From BoingBoing, and all over the Twittrverse tonight
US orders Twitter to hand over account data on Wikileaks and multiple Wikileaks supporters
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/07/re ... oenas.html





The article at BoingBoing is a good quick summary, with some interesting questions at the end. Like why were some people fully named, and others by just their usernames? I kinda think the Eastern District of Virginia is fishing.

Link to the Subpoena
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn ... bpoena.pdf

The unsealing order
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn ... _Order.pdf

I have a question!
Seeing as how the net is located nowhere in particular, what right is there for the US to demand records of people who are not US citizens particularly if the site in question did not originate in the US? The prosecution of non US citizens who contravene Us Law depends on treaties between the US and individual states.
Regards .............Dick

We're Americans. Sue first and see if it solves the problem. Then worry about legality. (Also works if you replace Sue with Shoot.)

Nevermind that one is a foreign legislator acting in her official capacity and certainly covered by sovereign immunity under international and domestic law (possibly the FSIA though I am not certain that would block third party discovery unless it really is the purpose of the discovery to harass the legislature of an ally).

If Twitter has servers in the US, the Government probably contends it has jurisdiction.

Now a report from Assange's lawyer that Skype might have been served as well,

This is discovery, so it has a broader scope than prosecution. They can subpoena anyone in the country for information/records. They can, through the Hague Convention and letters rogatory, subpoena people abroad (these take significantly longer - months). The targets can move to quash the subpoenas, arguing that they are too broad, that they are irrelevant, or seek privileged information.

I don't think sovereign immunity would necessarily protect a legislator's twitter account, unless he/she were twittering from the floor of the legislature. But, that's one of the privileges the target could invoke in seeking to quash the subpoena. (The lawyer for the legislator would have to intervene and protest the subpoena, I doubt Twitter could invoke that privilege on behalf of their customer).

It's not uncommon to list pseudonyms if that's all you know.

It might under the FSIA, if not under international law. I understand the MP has the EFF on it, so if there actually grounds to quash, they will be raised.

Slightly off topic, but we don't have a pure Wikileaks thread. Apparently Jane Hamsher and a fellow named David House are getting treatment at Quantico when they tried to get on the base where Pvt. Manning is being held. The leftist blogosphere is going nuts over it. Via Greenwald:



http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn ... index.html

Apparently Hamsher did not have current proof of insurance for her car and the MPs didn't want to accept "electronic proof" of that. You can read House and Hamsher's twitter feeds at the link.

They can murder Manning. How special.

If those he outed had been or do get murdered, that's fine with you though, right?

You must really hate the U.S.

Life in prison with no parole would be good enough.

You didn't just type that, did you? That's pure teabaggery.

Either I accept everything the government does is pure and wholesome (Tuskegee syphilis experiments, deposing the legitimately elected governments of over 30 nations, etc) or get out?

Really?

No one said that. You've been defending the outing of classified documents, some of which put American lives in danger. by these assholes since day one. Why any sane American would defend that type of behavior is beyond me, that's all.

That may or may not have placed anyone's like in danger.

We have to open up the wound and let all the diseased puss out of the wound and start behaving like a moral nation.

Seriously? ronny raygun murdered tens of thousands of people in Central America and he didn't even come up on charges, let alone spend a millisecond in prison for mass murder. georgie and obama have slaughtered civilians right and left, and almost 5,000 Americans service members, with no moral basis.

America isn't above the law. American prezinuts and operatives aren't above the law. We're supposed to be about the Rule Of Law, not the blatant disregard for any law that interferes with profit or the murder of non-Americans who get in the way.

We as a nation have to behave exceptionally to be exceptional.

How many lives did our government put in danger when they started wars based on false premises? How many lives did our government put in danger when they tortured people in our name? It cuts both ways.

And I defended that exactly where?

IMO that does not excuse the actions of Manning.

Exactly.

We have to hire better people to lead and run our government.

Ask the innocent at Gitmo how things are going. Or at Baghram. Or all the victims of the extraordinary renditions.

