Judge Won’t Stop WikiLeaks Twitter-Records Request

From Wired.com's Threat Level blog:

The U.S. government is getting closer to getting data from Twitter about various associates of WikiLeaks.

The people whose Twitter records were being requested had moved to throw out the government’s request for data, but a judge denied that motion Friday, ruling that the associates don’t have standing to challenge it.

The judge also denied a request to unseal the government’s application for the Twitter order.

Judge Theresa Buchanan, in the Eastern District of Virginia, ruled that because the government was not seeking the content of the Twitter accounts in question (.pdf), the subjects did not have standing to challenge the government’s request for the records. Content, under the Stored Communications Act, is “any information concerning the substance, purport, or meaning of that communication.”