The U.S. government has reportedly invoked the controversial Patriot Act as a legal basis for demanding data from Internet provider Dynadot about WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.
The whistle-blowing organization recently received a copy of the (now) unsealed court order, which was apparently signed by a U.S. magistrate judge on January 4, 2011.
“Using the terms of the Patriot Act the order was issued to Dynadot, the domain registrars for wikileaks.org, for all information they hold on WikiLeaks, Julian Assange and wikileaks.org,” the organization confirmed in an official statement.
“[This includes] subscriber names, user names, screen names, or other identities, [as well as] mailing addresses, residential addresses, business addresses, e-mail addresses and other contact information.”
Additional information was demanded by the order, such as connection logs (session times and durations), records of user activity for any connections made to or from the account, along with source/destination email and IP addresses.
As expected, the latest legal action against WikiLeaks did little to hobble the whistle-blowing website as it released approximately 55,000 new diplomatic cables obtained from various U.S. consulates and embassies around the world.
Highlights from the leaked cables include:
- Russia’s State Narcotics Control Agency (FSRK) threatens small businesses with fake criminal charges.
- Sasson report on Israeli settlement activity in the disputed West Bank termed a “powerful bombshell.”
- U.S. company indirectly sold military parts to the Libyan Air Force.
- Human trafficking from Mozambique to South Africa – “sexual exploitation, forced labour, removal of organs…”
- Israel ranks Palestinian terrorism as number four threat.
- British lives thrown away in Afghanistan.
- Turkey – Americans, homosexuals and bikinis not welcome here .
