Twitter’s Response to WikiLeaks Subpoena Should Be the Industry Standard

[kster]

By Ryan Singel January 10, 2011



ANALYSIS — Twitter introduced a new feature last month without telling anyone about it, and the rest of the tech world should take note and come up with their own version of it.

Twitter beta-tested a spine.

On Friday it emerged that the U.S. government recently got a court order demanding that Twitter turn over information about a number of people connected to WikiLeaks, including founder Julian Assange, accused leaker Pfc. Bradley Manning, former WikiLeaks spokeswoman Birgitta Jonsdottir, and WikiLeaks activist Jacob Appelbaum.

The request was approved by a magistrate judge in Alexandria, Virginia where a federal grand jury is looking into charges against WikiLeaks related to its acquisition and publishing of U.S. government classified information.

The court order came with a gag order that prevented Twitter from telling anyone, especially the target of the order, about the order’s existence

To Twitter’s credit, the company didn’t just open up its database, find the information the feds were seeking (such as the IP and e-mail addresses used by the targets) and quietly continue on with building new features. Instead the company successfully challenged the gag order in court, and then told the targets that their data was being requested, giving them time to try and quash the order themselves.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/01/twitter/

[PDJane]

1. Many good Karma points.....

this spine thing may be catching.

[Fleshdancer]

2. Twitter keeps making it harder and harder to hate it. Damn it.

;)

I have an account but I rarely post on it because 140 characters is crap. I adore following Olbermann, Atrios, TomTomorrow, Maddow, and roughly 90 others though. Knowing Twitter had the courage to challenge this gag order is pretty damn cool IMO.

[midnight]

3. Hmmm. I didn't know corporations could do that?

[Hissyspit]

4. "Twitter beta-tested a spine."

[Poll_Blind]

5. Good.

PB