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It's been awhile since we've heard much from WikiLeaks. New leaked data continues to trickle out here and there and Julian Assange is even talking to the press, but major bombshells like the Iraq War Logs or Cablegate haven't been dropped since late 2010.

Part of the relative silence has to do with the fact that Assange is currently under house arrest in the U.K. and WikiLeaks still faces a financial blockade and an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Justice Department. The future of the organization is anything but clear, but when it comes to the site's ability to continue operating, they're not taking any chances.

Twitter will have to comply with a ruling by U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady to turn over information collected in the accounts of three WikiLeaks backers.

Icelandic parliament member Birgitta Jónsdóttir, computer security researcher Jacob Appelbaum and Dutch activist Rop Gonggrijp had filed a request blocking the subpoena while the case was considered by a federal appeals court. O'Grady denied the motion, saying their appeal had little chance of success based on existing U.S. case law.

"Litigation of these issues has already denied the government lawful access to potential evidence for more than a year," O'Grady said in his ruling. "The public interest therefore weighs strongly against further delay."

One year ago today, the slow leak of over 250,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables from WikiLeaks began. It would be the biggest exposure of such information in recorded history, and the event would trigger both a massive wave of support for the organization and an unprecedented backlash that has included governments, financial institutions and Internet companies.

Today, WikiLeaks is struggling to survive, let alone operate as it once did. A financial blockade has crippled its finances, its founder continues to fight extradition over sexual assault charges and others have defected from the organization entirely. Some of them even launched a competing site for whistleblowers.

A U.S. Federal Court in Virginia caused quite a stir among digital privacy advocates last week when it ordered Twitter to grant the Justice Department access to private data from the accounts of three suspected WikiLeaks supporters. That data includes IP addresses, session times and relationships between other Twitter users.

Normally, requests for this type of information are not particularly controversial, but in this case a warrant was not required and the subjects of the data inquiries have not yet been charged with any crimes. The government is able to make such warrantless requests thanks to a 1994 law known as the Stored Communications Act.

We live in an era where it is feasible to manufacture things that seem like truths, and someone is always in the business of trying. If someone were to leak the entire contents of my active e-mail file, all 4.5 GB of it, onto some public wiki for the inspection of the entire world, folks would marvel at the astounding volume of all the bits of seemingly urgent, potentially life-threatening information I have somehow managed to ignore. There are apparently dozens of fellows who worked at, or for, or near Apple who have taken some secret with them out the door and have launched a startup with it. And it is absolutely amazing, the number of distressed foreign ambassadors who need my help in dislodging millions of dollars from American bank accounts.

You would think there was some kind of automated filter, an analysis system to separate the manufactured truths from the real ones. Indeed, industrious programmers are working to build systems that do precisely this. The problem is, more industrious folks are working even harder to devise methods to thwart such systems. The fake facts industry is becoming more clever than the real facts industry.

Wikileaks shed light on UN documentation of executions of children performed then covered up by US military.

Controversial international watch-dog organization Wikileaks announced today that it will cease publication of leaked documents due to financial difficulties resulting from an inability to access millions of dollars in donations blocked or held in limbo by by major financial institutions. It's an important story about just how uncontrollable the web really is; organizations like Wikileaks still require budgets to operate and the centralization of financial transactions is one meaningful choke point available to those who would aim to slow or cease their activities.

The news comes days after the United States government announced it would withdraw all troops from Iraq by the end of this year, a decision reportedly forced by the Iraqi government's unwillingness to grant US troops legal immunity if they remained in the country.

Gmail users got a hefty dose of reality today when it was revealed that Google handed over one user's private data to the U.S. government, who requested it without a search warrant.

The contacts list and IP address data of Jacob Appelbaum, a WikiLeaks volunteer and developer for Tor was given to the U.S. government after they requested it using a secret court order enabled by a controversial 1986 law called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, according to the Wall Street Journal. The law allows the government to demand information from ISPs not only without a warrant, but without ever notifying the user.

Wikileaks, the politically complicated organization that says it "opens governments" by posting secret documents online, celebrates its 5th birthday today. A lightning rod for criticism since beginning to post a huge trove of US State Department files one year ago next month, the organization has also won numerous awards around the world for exposing the wrong-doing of other governments and powerful corporations.

Wikileaks leader Julian Assange yesterday marked 300 days under house arrest facing extradition from the UK for alleged sexual assault. Alleged leaker of the State Department documents Bradley Maaning has been held even longer. Neither has faced trial.

Despite the Google Plus announcements and the passionate responses to Facebook's f8 conference, the biggest story to hit ReadWriteWeb this week was that Wadah Khanfar, the director of Al Jazeera, had announced his resignation after Wikileaks released documents that alleged he censored coverage under American pressure.

After the jump you'll find more of this week's top news stories on some of the key trends that are shaping the Web - Location, The Real-Time Web and App Stores - plus highlights from some of our six channels. Read on for more.

Wadah Khanfar, the director of Al Jazeera, announced his resignation today after Wikileaks released documents that could prove embarassing to the news organization, the New York Times has reported.

According to the documents, Khanfar held particularly close ties with the U.S. government, to whom he promised the network would provide less critical coverage. He steps down today after running the network for eight years.