The precedent has been set and it’s a very bad one. A US judge ruled that Twitter must release all of the details of Birgitta Jonsdottir’s account, as well as two others. Their links to WikiLeaks has put them under the scrutiny of the Justice Department after last year’s video of US helicopters shooting two Reuters reporters in Iraq. Speculation is that Jonsdottir is not the target but rather a piece of the case they’re currently building against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. “This is a huge blow for everybody that uses social media,” said Jonsdottir. “We have to have the same civil rights online…

The founder and face of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, is facing extradition and possible charges in Sweden for sexual misconduct. The website and organization are caught in a financial stranglehold as many of the means through which it receives donations and funding are cut off. If the man is jailed and the organization crumbles, can Wikileaks survive as a movement? That’s the question that the NY Times attempts to answer. While many of their points are valid, is it realistic to believe that this Pandora’s Box can truly be closed now that the demand for this sort of transparency and accountability…

Person of the Year is a fairly substantial award given out by TIME magazine annually. Nearing the end of this year, however, the award seemed to be up in the air. Who has managed to accomplish anything significant this year? Julian Assange? Maybe. But there was another, and he had a far more personal impact on the world than anyone else today. It just so happened to be Mark Zuckerberg. The 26-year-old phenom has accomplished more in these past five years than most accomplish in their entire life. Not too bad for someone who, not too long ago, was considered to be a boy filling the shoes of a man. Now he has…

The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, has been set free on bail by the British courts today. The conditions of his bail were that another hearing would be held on January 11, 2011. The $300,000+ bail was posted with help from many supporters (including several celebrities) who donated the money to have his bail posted. All of this comes at the height of a rape investigation and secret U.S. cables being leaked into the wild. Although there is still some debate about whether Mr. Assange will be charged in the U.S. for allegations of espionage, the Wikileaks founder will surely be happy that he can…

PayPal. It’s one of the most well-known methods of transferring money online (even though it might be the most frustrating). It’s an American establishment that saw amazing growth the with rise and purchase by eBay. Now not only is it a way for millions to transfer and get paid, it is sometimes the lifeline that helps supports many websites’ existence for paying the bills, primarily in the form of donations. But PayPal took that away from Wikileaks, and now The Pirate Bay wants users to retaliate. On The Pirate Bay’s latest blog posting, the company calls for PayPal users to take away the one thing…

Now that 90,000 military documents about US military activity in Afghanistan, you can almost be assured that some revelation will come out that will embarrass or worse. But what will Wikileaks do to traditional media? After all, had these documents been leaked by the New York Times or The Guardian, we would have gotten some choice details, but – due to journalistic ethics – would never have seen the full data-set (though, to be clear, Wikileaks has censored names it feels would be endangered if released). Some, like Alexis Madrigal states on the The Atlantic tech blog, feel the rules that state…

The Digital Economy Bill that recently passed in the UK and is being pushed upon many other countries around the world. It has some very discouraging text in it that could hurt innovation, forcing the methods of old on people and ways of new. But all that pales in comparison to what this bill could allow governments to do: it could allow them to entirely block sites like Wikileaks.org that post government documents and exposes the truth (like leaked documents), and we would have no power to stop it. This power could come from clause 8 in the bill that would allow certain government officials to block…