Iceland Hits Back At WikiLeaks Investigation

The US ambassador to Iceland has been has been summoned to explain why US investigators are trying to access the Twitter account of an Icelandic Member of Parliament, as they try to build a case against whistleblowing site WikiLeaks.

Over the weekend, Twitter announced that it was opposing an order from a US court to reveal the account details of supporters of WikiLeaks. Twitter has informed the individuals whose account information has been requested, while raising the possibility that other social networking players have received similar orders.

Among those named in the subpoena is WikiLeaks contributor and current Icelandic MP Birgitta Jónsdóttir (left), who wrote the following in a tweet: “just got this: Twitter has received legal process requesting information regarding your Twitter account in (relation to wikileaks).”

“[It is] very serious that a foreign state, the United States, demands such personal information of an Icelandic person, an elected official,” Interior Minister Ogmundur Jonasson told Icelandic broadcaster RUV. “This is even more serious when put [in] perspective and concerns freedom of speech and people’s freedom in general.”

Wikileaks collaborator

Jónsdóttir has collaborated with Wikileaks in the past, and played an important role in the making of the Collateral Murder video, which showed footage of US airstrikes on Baghdad in 2007, in which Iraqi civilians and a Reuters cameraman were killed.

Iceland’s foreign ministry has demanded a meeting with Luis Arreaga, the US ambassador to Reykjavík, in order to discuss the subpoena. Meanwhile, Jónsdóttir is talking to lawyers at the Electronic Freedom Foundation in an attempt to halt the US justice department’s move.

The court order revealed that American authorities are also seeking Twitter data from WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, Dutch hacker Rop Gonggrijp (whose name is misspelled in the subpoena) and Bradley Manning, the US Army intelligence analyst suspected of leaking documents to WikiLeaks.

The court issuing the subpoena claims it has “reasonable grounds” to believe Twitter holds information “relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation”.