The Twitter subpoena battle
A court hearing took place today in the effort by several WikiLeaks volunteers and associates to keep the U.S. Department of Justice from accessing their Twitter records:
The government has requested personal Twitter information for Assange, Bradley Manning – the Army private who is suspected of supplying classified material to WikiLeaks – Birgitta Jonsdottir, a former WikiLeaks activits who is also a member of Iceland’s parliament, and computer programmers Rop Gonggrijp, a Dutch citizen, and Jacob Appelbaum, an American.
The case goes to the heart of the larger debate about WikiLeaks itself and whether the site’s disclosing of thousands of classsified government documents was free speech or a violation of national security. A judge ordered Twitter to turn over the information in a Dec. 14 ruling.
Jonsdottir, Gonggrijp and Appelbaum were represented by three defense lawyers, including one from the American Civil Liberties Union, in Tuesday’s hearing.
Read the rest at the Washington Post…and more from the Guardian and NY Times.
Also, Harvard Law professor and civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz is now advising Julian Assange and WikiLeaks in their brewing legal battle with the DOJ. He has won 13 out of the 15 murder and attempted murder cases that he has worked on, and is probably best known for his roles in the OJ Simpson and Pentagon papers cases.