Birgitta Jónsdóttir is a former WikiLeaks volunteer and is a member of Parliament in Iceland. Recently the courts in the U.S. decided to push for access to her Twitter account because of her involvement with WikiLeaks. Jónsdóttir is furious with the decision of the U.S. government and has decided to take her case to the Council of Europe.

Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, has lost a high court appeal extradition to Sweden to face rape charge allegations. Lord Justice Thomas and Mr. Justice Ouseley handed down the decision for Assange’s appeal against a European arrest warrant that was issued by prosecutors in Sweden. Two Swedish women filed rape and sexual assault charges against Assange during his visit to Stockholm in August 2010.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is now making members of his team sign a nondisclosure agreement that WikiLeak’s own leaked material is their property. “You accept and agree that the information disclosed, or to be disclosed to you pursuant to this agreement is, by its nature, valuable proprietary commercial information,” states the agreement, “the misuse or unauthorized disclosure of which would be likely to cause us considerable damage.” The unauthorized disclosure of WikiLeaks documents will have a penalty of 12 million British pounds ($20 million). Leaks to the press by WikiLeaks loses them the ability to sell the documents to publishers. [Wired]

Yesterday I wrote about a new website called SafeHouse. SafeHouse is The Wall Street Journal’s WikiLeaks competitor. The Wall Street Journal said that those who submit whistle-blower documents to SafeHouse will be guaranteed anonymity through encryption. Jacob Appelbaum, a former WikiLeaks volunteer, and a developer of the Tor anonymity network, immediately noticed flaws with SafeHouse.

WikiLeaks is best known for containing whistle-blower documents that are confidential in nature. WikiLeaks provided anonymity to those who submitted the documents. WikiLeaks grew in popularity and journalists started
thinking to themselves why they didn’t come up with the idea. Most publications ask for tips from readers without guaranteeing anonymity. The Wall Street Journal is launching a new portal that has a similar concept.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is awaiting a trial in Sweden for sexual assault charges and he was recently interviewed by Russia Today. He gave his opinion on the political unrest in Egypt and Libya during the interview. He had especially criticized Facebook as being the most appalling spy machine ever.

Movie director Steven Spielberg has acquired the rights to make a film about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Some of the names that came up to play Assange include Macauly Culkin, Orlando Bloom, and Tilda Swinton.

eBay payment subsidiary PayPal.com has cut off a support account for U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning. The account that was frozen belonged to the Courage to Resist organization. The Courage to Resist partnered with the Bradley Manning Support Network for raising funds in support of Manning. Manning was one of the whistle-blowers of government documents that was leaked on to Wikileaks. “We’ve been in discussions with PayPal for weeks, and by their own admission there’s no legal obligation for them to close down our account,” said Loraine Reitman of the Bradley Manning Support Network (Support Network). “This was an internal policy decision by PayPal.” [BradleyManning.org]