WikiLeaks Supporters' Twitter Accounts Subpoenaed 391
HJED writes "The US Justice Department has served Twitter with a subpoena for the personal information and private messages of WikiLeaks supporters. There's a copy of the subpoena here (PDF); boing boing has a detailed article. Twitter has 3 days to turn over the information."
Just another day... (Score:2, Interesting)
... in the US government's life of doing whatever the hell they want without a court involved if they're caught with their pants down. But that's not what's scary - it's that this will happen without objections, other than a silent whisper from the victims here, effectively quenched by a public that wants to read more about Khloe Kardashian getting her own reality show. Heck, it hasn't even been established in a court that what has been leaked could be endangering lives. But who cares?
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:5, Interesting)
That's actually a bigger worry IMHO than whatever random stuff is on Twitter. The flow of cables from Wikileaks has dried up. They hardly released any at all since the new year.
Given that only 2000 of them have been released out of 250,000 they need to be stepping up the pace dramatically if they want these cables to ever see the light of day. But the exact opposite is happening. Is the biggest leak in history destined to actually be the smallest thanks to infighting and problems at Wikileaks, I wonder?
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:3, Interesting)
I suspect that one of the problems they are having is manpower; they need the 'big' news organizations to help them sift through all the cables and see what can be released and whether those need redacting, but those organizations are now very busy handling the news around the whole affair. And the wikileaks people themselves may be a bit preoccupied with several legal procedures. There are other internal problems at wikileaks but I do not think that those are the only reasons the flow seems to dry out.
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I'd hand it to the Justice Department immediate (Score:4, Interesting)
Twitter has been ordered to produce
The following customer or subscriber account information for each account associated with Wikileaks; ...
Were I Twitter, I would send them thousands of account records -- Every user that has ever mentioned Wikileaks via Twitter [twitter.com] and let them sort it out themselves.
The order said they must produce the information, but did not specify that the info must not be anonymized, or mixed in with thousands of other accounts.
Rememeber 2007! (Score:5, Interesting)
May be twitter can use that as a defense?
Re:The need for psychiatric evaluation of gov... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think Slashcode should auto-detect these idiotic URL shorteners and either just refuse to accept them like it does for "all caps" posts and the like or preemptively down-mod the post by 2 points at least...
Re:There is a threat to democracy! (Score:5, Interesting)
So, it's ok for authorities to lie, cheat, bribe, kill, torture, etc, and the very act of exposing them is a crime punishable by death or life imprisonment?
It's also ok for authorities to use surveillance, covert-operations, false flag operations, etc., to ensure "peace and prosperity".
You're so fucked.. Just watch your country go down in flames, and the same fucking politicians stepping up and "saving it", from the problems of their own creation!
Re:To quote Padme... (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a lot of people out there that are either deluded into thinking that they can't accidentally be accused or don't care as long as one of the accused is actually guilty and is willing to toss the others under the bus to get a conviction.
Re:The need for psychiatric evaluation of gov... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not just values, it's the entire skewed outlook on history and the role of the government.
It's a crazy outlook, where taxes are a violation of rights, but, you know, detaining people without charging them for crime is not.
I just want to shake the goddamn Tea Party idiots and say 'Do you actually know why we revolted from England? And if you say 'taxes' I will shoot you in head.'
Re:Why is this a surprise? A law was broken.. (Score:3, Interesting)
For military personel it is treason, for anyone else it is not. Especially when the group releasing the documents are not American, they have no duty to keep the secrets of foreign nations. Heck, you are not required to keep the secrets of your own goverment either. When the pentagon papers were published by the New York Times, and Nixon had them taken to court, the supreme court found 6-3 in favor of the New York Times publishing the documents.
"Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell."
—Justice Black
So in the closest case we have to Wikileaks, the supreme court ruled it was the newspapers RESPONSIBILITY to report the lies of our government to us. If you want to hide your head in the sand, obey big brother at all times, and never question your government, move to to China, they appreciate your kind there. America was founded on the idea of an open democracy by the people for the people, not some secretive government that disappears people who disagree with it for "treason". But the reason the governments are scared of Wikileaks is because a lot of people in government do things that if their people found out, would have them thrown out in seconds. Every time wikileaks releases more documents, the government starts banging the treason drum, saying it puts our troops at risk. As of yet not one single Wikileak can be blamed for causing the death of an American soldier. They said the same thing about the Afghan war document leak in august. The secretary of defense himself said "the review to date has not revealed any sensitive intelligence sources and methods compromised by this disclosure." Those were military communications, and these are diplomatic cables, which are far less likely to endanger troops, and far more likely to embarrass two faced diplomats who are being caught saying one thing to the public and another in private.
The truth of the matter is 911 was an incredibly successful attack on the freedoms of Americans. No group had ever been as successful at changing American views and ideals since the founding fathers. Since then large portion of Americans can be herded wherever the government wants you by using words like "National Security" and "terrorism", people willingly give up freedoms that our grandfathers fought for and often paid for with their lives. That one attack did more to bring us closer to a 1984 style big brother controlled America, where any dissent is crushed and called treason, than any effort by any group. People willingly give up their freedoms and rights in exchange for protection from the terrorist bogeymen. Hell they don't even need to get actual protection, most people are perfectly happy with the bullshit security theatre their goverment puts in place (at great public cost) that will do nothing to stop another attack. America may once have been the land of the free and the home of the brave, but it is quickly turning into the land of the totalitarian democracy, the home of cowards who hide behind their governments skirts.