Obama, Holder – get your filthy hands off Twitter!
One of the worst things that is bound to happen in the next few years is the inevitable Big Government clampdown on the world’s last stronghold of free speech: the internet.
It’s one of the many of the reasons I am so suspicious of soap-dodging probable vampire Julian Assange, who strikes me as a malign spirit more interested in wreaking havoc in the relatively free West (just like his great fan George Soros) than he is, say, in the world’s Islamofascist terror states and Communist dictatorships. And I believe that in doing so, he is drawing exactly the kind of unnecessary heat onto the internet that we REAL lovers of free speech and liberty (as opposed to Assange’s Left-leaning anarchists) need like a hole in the head.
But that certainly doesn’t mean I have any sympathy whatsoever with the Obama administration’s outrageous demands that Twitter hand over the private messages of an Icelandic MP.
A member of parliament in Iceland who is also a former WikiLeaks volunteer says the US justice department has ordered Twitter to hand over her private messages.
Birgitta Jonsdottir, an MP for the Movement in Iceland, said last night on Twitter that the “USA government wants to know about all my tweets and more since november 1st 2009. Do they realize I am a member of parliament in Iceland?”
She said she was starting a legal fight to stop the US getting hold of her messages, after being told by Twitter that a subpoena had been issued. She wrote: “department of justice are requesting twitter to provide the info – I got 10 days to stop it via legal process before twitter hands it over.”
She said the justice department was “just sending a message and of course they are asking for a lot more than just my tweets.”
Jonsdottir sounds like a good egg:
In Iceland she has championed the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative which is aimed at creating legislation to make Iceland a legal haven for journalists and media outlets.
And by crikey are we going to need that legal haven soon. What with Britain’s oppressive libel laws and the kind of bullying we’re seeing in this case from the US Justice Department, we speakers of truth-to-power are in danger of having nowhere to run or hide.
Pickled puffin in herring sauce is an acquired taste. But I’m sure we’ll all eventually get used to it.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Obama, Holder – get your filthy hands off Twitter! – Telegraph Blogs
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