We won't get better unless we root out the disease and start the healing process.

So clearly, we should have shot Daniel Ellsberg, too. Not that I'm defending Manning. I do not trust his motivation, and find it very suspicious that he violated an oath he had taken very recently.

Virtually every exposure of government wrongdoing has been by leaking documents under conditions that would be illegal in the absence of any defense, such as, in Ellsberg's case, the First Amendment.

Manning lacks the benefit of such a defense for many of the leaks, as they were largely indiscriminate and without regard for the importance of any individual item. However, we are going to see more and more of such leaks, though I hope most of them will not arise from people violating their oaths.

I'll agree that Manning needs to do some time. I do not believe America will benefit, however, from creating our own homegrown Mordechai Vanunu, as you seem eager to have happen.

I am not in favor of executing Manning, although his behavior does fall dangerously close to treason.

However, if he felt the way he did about this or any other nation's right to safeguard its internal diplomatic communications, he shouldn't have taken an oath that he knew would require him to violate his personal principles. He loses all sympathy by having taken that significant step.

Assange's behavior is beyond reprehensible when seen just through the lens of journalistic ethics. The New York Times has documented in detail the numerous instances demonstrating his reckless approach to the disclosure of confidential informants and other vulnerable people. Every disclosure of a sensitive fact and identity of a person must involve a balancing of the true journalistic value of the disclosure versus the price someone will pay. That balance clearly weighed against disclosure of many facts and the names of many persons, but Assange didn't give a shit, to such a degree that the Times decided to stop cooperating with him. He's not a journalist. He's an attention whore who was catapulted into our radars only because our society still hasn't figured out how to live with the Internet.

As I posted over on PJ, the article I read said that the Army would not seek the death penalty for Manning, but I would have no problem executing him.

Assange is not a journalist, he's a hack that posts anything and everything without vetting it and without consideration of the consequences. Doesn't make him a criminal, but it does make him an asshat. His legal problems in Sweden are beside the point.

PFC Bradley Manning, however, if competent to stand trial, is very nearly a traitor. He is not a whistleblower, he is a snively little punk who, from the biographies I've read, gets his feelings hurt whenever anyone tells him no. He did not do this for altruistic purposes, he did it because the Army was about to discharge him. He'd already been demoted at least once, and was about to get booted; he wanted to hurt the organization that hurt his widdle feelings, and for that he betrayed his country, his oath and whatever honor he may have had up until then.

Hang the punk.

(Yeah, I tend towards the reactionary on this type of thing, plus I've had my grouch on a bit today. Sue me.)

Holy shit.

John is a 12-year veteran of the U.S. Army. He commanded a tank in Desert Storm. His son was wounded so many times in Iraq, John had to pay tens of thousands of dollars out of his own pocket in order to supplement the care his son received from the government. He's the hardest working man I know.

He has some unusual ideas about government and about economics. I don't agree with all of them. On this issue, I'm almost 100% in agreement with him. What Manning did was wrong, and Assange is a dick ... but the world is a better place, overall, for the actions of Wikileaks. I haven't heard of a single death yet that was provably caused by the revelations.

Reasonable minds can disagree about Wikileaks.

But JohnThomas8 does not "hate the U.S." He's one of the most honorable men I know. He wants the U.S. to be a better country. He wants corruption and waste and greed out of our government. I want the same goddamn thing. We may disagree about how to get there. But that doesn't mean he "hates the U.S."

I'm sure you are right about JohnThomas8. I appreciate his input on the site even if I don't always agree with him.

But as for your statement that you haven't heard of a single death yet that was provably caused by the revelations... has anyone bothered following up to find that out? He released the names of thousands of people, most of them obscure "foreigners" who no one had ever heard of before. Thanks to his disclosures, Al Quaeda and the Taliban know exactly which people in Afghanistan and Iraq were acting as confidential informants to the governments of those countries and to ours. These are local people, in the community, with families and children. Do you really doubt that thugs are going to go after them or their families? Why wouldn't they?