Twitter Deserves Credit For Defending Its Users' Rights
By Shane Richmond
09 January, 2011
Blogs.telegraph.co.uk
The US department of justice has ordered Twitter to hand over the messages and account details of several users who are, or have been, associated with Wikileaks.
Salon reports: "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."
Initially the order was sealed, that is it was to be kept secret from the targets. It’s to Twitter’s credit that it asked for the order to be unsealed and then informed the users concerned.
Wikileaks, on its official Twitter account has speculated about whether Google and Facebook have also been the target of "secret US government subpoenas".
There are two points worth making about this. The first is one that should be obvious: you should be very careful of the information you share on social networks or 'cloud’ computing services. Given that the information is outside your control, you can’t be sure whether it will be turned over to the authorities.
There’s also a risk that cases like this one will deter people from using social networks to express controversial opinions. We’ve already seen one case in which students being warned that writing about Wikileaks on Facebook could harm their career prospects.
The second point is well made by Glenn Greenwald at Salon: "…all of this extraordinary probing and 'criminal’ investigating is stemming from WikiLeaks’ doing nothing more than publishing classified information showing what the US government is doing: something investigative journalists, by definition, do all the time."
This is a campaign of harassment against people who are seeking to hold the powerful to account. Worse, the US government is attempting to carry this out in secret. We know about it only because Twitter went out of its way to tell its users. Anyone who cares about free speech, journalism and curtailing the actions illiberal governments should sympathise with Wikileaks.
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