The United States District Court has ordered a subpoena to demand information about Wikileaks' Twitter account activity. The social media giant has been asked to hand over private message threads, account addresses and records of connection activity.
Twitter may not be the only web-based company that has been asked to hand over information about Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange. The NYT reports that some other American based companies, including Google and Facebook, may have been asked to divulge private information secured in Assange's accounts.
According to a court order, the information is "relevant to an ongoing investigation" and asked Twitter to keep the existence of the order private.
However, due to legal action by the San Fransisco based social media company, the court documents were unsealed and made public.
Also under investigation, according to the reports, is Dutch hacker Rop Gonggrijp. He prasied Twitter for their compliance with their privacy policy and allowing the subpoena to be made public.
"It appears that Twitter, as a matter of policy, does the right thing in wanting to inform their users when one of these comes in," Gonggrijp said. "Heaven knows how many places have received similar subpoenas and just quietly submitted all they had on me."
United States relations with Wikileaks and founder, Julian Assange, have been growing sour for the past few months. After the leak of multiple waves of classified information, officials began criminalizing the whistle-blowing super power, accusing Wikileaks of being responsible for the deaths of American soldiers abroad. American based companies, including Amazon, PayPal, Visa and Mastercard, have even gone as far as to remove Assange from their servers.
Is this the start of a revolution where the government must fear its people? Or will the "all powerful" U.S. superpower snuff out the resistance and carry on with its crooked policies?
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"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."
-Thomas Jefferson
