US government still hunting #WikiLeaks as Obama targets #whistleblowers | Media | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/mar/05/us-government-still-hunting-wikileaks-obama-targets-whistleblowers
WikiLeaks’s lawyer, Michael Ratner, said the disclosure was significant because, coming from such a high court, it left no doubt about the US government’s intentions.
“We are talking about a serious, multi-subject long-term investigation of WikiLeaks and its people,” Ratner said. “This confirms in spades that the US authorities are coming after WikiLeaks and want to close it down.”
The court ruling arrived in response to a freedom of information request from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (Epic). About a year after the Manning leaks, Epic requested from the DoJ and #FBI all records regarding any individuals who had been targeted for surveillance “for support for or interest in WikiLeaks”.
In her ruling, the judge ordered the national security division of the DoJ to redouble its search of its files for documents that might fit the freedom of information request. But she sided with the federal agencies in granting them an exemption to the rules, so that they did not have to hand over any material to Epic – on grounds that doing so might interfere with their law enforcement activities.
The FBI and criminal division argued before the court that the release of their files “would allow targets of the investigation to evade law enforcement”. Rothstein agreed that “the government’s declarations, especially when viewed in light of the appropriate deference to the executive on issues of national security, may satisfy this burden.”
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Some aspects of the FBI’s investigation into WikiLeaks have already become public. In January 2011 it was revealed that the US government had ordered #Twitter to hand over private messages from a then WikiLeaks volunteer, the Icelandic member of parliament Birgitta Jónsdóttir.
Earlier this year, it emerged that a similar demand for information had been imposed on #Google relating to three WikiLeaks staffers, including the British citizen Sarah Harrison.