US orders Twitter to hand over WikiLeaks records

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A US court has ordered Twitter to hand over details of the accounts of WikiLeaks and several supporters as part of a criminal investigation into the release of hundreds of thousands of confidential documents.

The Dec 14 subpoena obtained by the US Department of Justice and published by online magazine Salon.com on Friday said the records sought from the microblogging website were “relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation.”

It ordered Twitter to provide account information on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Bradley Manning, the US Army intelligence analyst suspected of leaking Pentagon documents made public last year by WikiLeaks.

The information sought by the government includes all connection records and session times, IP addresses used to access Twitter, email and residential addresses plus billing records and details of bank accounts and credit cards.

The subpoena included the accounts of WikiLeaks supporters Jacob Appelbaum, Rop Gonggrijp and Birgitta Jonsdottir, a former WikiLeaks volunteer and member of Iceland’s parliament.
“WikiLeaks strongly condemns this harassment of individuals by the US government,” WikiLeaks said in a statement issued to Reuters by its London lawyer, Mark Stephens.

Iceland’s Foreign Minister Ossur Skarphedinsson told Icelandic media yesterday his government planned to lodge a protest tomorrow with the US ambassador in Reykjavik.