"US Court Authorizes Service By Twitter on Wikileaks"

A very interesting post by Ted Folkman (Letters Blogatory).

Folkman is a leading expert on (among other things) international service of process, a technical but tremendously important field of civil procedure; read his post for more details on this issue, but here's the introduction:

The Democratic National Committee has obtained leave of court to serve process on Wikileaks via Twitter in its lawsuit against Russia, Wikileaks, Julian Assange and others. I have written previously about the FSIA [Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act] issue in the case and the issues about serving process on Mr. Assange in the Ecuadoran embassy in London. But serving process on Wikileaks poses difficulties, too.

The DNC's motion gives several reasons for seeking leave to serve process by Twitter rather than by a more traditional means. Wikileaks, it says, is an "organization of unknown structure" that has "more of a virtual than a physical presence." It has post office boxes in California and in Australia, but it is unclear to the DNC whether Wikileaks uses them for business. Lawyers who have represented Wikileaks in prior US litigation have said they no longer represent the organization or are not authorized to accept service. And Wikileaks, or someone purporting to act on its behalf, does have an active Twitter presence….