WASHINGTON — Investigative documents in the WikiLeaks probe spilled out into the public domain Saturday for the first time, pointing to the Obama administration’s determination to assemble a criminal case no matter how long it takes and how far afield authorities have to go.
Backed by a magistrate judge’s court order from Dec. 14, the newly disclosed documents sent to Twitter Inc. by the U.S. attorney’s office in Alexandria, Va., demand details about the accounts of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Pfc. Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst who’s in custody and suspected of supplying WikiLeaks with classified information.
The others whose Twitter accounts are targeted in the prosecutors’ demand are Birgitta Jonsdottir, an Icelandic parliamentarian and one-time WikiLeaks collaborator; Dutch hacker Rop Gonggrijp; and U.S. programmer Jacob Appelbaum. Gonggrijp and Appelbaum have worked with WikiLeaks in the past.
Justice Department spokesman Matt Miller declined to comment on the disclosure in the case, which intensified after WikiLeaks’ latest round of revelations with the posting of classified State Department diplomatic cables.
The next day, Nov. 29, Attorney General Eric Holder vowed that anyone found to have violated U.S. law in the leaks would be prosecuted.
Assange said the U.S. move amounted to harassment, and he pledged to fight it.
“If the Iranian government was to attempt to coercively obtain this information from journalists and activists of foreign nations, human rights groups around the world would speak out,” he told The Associated Press in an e-mail.
Legal experts have said one possible avenue for federal prosecutors would be to establish a conspiracy to steal classified information.
“They are trying to show that Manning was more than a source of the information to a reporter and rather that Assange and Manning were trying to jointly steal information from the U.S. government,” said Mark Rasch, a former prosecutor on computer crime and espionage cases in the Justice Department.
In a statement about the demand to Twitter for information, WikiLeaks said it has reason to believe Facebook and Google, among other organizations, have received similar court orders. WikiLeaks called on them to unseal any subpoenas they have received. Neither Facebook Inc. nor Google Inc. returned messages Saturday.
Building web of support
WikiLeaks and its tech-savvy staff have relied on American Internet and finance companies to raise funds, disseminate material and get their message out.
WikiLeaks’ frequently updated Facebook page, for example, counts 1.5 million fans, and its Twitter account has a following of more than 600,000. Until recently, the group raised donations via U.S. companies PayPal Inc., MasterCard Inc. and Visa Inc., and hosted material on Amazon.com‘s servers.
Article source: http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_17046780?source=rss
Category: Social Media Threats