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WikiLeaks In New Legal Battle

Posted by Soulskill on from the sounds-like-something-needs-to-be-leaked dept.

geegel writes "The US Justice Department is now fighting in court demands from three WikiLeaks associates to disclose the names of several electronic service platforms that received requests to hand over user information. This comes after Twitter obtained a court order to unseal the demands in order to notify the three persons. The current legal row has seen both the ACLU and the EFF provide legal assistance to the WikiLeaks associates."

7 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Hey Slashdot! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Have you turned over any records to the Feds concerning Wikileaks members (or any records, period)? If you can't comment on that, then perhaps you could outline what Slashdot's policy is for turning over records to law enforcement when not accompanied by a Federal warrant or National Security letter.

    1. Re:Hey Slashdot! by Soulskill · · Score: 5, Informative

      We haven't received any such requests since I've been working here, so no, nothing's been turned over to the Feds or anybody else. I'm not aware of any requests happening before that either, but I couldn't say for sure.

      The closest we've come, to my knowledge, was a DMCA takedown request after copyrighted Scientology material was posted in a comment. The comment ended up being deleted, but I think the post pretty clearly illustrates how we felt about that. There was also a time Microsoft asked us to remove some comments back in 2000. Those comments stayed in place.

      I actually have no idea if we have a "policy" for such requests, since it hasn't come up. If it were up to me, I'd tell them to get stuffed. I suspect CmdrTaco would as well. Honestly, I don't know what records we'd have that would be worth requesting.

    2. Re:Hey Slashdot! by VortexCortex · · Score: 4, Funny

      We haven't received any such requests since I've been working here, so no, nothing's been turned over to the Feds or anybody else.

      Look. I know how this stuff goes. You can't exactly say that you did, but if you have, just give us a signal -- Maybe just cough twice (er, no -- something electronic...) OK just cause a few server errors -- that'll be the signal.

  2. Re:EFF by el_tedward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'll bite.

    What about the new york times and bazillions of other news organizations? How does the type of organization you are determine the legality of ones actions?

  3. Re:So many 503s by Soulskill · · Score: 5, Informative

    We're working on the 503 problems. Sorry it's been such a pain.

  4. The real question here is... by SuperCharlie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why would the justice dept want to hide who it is asking records from.

    If they are in the right.. well.. why hide it.

  5. Re:National Defense is Different by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Once upon a time, Haiti was going to increase their minimum wage from $0.24/hour to $0.61/hour. Levi Strauss and Hanes (among others) didn't like that, so the US State Department pressuredHaiti to create an exemption for textile workers.

    The only reason anyone knows that happened is because of wikileaks.