The U.S. court system, like the democracy it upholds, is legendary for the time it takes to get anything done. This might not have mattered in the 18th century when it took weeks to send information across any significant distance, but in modern society matching laws to technology has proven to be difficult if not impossible. The case of WikiLeaks provides the courts with another challenge.
The U.S. Justice Department recently received a court order that demanded that Twitter turn over account information on activists with ties to WikiLeaks. Included in the court order are Birgitta Josdottir, a member of Iceland’s national parliament, Rop Gonggrijp, a Dutch hacker, and Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. The court order is not a subpoena. It is known as a 2073(d), which allows the police to obtain records from a website or Internet service provider if the information is “relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation.” WikiLeaks has been under investigation by the Justice Department since a release of documents that contained classified military and State Department cables.
Twitter cooperated with the court order, but the social networking website did not release the information to the Justice Department without first informing its users about the investigation and letting them know about their legal options. The users targeted by the investigation have 10 days to oppose the request for information about their accounts.
Who does the power of the law support in this situation? Should the U.S. government have the right to request information about citizens of foreign countries? The WikiLeaks saga goes past the idea that the U.S. government should be allowed to police its citizens. What legal standing does the U.S. have to punish a journalist that is not an American citizen and does not live in the United States?
The information war between established powers and whistleblowers has only begun, and laws to protect this new type of journalist have yet to be written.