Twitter's Lawyers Seek To Block WikiLeaks Data Handover 81
jhernik writes "Lawyers on Friday asked a judge to overturn a ruling from earlier this month, forcing Twitter to hand over account details to the Department of Justice, in a case related to the federal government's ongoing investigation of WikiLeaks. The appeal (PDF) seeks to overturn a ruling that would give the government access to Twitter account details for three users who had contact with WikiLeaks. The government also wants Twitter to provide information on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and on Bradley Manning, a US Army private charged with providing data to WikiLeaks."
Re:Retroactive wiretap (Score:5, Informative)
The DoJ doesn't want the tweets, they want the account info for the users posting the tweets: email addresses, real names, IP addresses, session logs; the types of things that cannot be found with a simple google search.
Twitter's argument is that the warrant is overly-broad. In addition to information salient to the ongoing case, Twitter feels that the warrant asks them to turn over information with no bearing on the current case, which they feel is an invasion of their users privacy. To be clear, Twitter isn't trying to overturn "warrants can be used to gather information," they're just saying that this warrant should be overturned.
Stupid headline (Score:5, Informative)
The story is wrong. They apparently didn't even read the document they linked to on the ACLU's website.
Twitter isn't appealing. The people whose information is being sought (Jacob Appelbaum, Ron Gonggrjp, and Birgitta Jonsdottir) are.
Re:Retroactive wiretap (Score:5, Informative)