ACLU And EFF Want To Find Out Who Rolled Over When Gov't Came Calling For Info About Wikileaks

Privacy

from the who-didn't-protect-its-users dept

While there’s been plenty of attention paid to the US government’s attempt, using a 2703(d) order (sorta like a subpoena, but not quite), to get info from Twitter on certain users who had a connection to Wikileaks, one of things that we pointed out at the time was the only reason we knew about the orders to Twitter was because Twitter fought the order. We wondered who else received such orders and just rolled over and handed over the data.

It appears that the ACLU and the EFF are asking the same question.

While (of course) it would appear that such info is being kept totally secret by the US government, those two organizations scanned the case numbers to determine that it appears four other similar orders were issued at the same time as Twitter’s order — and they’d like to know who those orders went to, in order to defend the users’ right to privacy. The argument seems pretty sound here. Since these users are currently fighting the government’s attempt to have Twitter hand over their info, shouldn’t they have the right to fight against other services handing over their info?

Of course, the end result of this will almost certainly be a revelation of which four online services simply rolled over rather than defending their users’ rights. Anyone want to take guesses as to who’s on that list?

Filed Under: government, privacy, subpoena, wikileaks
Companies: aclu, eff, twitter, wikileaks