WikiLeaks In New Legal Battle 86
geegel writes "The US Justice Department is now fighting in court demands from three WikiLeaks associates to disclose the names of several electronic service platforms that received requests to hand over user information. This comes after Twitter obtained a court order to unseal the demands in order to notify the three persons. The current legal row has seen both the ACLU and the EFF provide legal assistance to the WikiLeaks associates."
Hey Slashdot! (Score:4, Interesting)
Have you turned over any records to the Feds concerning Wikileaks members (or any records, period)? If you can't comment on that, then perhaps you could outline what Slashdot's policy is for turning over records to law enforcement when not accompanied by a Federal warrant or National Security letter.
Re:EFF (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll bite.
What about the new york times and bazillions of other news organizations? How does the type of organization you are determine the legality of ones actions?
They have and they will (Score:4, Interesting)
Years ago someone posted the "top secret" scientology documents into the comments and they were deleted. I can't recall if it was court ordered or merely a scare letter from an attorney.
please show me exactly which law says that (Score:3, Interesting)
because you can't.
there is no law banning the 'leaking' of classified information.
there are several different laws that ban specific types of information, some of it classified, in certain situations, by certain people.
the truth is that the vast majority of the documents that Manning released do not fall under any law simply becasue they are classified.
read his charge sheet, then look up the actual laws and read them. the civilian laws that he broke do not use the word 'classified'. at all. the Espionage Act (he has about 5 or so charges on this) is regarding 'national defense information'.
please tell me how information about Gadhafi's "hot nurses" are information vital to the national defense.
congress has been unwilling or unable to pass any law making a blanket ban on passing classified information.
or the Collateral Murder video. how does that rise to the level of the Espionage Act?
why is there no blanket anti-classified leaking law? because congress itself leaks classified information all the time, in order to fight political battles in the media. thats where all the 'senior officials who did not wish to be named' comments come from in news stories.
you can read about Ollie North's experience in the 80s, the whitehouse leaked, congress leaked, everyone leaked. it was part of their media strategy.
There is a great paper from the 1973 Columbia Law Journal by Schmidt and Edgar about this, you can read it online at
http://www.fas.org/sgp/library/index.html [fas.org]
Essentially, the American nation has put more faith in open debate and discussion than in government secrecy and its associated blatant lying and corruption (see Reynolds v. United States for a classic example).
this principle is slowly being chipped away by various underhanded tactics over the years, but the spirit of openness is like an unquenchable flame or some kind of endemic weed... the human condition is to ask questions and demand accounability from authority.