US Government Seizes Email of WikiLeaks Volunteer

bs0d3 writes "The U.S. Department of Justice has forced Gmail and Sonic.net to hand over the personal information of Jacob Appelbaum, a WikiLeaks volunteer. Sonic says they fought to keep the DoJ out of Appelbaum's records, which was very expensive but 'the right thing to do.' Google said, 'we comply with the law,' although 'Both Google and Sonic pressed for the right to inform Mr. Appelbaum of the secret court orders, according to people familiar with the investigation.' The collected information and the nature of the investigation remain classified. Applebaum's Gmail correspondence seized by the DoJ dates back to November 1, 2009, which is believed to be the month that WikiLeaks contributor and Army Private Bradley Manning allegedly began communication with Julian Assange. Last year, federal prosecutors used a similar subpoena to obtain information pertaining to Applebaum's Twitter account."

Comments

Re:The problem is the law

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

2011 US House reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act (HR 514):

Republicans:
Yea - 210
Nay - 26
No vote - 5

Democrats:
Yea - 67
Nay - 122
No vote - 4

In 2011, 35% of Democrats voted to reauthorize the PATRIOT ACT and 87% of Republicans do. The sooner you stop thinking that there are no differences between the parties, the sooner you can realize that your vote actually does make a difference.

I know that it's popular to trumpet the 'there is no difference' line on Slashdot. But instead of doing that, why not do some actual research into the positions and voting records of your candidates? Maybe then you will figure out that there *are* real differences and that the reality of a complex representative political system means that you are going to disagree with your representatives on a good number of issues.