Subpoena Of Twitter Accounts Of WikiLeaks Supporters

neontommy | 08.01.2011 12:04 | Other Press | Repression | World

Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald reports that the Department of Justice has served Twitter with a subpoena seeking private information on several supporters of Wikileaks. The federal order, he says, is much broader than originally believed.

Says Greenwald:

The information demanded by the DOJ is sweeping in scope. It includes all mailing addresses and billing information known for the user, all connection records and session times, all IP addresses used to access Twitter, all known email accounts, as well as the "means and source of payment," including banking records and credit cards. It seeks all of that information for the period beginning November 1, 2009, through the present.

Greenwald also links to a copy of the subpoena. On Thursday, the Guardian newspaper reported that Birgitta Jónsdóttir -- a former WikiLeaks volunteer and a current member of the Icelandic Parliament -- had announced on Twitter that the DOJ subpoena was seeking a trove of information on her dating back to November 20009. A number of other news outlets, including the BBC, also reported the request for information on the Icelandic MP. But Greenwald reports that the DOJ probe actually has a much wider focus, enmeshing several other WikiLeaks supporters.

What hasn't been reported is that the Subpoena served on Twitter -- which is actually an Order from a federal court that the DOJ requested -- seeks the same information for numerous other individuals currently or formerly associated with WikiLeaks, including Jacob Appelbaum, Rop Gongrijp, and Julian Assange. It also seeks the same information for Bradley Manning and for WikiLeaks' Twitter account...

...The Order was signed by a federal Magistrate Judge in the Eastern District of Virginia, Theresa Buchanan, and served on Twitter by the DOJ division for that district. It states that there is "reasonable ground to believe that the records or other information sought are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation," the language required by the relevant statute. It was issued on December 14 and ordered sealed -- i.e., kept secret from the targets of the Order. It gave Twitter three days to respond and barred the company from notifying anyone, including the users, of the existence of the Order. On January 5, the same judge directed that the Order be unsealed at Twitter's request in order to inform the users and give them 10 days to object; had Twitter not so requested, it would have been compelled to turn over this information without the knowledge of its users.

Jónsdóttir, as a member of the Icelandic parliament and as a member of the NATO parliamentary assembly, says she will be resisting the order and will be demanding a meeting with the U.S. Ambassador and other relevant officials.

Jónsdóttir was deeply involved in the release last year of a U.S. military video, revealed by WikiLeaks, which showed an American helicopter firing at two Reuters reporters in Iraq. While she has recently distanced herself from WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange, she remains a driving force behind the Modern Media Initiative which aims at making Iceland a haven for whistlelblowers, according to the Guardian,

"I think I am being given a message, almost like someone breathing in a phone,” Jónsdóttir wrote. “If Twitter hands over my information – then no ones information is save [sic] with Twitter."

UPDATE: Rop Grongrijp, one of those targeted by the subpoena, has now posted a response on his personal blog,

neontommy
Homepage: http://www.neontommy.com/news/2011/01/doj-subpoena-twitter-accounts-wikileaks-supporters-wider-first-believed

Comments

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This is surely not the only subpoena

08.01.2011 13:38

I think the important point made in that guy's blog post is that he's only been made aware of this subpoena because twitter went out of their way to overturn the silencing part of the subpoena. The US government have far better ways of obtaining all this information and more, and presumably twitter is not the only place they've subpoena'd, but just the only one that overturned the silencing before sending off details. There are probably plenty of other websites that have sent off all details requested and kept their mouths shut.

jaw

The return of fascist activity

08.01.2011 14:27

There is nothing I can really say other than this represents a return to the face of Nazism by the 'land of the free and brave'

Keith Harris

Interwebs security

08.01.2011 14:39

Agree with jaws - at least twitter told a user that they had received a subpoena, I'm sure many other social network providers haven't (they certainly haven't in the past). So +1 to twitter on that score.

It remains to be seen as to how twitter respond to the subpoena. Hopefully they have lawyers on the case who will work out how twitter can resist the subpoena. If they can't, I would be (happily) surprised if twitter will commit an offence by not complying with the subpoena. And, even if the lawyers are successful, I think we can be fairly certain than any legal loopholes for social networking sites to resist subpoenas will be closed.

Many years ago I was given some advice by a tech friend - never put anything on the internet (including emails, social networking sites, etc.) that you wouldn't want read out in court for your own prosecution, or that of somebody else.

If you NEED to send something, encrypt it. Here's an extract from HacktionLab's Tech Tools for Activists

http://www.booki.cc/tech-tools-for-activists/_full/

Securing your own email

If you are concerned about privacy but not using a secure webmail service, or are communicating with someone who is not, or want an addition of level of personal security, you will want to encrypt your mail. Encryption is the process of taking a plain text message and converting into something that looks like gobbledygook, which at the other end can be decrypted and the original message restored.

The Free software tool of choice for this is called GPG, the GNU Privacy Guard. Most people, even well rounded techies, find GPG tricky to get their heads round. Give yourself time to look at this - and it may take some time - but it is worth it.
GPG encryption uses pairs numbers we refer to as key pairs. GPG will help you generate your key pair, comprised of a public key and a private one. You need to give your public key to anyone you wish to have encrypted communication with.

Your private key you will keep absolutely secret and never ever reveal to anyone ever, as it is used to decrypt email sent to you. It is so very secret that it needs protecting with a passphrase, which is basically a very long password.

So could GPG have helped prevent the breach of trust mentioned above? GPG helps because by encrypting the email using the recipients' public keys, the sender can be assured that only the authorised recipients will be able to read it (privacy). Also the recipient can be assured of the identity of the sender (authenticity).

More information about setting up and using GPG with the popular Thunderbird email client can be found at this excellent article

http://security.ngoinabox.org/thunderbird_main

Also

http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/secure_email

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Not Good Enough

08.01.2011 15:27

Encrypting email only offers a certain degree of protection. For a start, the recipient can simply reveal the contents, or poorly setup encryption can be cracked. Plus keyboard trojans will record anything that you type before it is encrypted so you have to have fully secured all the computer operating systems and applications beforehand, including encrypting the drives you use using plausible deniability. There is no point putting heavy locks on your front door while leaving the windows open, it merely gives you a false sense of security and leads to more reckless talk.

Encrypting email is irrelevant to this case so far. The subpoena requests IP addresses, so Twitter will have to list all the computers used to access the account. Some protection against this is to use an anonymiser such as Tor, and understanding how to use it securely since even this is subject to provisos. However some sites block anonymised traffic, and it is no coincidence that the Indymedia sites which block anonymised traffic are the ones implicated in police collusion ( see the hidden comments on the 'Sheridan and the Prostitution of Scots Law ' article for example ).

Advice

What's real?

09.01.2011 14:27

If government officials know that at a later date 'it' will end up on wikileaks, doesn't that change the information? I write on the internet knowing that intelligence services are recording it.
It's like people who are tortured, giving the torturer what they are looking for...
Isn't it judicially meaningless?

anon

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