| Birgitta Jónsdóttir | |
|---|---|
| Member of Parliament | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 2009[1] |
|
| Parliamentary group chairman | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 17 April 1967 Reykjavík, Iceland |
| Political party | The Movement |
Birgitta Jónsdóttir (born 17 April 1967) is a member of parliament of Althing, the Icelandic parliament, formerly representing the Citizens' Movement, but now representing The Movement.[1][2] Her district is the Reykjavík South Constituency.[1] She was elected to the Icelandic parliament in April 2009 on behalf of a movement aiming for democratic reform beyond party politics of left and right. Birgitta has been an activist and a spokesperson for various groups, such as Wikileaks,[3] Saving Iceland and Friends of Tibet in Iceland. She acts as a spokeswoman for the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative.
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Born in Reykjavik, Birgitta is also a poet, writer, artist, editor, publisher, activist and has used the internet for these activities. Her first poetry collection was published when she was 22 years old by Iceland's biggest publisher, Almenna Bókafélagið, AB books, in 1989. Birgitta organized "Art against war" where a number of Icelandic artists and poets came out to protest the war in Iraq. Birgitta set up the first Icelandic online art gallery in 1996 for the Apple Shop in Iceland. Birgitta has participated in several international projects related to writing and activism including "Poets Against the War", "Dialogue among Nations through Poetry", and "Poets for Human Rights". She also edited and published the two international books The World Healing Book and The Book of Hope which contains writings by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Rita Dove, the Dalai Lama, Rabbi Michael Lerner, John Kinsella, and Sigur Rós. Birgitta is a founder of Beyond Borders Press and Radical Creations. Birgitta is a part of International Network of Parliamentarians’ for Tibet (INPaT)
Birgitta was an active volunteer for Wikileaks and had an important role in the making of the Collateral Murder video, including co-production.[4] She has advocated to make Iceland a haven for press freedom and is the chief sponsor of the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative.[5][6][7][8]
On 18 June 2010 she told ABC News' Brian Ross that Wikileaks will be releasing a leaked video of a US airstrike in Afghanistan "hopefully very soon".[9]
On 7 January 2011, Birgitta announced on her Twitter page that she had been notified by Twitter that it had been served by the United States Department of Justice with a subpoena demanding information "about all my tweets and more since November 1st 2009."[10] According to Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com:
The information demanded by the DOJ is sweeping in scope. It includes all mailing addresses and billing information known for the user, all connection records and session times, all IP addresses used to access Twitter, all known email accounts, as well as the "means and source of payment," including banking records and credit cards. It seeks all of that information for the period beginning November 1, 2009, through the present.[10]
On 14 April 2011 Wired Magazine online published an article "WikiLeaks Associates Hit Back Over U.S. Twitter Records Demand" describing a "contentious legal battle with the Justice Department" with the three Wikileaks volunteers, charging in a court filing that the government’s argument “trivializes both the Parties’ and the public’s constitutional rights.”[11]
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