On Thursday, a judge ruled that it is reasonable for the United States Department of Justice to have seized the personal information of three Twitter users in its WikiLeaks investigation.

The ruling was in response to a judicial appeal.

The case is part of an ongoing U.S. investigation of whistleblower website, WikiLeaks. In January, the Department of Justice subpoenaed Twitter to hand over tweets sent by – and to – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

In March, a U.S. federal judge ruled that the government could have access to the users’ personal Internet (IP) addresses. The tweeting trio appealed.

Thursday’s ruling is a setback for advocates of Internet privacy, who consider the seizing of IP information to be a breach of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects citizens from unlawful search and seizure.

“With this decision, the court is telling all users of online tools hosted in the U.S. that the U.S. government will have secret access to their data,” said Birgitta Jonsdottir, one of the individuals involved, in a statement issued through the Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union.

Jonsdottir, a member of parliament in Iceland, and fellow WikiLeaks volunteers Jacob Appelbaum, an American computer security expert, and Dutch citizen Rop Gonggrijp, found out about the Department of Justice seizure because Twitter wanted them to know this was happening.

“I am very disappointed in today’s ruling because it is a huge backward step for the United States’ legacy of freedom of expression and the right to privacy,” Jonsdottir said.

In a 60-page decision, Judge Liam O’Grady of Virginia District Court pointed to the Twitter user agreement, concluding that people voluntarily hand over their “expectation of privacy” when they open a Twitter account.

Judge O’Grady wrote: “Two consequences follow from the Court’s conclusion that Petitioners voluntarily relinquished any expectation of privacy in their IP address information when they chose to use the Internet to communicate with the Twitter service. First, because the Twitter Order did not invade Petitioners’ reasonable expectation of privacy, it cannot constitute a search in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”

In the extensive ruling, the court also denied the trio the right to find out why the Department of Justice had wanted to seize their IP addresses in the first place.

“Today is one of those ‘losing faith in the justice system’ kind of days,” wrote Appelbaum on Twitter.

In a statement posted on his website, Gonggrijp admitted “the consequences of this decision for me are extremely limited: there is not a whole lot you can learn from records that Twitter had on me that you can’t learn from reading my blog.”

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“When you use the Internet, you entrust your online conversations, thoughts, experiences, locations, photos, and more to dozens of companies who host or transfer your data,” said Electronic Frontier Foundation legal director Cindy Cohn. “In light of that technological reality, we are gravely worried by the court’s conclusion that records about you that are collected by Internet services like Twitter, Facebook, Skype and Google are fair game for warrantless searches by the government.”

Jonsdottir, Appelbaum, Gonggrijp and their lawyers are reviewing the order and considering possible next steps.

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