Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of Iceland’s parliament. Friðrik Tryggvason/Wikimedia Commons

Three WikiLeaks associates fighting to keep records of their Twitter use out of the hands of the prosecutors lobbed the latest volley in a contentious legal battle with the Justice Department on Thursday, charging in a court filing that the government’s argument “trivializes both the Parties’ and the public’s constitutional rights.”

For four months the Justice Department has been seeking non-content information about WikiLeaks’ official Twitter account, and the accounts of three people connected to the group: Seattle coder and activist Jacob Appelbaum; Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of Iceland’s parliament; and Dutch businessman Rop Gonggrijp.

Jonsdottir and Gonggrijp helped WikiLeaks prepare the release of a classified U.S. Army video published last year as “Collateral Murder,” and Appelbaum is the group’s U.S. representative.

A magistrate judge in Alexandria, Virginia, approved the records demanded last month as part of an investigation that appears to be probing WikiLeaks for its high-profile leaks of classified U.S. material. WikiLeaks itself hasn’t challenged the demand for records pertaining to the organization’s feed, but the three individuals have been fighting the case with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The government is seeking the records under 18 USC 2703(d), a provision of the 1994 Stored Communications Act that governs law enforcement access to non-content internet records, such as transaction information. To obtain such an order the government must provide a judge with “specific and articulable facts” that show the information they seek is relevant and material to a criminal investigation — but the people targeted in the records demand don’t themselves have to be suspected of criminal wrongdoing.

A hearing is set for April 22.

Twitter Wikileaks 4-14-11 filing

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