By Channel 4
WikiLeaks has announced that the Twitter account details of four supporters, including founder Julian Assange and an Icelandic MP, have been subpoenaed by US officials.
"Today, the existence of a secret US government grand jury espionage investigation into WikiLeaks was confirmed for the first time as a subpoena was brought into the public domain," a WikiLeaks statement said.
The statement continued: "..the US State Department has requested the private messages, contact information, IP addresses and personal details of Julian Assange and three other individuals associated with WikiLeaks".
One of the four individuals, Icelandic MP Birgitta Jonsdottir, tweeted last night that she had been informed by Twitter that the US Department of Justice had ordered the social networking organisation to hand over information "about all my tweets and more since November 1st 2009".
The subpoena order was signed in the Eastern District of Virginia and served on Twitter by the Department of Justice division for that district. The Salon website reports that it was issued on 14 December, giving Twitter three days to respond and forbidding the company from notifying anyone of the existence of the order.
On 5 January Theresa Buchanan, the judge who issued the order, directed that the order be unsealed, at Twitter's request, in order to inform the users and give them 10 days to respond.
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