U.S. GOVERNMENT OBTAINS COURT ORDER FOR WIKILEAKS VOLUNTEER'S EMAIL

The U.S. government has obtained a controversial type of secret court order to force Google Inc. and small Internet provider Sonic.net Inc. to turn over information from the email accounts of WikiLeaks volunteer Jacob Appelbaum, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Sonic said it fought the government's order and lost, and was forced to turn over information. Challenging the order was "rather expensive, but we felt it was the right thing to do," said Sonic's chief executive, Dane Jasper. The government's request included the email addresses of people Mr. Appelbaum corresponded with the past two years, but not the full emails.

Both Google and Sonic pressed for the right to inform Mr. Appelbaum of the secret court orders, according to people familiar with the investigation. Google declined to comment. Mr. Appelbaum, 28 years old, hasn't been charged with wrongdoing. The court clashes in the WikiLeaks case provide a rare public window into the growing debate over a federal law that lets the government secretly obtain information from people's email and cellphones without a search warrant. Several court decisions have questioned whether the law, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, violates the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

CIA NAMES NEWEST TASK FORCE WTF!

The CIA has created a task force to look into Wikileaks. According to The Washington Post the task force will “assess the impact of the exposure of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables and military files by WikiLeaks.” Like everything else in Washington D.C. the task force is known by its acronym WTF....how appropriate. [Washington Post]

WIKILEAKS APP REMOVED FROM iOS APP STORE

Apple has removed the Wikileaks app from the iOS App Store. Igor Barinov, the developer of the app, received an email from Apple yesterday telling him the app had been delisted from the App Store. The email gave no details and advised Mr. Barinov to contact the iTunes Store team for resolution.

The Wikileaks app allowed users to access the documents on the infamous website and Twitter account with ease. It sold for $1.99. Since the email contained no useful information, other than the delisting statement, it is unclear if the app was removed for a Terms of Service violation or if Apple is taking the same route as Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Bank of America in their assaults on Wikileaks. [BGR]

WIKILEAKS MOVES TO SWITZERLAND; CHANGES DOMAIN NAME

After being ousted by Amazon’s Web Services, the controversial site WikiLeaks has run into another snafu, this time with its DNS provider, EveryDns.net. Via a statement, EveryDns stated that due to “interference issues” that are affecting the service of others, the company has ceased resolving wikileaks.org; the service was provided to WikiLeaks for free. In response to the DNS shutdown, WikiLeaks tweeted the following message:

WIKILEAKS: Free speech has a number: http://88.80.13.160

In a subsequent tweet, the company then announced that it had moved to Switzerland; the site’s new domain name is now wikileaks.ch.

A very vocal opponent of the WikiLeaks cable publishings has been the Independent Senator from Connecticut, Joe Lieberman. The Senator has introduced legislation, dubbed the SHIELD (Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination) Act, that would make it illegal to publish information “concerning the human intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign government” or information relating to “a classified source or informant.” We have to wonder where Sen. Lieberman’s legislation was when CIA operative Valerie Plame was outed. No word on when the new legislation will hit the Senate floor.

Meanwhile, Amazon has released a statement stating that the reason for its removal of WikiLeaks’ data from its AWS servers was not a result of denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks or government pressure, but rather the fact that the site did not operate within Amazon’s terms of service. [BGR]