DOJ obtains sealed Stored Communications Act orders for Twitter records of WikiLeaks-associated journalists and activists
On December 14, 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice obtained a sealed § 2703(d) court order in the Eastern District of Virginia directing Twitter to produce subscriber information, connection records, and IP addresses for accounts associated with WikiLeaks, including Julian Assange, Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning, journalist-activist Jacob Appelbaum, Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jónsdóttir, and Dutch hacker Rop Gonggrijp. The order was accompanied by a gag order; Twitter successfully moved to unseal it.
Dates: Order issued December 14, 2010; Twitter disclosed to targets January 2011; motions to vacate March 2011; district court upheld November 10, 2011; Fourth Circuit affirmed January 26, 2012. Individuals and organizations: Julian Assange; Chelsea Manning; Jacob Appelbaum; Birgitta Jónsdóttir; Rop Gonggrijp; Twitter; USAO Eastern District of Virginia (Neil MacBride, John Davis); AG Eric Holder. What happened: The DOJ obtained a § 2703(d) order under the Stored Communications Act compelling Twitter to produce metadata for the named accounts in connection with the broader WikiLeaks investigation. The accompanying § 2705(b) gag order barred Twitter from informing the targets, but Twitter successfully moved to unseal the order. Three of the targets (Appelbaum, Jónsdóttir, Gonggrijp) filed motions to vacate; the U.S. District Court for E.D. Va. upheld the order (In re § 2703(d) Order, 1:11-dm-00003), and the Fourth Circuit affirmed. Legal authority used: § 2703(d) Stored Communications Act court order; § 2705(b) gag order. Outcome: Records produced by Twitter after legal challenge failed. Manning was court-martialed and convicted in 2013 (sentence later commuted by Obama). Assange was not indicted by the Obama DOJ. Appelbaum and Jónsdóttir were not charged. Similar orders to Google and Facebook were reported but unconfirmed by those companies. Why it matters: Confidential journalistic sources and confidential publishing relationships were implicated. Records demand was enforced over objection. The case established Fourth Circuit precedent that users have no Fourth Amendment expectation of privacy in subscriber metadata held by third-party platforms.