Twitter's Transparency as Emulation Worthy Tech Practice
BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, January 11 2011
Wired.com's Ryan Singel suggests that Twitter's reaction to a U.S. district court order for Wikileaks's participants user records should become the industry standard:
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.
Still unclear is how Twitter plans to comply with the order should it come to that, given that the law, as written, doesn't exactly match up with how Twitter works. In its letter to the implicated users, you'll remember, Twitter Inc wrote, "Please be advised that Twitter will respond to this request in 10 days from the date of this notice unless we receive notice from you that a motion to quash the legal process has been filed or that this matter has been otherwise resolved." Will Twitter restrict its revelations to the government to just the barest of essentials, or will it err on the side of disclosure? Twitter's legal team wasn't talking to Singel.
Over on CNET, Declan McCullagh reports that Birgitta Jónsdóttir, the Icelandic member of parliament targeted with others by the court order, has taken on representation from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.