.jpeg)
Twitter account details handover order upheld in ongoing Wikileaks probe
A federal judge has ruled that the US government may demand that three associates of Julian Assange hand over Twitter account information as criminal investigations into whistle-blower website Wikileaks go on.
Following the invocation of a law that allows investigators to procure electronic data without a search warrant, The US government ordered three of Assange’s associates to hand over Twitter account informations.
The three involved are Icelandic MP Birgitta Jonsdottir, Dutch hacker Rop Gonggrijp, and US computer programmer Jacob Appelbaum. They already appealed the initial ruling, and have appealed the case before a constitutional court.
But despite how the three users of the social network had appealed against the earlier ruling approving this demand, the constitutional judge ruled that their constitutional rights to free speech and association did not shield members from complying with legitimate government investigations.
Their legal team had argued the request to comply represented a violation of their constitutional rights of free speech and association. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the rights group which represented the Twitter users, said they planned to appeal against the ruling.
The government order did not relate to Twitter messages but rather it sought to obtain internet protocol (IP) addresses and account details. US government lawyers argued that that law, which only required that authorities demonstrate a reasonable belief in the information's relevance, is routinely used in criminal investigations like the Wikileaks probe.
Judge Theresa Buchanan, presiding over the case, sided with the government on the nature of the investigation, and argued that there was no constitutional violation. "The Twitter Order does not seek to control or direct the content of petitioners' speech or association," she wrote in her ruling.
In a statement, ACLU lawyer Aden Fine said: "This ruling gives the government the ability to secretly amass private information related to individuals' internet communications."Except in extraordinary circumstances, the government should not be able to obtain this information in secret. That's not how our system works."
