Iceland blasts US demand for lawmaker's details in WikiLeaks probe

[EFerrari]

Source: Deutsche Welle

Politicians in Iceland have hit out at a US request for Twitter to hand over details of a member of the country's parliament because of her connections with WikiLeaks.

A subpoena for parliamentary representative Birgitta Jonsdottir's details was issued as part of an investigation involving several individuals associated with the whistle-blowing website.

Icelandic Foreign Minister Oessur Skarphedinsson Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Skarphedinsson denounced the US demand as 'intolerable'Icelandic Foreign Minister Oessur Skarphedinsson said it was not acceptable that US authorities had demanded the information.

"According to the documents that I have seen, an Icelandic parliamentarian is being investigated in a criminal case in the United States for no reason at all," Skarphedinsson told Icelandic public radio RUV.

Read more: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,14758284,00.html

[msongs]

1. Iceland should tell the US to F.O. nt

[No Elephants]

7. It just did.

[Name removed]

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[glinda]

2. We are loosing friends fast.

[EFerrari]

3. Our government is, anyway. n/t

[Name removed]

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[pam4water]

4. Wow go Iceland. I thought they would still be in shock fro the bank meltdown. K&R N/T

[JJW]

5. Iceland is in very good shape

because they refused to bailout the criminals.

[DeSwiss]

6. Actually they're doing better than a lot of others....

...http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-03/iceland-is-better-off-than-greece-thanks-to-krona-update2-.html">Greece and http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2009/09/28/74301/iceland-is-now-better-off-than-ireland-german-bank-says/">Ireland come to mind. And they're smart enough to know when to just let banks that gamble with rich people's money, fail.

- They take the principles of capitalism about the freedom of the marketplace, literally.....

Iceland Premier: Letting banks fail leaves us better off than Ireland.
Reykjavík : Iceland | Nov 30, 2010

The president of Iceland, Olafur Grimsson says that Iceland is better off than Ireland because the government decided to let private banks fail two years ago and also because the currency could be devalued. Grimsson said: "The difference is that in Iceland we allowed the banks to fail. These were private banks and we didn't pump money into them in order to keep them going; the state did not shoulder the responsibility of the failed private banks."

In Ireland Brian CowenBrian Cowen the prime minister sought a 112 billion dollar bailout from the EU and IMF after the banks brought Ireland to the brink of bankruptcy. Iceland on the other hand whose banks were also 85 billion in the red had a different solution. It split the banks into domestic units that kept their own financial system going but left foreign liabilities in the failed lenders!

As a result of this move Grimsson said:"Iceland is faring much better than anybody expected," Grimsson said. The government will probably put the matter of Iceland's liability for foreign depositor claims on the failed banks would probably be put to a referendum. I would expect that Icelanders would hardly support paying back the loans that they had nothing to do with them directly.

Grimmson said: "How far can we ask ordinary people -- farmers and fishermen and teachers and doctors and nurses -- to shoulder the responsibility of failed private banks. "That question, which has been at the core of the Icesave issue, will now be the burning issue in many European countries."

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/7479423-iceland-premier-letting-banks-fail-leaves-us-better-off-than-ireland

K&R

[molly77]

8. Online comment from the Guardian re. wikileaks

The US, already so bankrupt financially and morally (Gitmo, torture, extraordinary rendition, violating US citizens' privacy), evidently has no qualms about its war on truth and transparency. Any state that will stop at nothing to conceal its misdeeds, its mania for world domination, is a threat to the international community. A failed empire is a failed state; hence all the more dangerous for the rest of us.

The Guardian has had good coverage of WikiLeaks and the online comments are just as interesting.Almost a thousand likes for this one comment.A FB friend who was in Europe last summer said that Europe is turning against the US because of the way the govt. is treating it's citizens. Guess it is hard for them to fathom the taking away of our meager safety nets.

[pam4water]

9. Sigh if only Obama had been that smart.

[Name removed]

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[suffragette]

10. Sounds like the DOJ just ran into a country which is

not so agreeable with the trend of automatically handing over private info.

From later in the article:
The subpoena obtained by the US Department of Justice in mid-December was made public on Friday after San Franciso-based Twitter won a legal battle requesting a right to inform the individuals involved. Among the information sought are online connection records, session times, IP addresses used to access Twitter, emails and residential addresses as well as bank and credit card account details.

And from an AP article:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iz6zjGero2WTvdTYLb0Ut0RAP83A?docId=c3ade94c282342529259c8a12d5ccaa1
A court order unsealed earlier this week revealed that American authorities had gone to court to seek data from Twitter about Assange, Jonsdottir, and others either known or suspected to have interacted with WikiLeaks.
Some of those named in the court order have said they suspect other companies — such as Facebook Inc., Google Inc., and the eBay Inc.-owned Internet communications company Skype — have also been secretly asked to hand over their personal data.
Assange and Jonsdottir have vowed to fight the court order.



So far, Twitter is the only organization that seemed to care enough about its user's rights to inform them about the DOJ request. Says a bit about Twitter as well as quite the opposite about the other companies.

[Name removed]

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[Red1]

16. Hell yeah

Is everyone starting to get a warm fuzzy about the knife american politicos feel? Is everyone starting to realize this rips the guts out of the esteem for washington? Will it matter?