The US overreaction to Wikileaks has damaged the country's diplomatic standing with Iceland.
While we doubt that an empire as great and transient as the United States would give a monkey's what Iceland thinks, it has been forced into a somewhat embarrassing position.
Desperate for a way to bend the law so that it can arrest Julian Assange on spying charges, the US has ordered its prosecutors to get information from Twitter.
Birgitta Birgitta Jonsdottir, an MP for the Movement in Iceland, revealed last week that the US justice department had asked Twitter to hand over her information.
While the US thinks that anyone who supports Wikileaks is a terrorist, in the real world the whistleblowing site is backed by some prominent liberals, including Jonsdottir.
One thing you do not do if you are a government is demand information on an elected official. Well you can, you just cannot do it through the courts and have to use your secret service. That is because it is called spying.
Not surprisingly, Iceland's interior minister, Ogmundur Jonasson, told the Guardian that it is very serious that a foreign state, the United States, demands personal information of an Icelandic person,particularly an elected official.
"This is even more serious when put [in] perspective and concerns freedom of speech and people's freedom in general," he added. In otherwords the US can be seen as bullying other countries to tow its bizarre line on Free Speech.
Iceland's foreign ministry has demanded a meeting with Luis Arreaga, the US ambassador to Reykjavík.
Jonsdottir is one of the site's contributors whose communications are being investigated by US authorities.
A court order last week revealed that they are also seeking Twitter data from the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, Dutch hacker Rop Gonggrijp and Bradley Manning, the US serviceman accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of sensitive government cables published by WikiLeaks.
The court issuing the subpoena said it had "reasonable grounds" to believe Twitter held information "relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation".
Jónsdóttir is talking to lawyers at the Electronic Freedom Foundation and would attempt to stop the justice department's move.
Users can send private messages on Twitter and the court order is also seeking details of source and destination internet protocol addresses used to access the accounts.
Tweeting can be synonymous to
insidious surrender.
Nobody asks your permission when your charge card transactions, or when your internet browser tracking cookies, are used to spy on you.
In fact, maybe Twitter, like Facebook, may sell the heuristics.
Following are some of the more controversial sections of
the Patriot Act, by which we are "sectioned":
Section 215 modifies the rules on records searches so that third-party holders of your financial, library, travel, video rental, phone, medical, church, synagogue, and mosque records can be searched without your knowledge or consent, providing the government says it's trying to protect against terrorism.
Section 218 amends the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), authorizing secret searches without public knowledge or Department of Justice accountability, so long as the government can allege a foreign intelligence basis for the search.
Section 213 warrants -- "Sneak and Peek" -- extend the authority of FISA searches to any criminal search. This allows for secret searches of one's home and property without prior notice.
Section 214 permits the removal of the warrant requirement for "Pen registers" which ascertain phone numbers dialed from a suspect's telephone and "Trap and trace" devices which monitor the source of all incoming calls, so long as the government can certify that the information likely to be obtained is relevant to an ongoing investigation against international terrorism.
Section 216 clarifies that pen register/trap-and-trace authority applies to Internet surveillance. The Act changes the language to include Internet monitoring, specifically information about: "dialing, routing, and signaling." It also broadens such monitoring to any information "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation."
Section 206 authorizes roving wiretaps: allowing taps on every phone or computer the target may use, and expands FISA to permit surveillance of any communications made to or by an intelligence target without specifying the particular phone line or computer to be monitored.
Section 505 authorizes the use of an administrative subpoena of personal records, without requiring probable cause or judicial oversight.
Section 802 creates a category of crime called "domestic terrorism," penalizing activities that "involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States," if the actor's intent is to "influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion."
Section 411 makes even unknowing association with terrorists a deportable offense.