The US government has obtained court orders to force Google and a small internet provider to hand over information from email accounts of a WikiLeaks volunteer, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The request included email addresses of people that Jacob Appelbaum, a volunteer for the whistleblower website, had corresponded with in the past two years, but not the full emails, the newspaper said, citing documents it had reviewed.

Internet provider Sonic said it fought the government order legally and lost, and was forced to turn over information, the company's chief executive, Dane Jasper, told the newspaper.

The newspaper said Mr Appelbaum, 28, had not been charged with any wrongdoing.

The search engine giant Google declined to comment on the matter.

WikiLeaks last year angered the US government by making public tens of thousands of secret US files and diplomatic cables that embarrassed Washington, as well as a classified video of a contested American military operation in Iraq.

The Google order dated January 4, 2011, directed the company to turn over the IP addresses from which Mr Appelbaum logged into his Gmail account and the email and IP addresses of the users with whom he communicated dating back to November 1, 2009.

It is not clear whether Google fought the order or turned over documents, the newspaper said.

This year, micro-blogging website Twitter fought a similar court order to hand over details of the accounts of several WikiLeaks supporters, including Mr Appelbaum, as part of a criminal investigation launched by the US department of justice into the major leaking of confidential US documents.

Twitter has not turned over information from the accounts of the WikiLeaks supporters, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the investigation.

Mr Appelbaum is a developer for the Tor Project, a not-for-profit organisation that provides free tools that help people maintain their anonymity online, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Reuters