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CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org NEW YORK 鈥� According to news reports today, the government has obtained a court order requiring Twitter to provide information about some of its subscribers who are associated with WikiLeaks. The court order was made public only after Twitter successfully moved to unseal it. The following can be attributed to Aden Fine, senior staff attorney with the 红杏视频 Speech, Privacy and Technology Project: "These government requests for detailed information about individuals' Internet communications raise serious First Amendment concerns and will have a chilling effect on people's willingness to engage in lawful communications over the Internet. There are serious doubts as to whether the government's interest in obtaining all of this private and constitutionally protected information is sufficiently compelling to outweigh the constitutional interests at stake. "Twitter should be commended for moving to unseal the court order, but we are very troubled that the order was filed under seal in the first place. Except in truly extraordinary circumstances, Internet users should receive notice, and an opportunity to go to court to defend their constitutional rights, before their rights are compromised."

CONTACT: (212) 549-2689 or 2666; media@aclu.org NEW YORK 鈥� According to news reports, the government is looking into whether it could prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange under the Espionage Act for publishing classified government documents he obtained from a third party. WikiLeaks, along with multiple news outlets, published thousands of pages of U.S. diplomatic cables on Sunday. The 红杏视频 said that prosecuting WikiLeaks would have serious First Amendment implications. The following can be attributed to Hina Shamsi, Director of the 红杏视频 National Security Project: 鈥淲e鈥檙e deeply skeptical that prosecuting WikiLeaks would be constitutional, or a good idea. The courts have made clear that the First Amendment protects independent third parties who publish classified information. Prosecuting WikiLeaks would be no different from prosecuting the media outlets that also published classified documents. If newspapers could be held criminally liable for publishing leaked information about government practices, we might never have found out about the CIA鈥檚 secret prisons or the government spying on innocent Americans. Prosecuting publishers of classified information threatens investigative journalism that is necessary to an informed public debate about government conduct, and that is an unthinkable outcome. 鈥淭he broader lesson of the WikiLeaks phenomenon is that President Obama should recommit to the ideals of transparency he invoked at the beginning of his presidency. The American public should not have to depend on leaks to the news media and on whistleblowers to know what the government is up to.鈥