A federal judge in the US ruled on Friday that Twitter must hand over to the government the personal account information of three users connected to WikiLeaks, rejecting their lawyers’ appeal that the First and Fourth Amendments protect such private online communication.<\/p>\n
As part of an ongoing grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks, the Department of Justice originally demanded in sealed court documents the Twitter account details — including personal contact information and IP addresses — of Dutch businessman Rop Gonggrijp<\/a>, U.S. activist Jacob Appelbaum<\/a> and Birgitta Jonsdottir<\/a>, a member of the Icelandic parliament. The government wanted Twitter to turn over the details without alerting the three that their information had been subpoenaed.<\/p>\n Twitter successfully fought that gag order<\/a> in January. But, in trying to have the government\u2019s request entirely thrown out, lawyers for the ACLU<\/a> and Electronic Frontier Foundation<\/a> failed to convince judge Theresa Buchanan that the Fourth Amendment right to privacy protects information like IP addresses — or that turning over such information would allow authorities to create a \u201cmap of association\u201d of Twitter users that would have a chilling effect on the First Amendment right of free association.<\/p>\n