An Icelandic politician whose Internet records are being targeted by Washington's WikiLeaks investigation warns that giving personal information to websites such as Twitter, Facebook and Gmail is about as secure as putting it on "a postcard."
"They are on a fishing expedition," Birgitta Jonsdottir told The Globe and Mail editorial board, making some of her first public comments since learning that U.S. prosecutors are after her Twitter account. Her private messages, credit-card and telephone numbers are all being sought from the social-networking site - and, almost certainly, from other U.S.-based Internet corporations, too.
The request speaks to how state secrets will be won, lost and protected during the Internet Age, where libraries worth of data can be uploaded onto thumb drives, and where unfathomable amounts of person-to-person correspondence reside on corporate computers inside the United States.
A freedom-of-information advocate, Ms. Jonsdottir, 43, became a crucial WikiLeaks volunteer in 2009, but left last fall amid fallings-out with the leadership of founder Julian Assange. U.S. President Barack Obama's administration is now under tremendous pressure to charge Mr. Assange amid the deep embarrassment caused by the ongoing disclosure of more than 250,000 diplomatic cables.
It's not clear whether any U.S. law was violated by Mr. Assange, an Australian hacker now wanted for questioning in Sweden in connection with a sexual assault investigation. But authorities are intent on pursing him, and to that end, are casting a dragnet around his correspondence and that of his associates - while citing an obscure 1986 law that allows detectives to seize such electronic records.
Ms. Jonsdottir doubts authorities will find out much from social-networking sites. "There is not much information about me there," she said. But "I care for everybody else who is using a social network and is not aware that this can be going on in the background."
She said that if people are using these services, they should know the information can be grabbed by authorities. "It's basically like writing postcards," she said.
Prosecutors won't comment, but clearly suspect that some correspondence might help them zero in on how WikiLeaks garnered the State Department cables.
Fittingly, this story broke via Twitter last Friday, where Ms. Jonsdottir posted the following message: "Just got this: Twitter has received legal process requesting information regarding your Twitter account in (relation to WikiLeaks)."
This is an unusual step. Internet companies are under no obligation to tell their users that police are seeking information about them. Twitter went an extra mile by disclosing this. "I'm very, very happy with Twitter," Ms. Jonsdottir said. "I don't know what's happening with Facebook - and Google. I'm waiting to just hear if they've issued subpoenas."
Specifically, prosecutors in Virginia are after information held by key WikiLeaks figures - Mr. Assange, Ms. Jonsdottir, Private Bradley Manning, and a few others. The latter, a U.S. soldier, is now being held in a naval brig amid allegations he stole the State Department cables and provided them to WikiLeaks.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia refused comment, beyond saying the probe was ongoing. He e-mailed The Globe a copy of a 1986 statute saying that any electronic correspondences are fair game for prosecutors, provided they have a judicially authorized warrant or a grand jury subpoena.
Ms. Jonsdottir was a poet before being elected to Iceland's parliament two years ago on a pro-transparency platform. She is now working to push through laws that would make Iceland to whistle blowers what Switzerland is to tax evaders.
WikiLeaks has made mistakes, she acknowledged. She said she felt the organization lacked structure and was not always sufficiently diligent in vetting documents before releasing them.
Regardless, she is proud of many disclosures.
Before arriving in Toronto to give a speech Tuesday, Ms. Jonsdottir made sure to fly via Britain, not the United States. For good measure, she had a hacker encrypt her laptop to prevent any snooping by customs agents.
A "Courage is Contagious" WikiLeaks sticker remains affixed to it. And while she has had some differences with Mr. Assange, she said that a criminal probe targeting him is ridiculous.
"I think it is outrageous to criminalize the middle man who is handing over the envelope to the rest of us," she said.
Police requests for information from Internet companies occur more often than people think. Google - which runs the popular Gmail service - says on its website that it got more than more than 4,000 requests for information from U.S. agencies alone last year.
The site does not specify whether Canadian authorities made similar requests. In Ottawa, the Conservative government is seeking to pass "lawful access" legislation that would clarify when Internet service providers have to provide customer data to police.
Editor's Note: There are no current criminal charges against Julian Assange in Sweden. Incorrect information appeared in an earlier online version of this story. This version has been corrected.
|
|
Telling Tweets from 'BirgittaJ'
Jan . 7, 2011
"just got this: Twitter has received legal process requesting information regarding your Twitter account in (relation to wikileaks)"
Dec. 17, 2010
"Happy birthday, Bradley Manning! @savebradley, you r a true moral hero. Your courage inspirational."
Oct. 27, 2010
"i am no longer a spokesperson for wikileaks and have nothing to add about the org about how it works in past, now or future"
"mass media should focus on the content of the latest http://wikileaks.org iraq leak instead of the personality of the messenger"
Colin Freeze