

"If the Iranian government was to attempt to coercively obtain this information from journalists and activists of foreign nations, human rights groups around the world would speak out," he said in a statement.

A copy of the Dec. 14 court order was posted on Salon.com. It said the information being sought was "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation," and demanded that Twitter not disclose its existence to WikiLeaks or any of the other accounts' owners.

WikiLeaks said the order was eventually unsealed "thanks to legal action by Twitter."

Twitter would not comment on the subpoena, but said its policy was to "notify users about law enforcement and governmental requests for their information, unless we are prevented by law from doing so."

Assange is currently fighting extradition from the UK to Sweden, where he's wanted for questioning as part of a separate inquiry into alleged
sexual assault.

Daily News

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