Why Twitter Alone Stood Up To the Government

The government has almost certainly made secret requests for WikiLeaks-related material from other companies. But only Twitter (successfully at least) fought to have those orders brought into the open. Here's why.

Secret subpoenas of the kind the Department of Justice sent Twitter are apparently not unusual. In fact, other tech companies may also have received similar WikiLeaks-related requests. But what is unusual in this story is that Twitter resisted. Which raises an interesting question: Assuming that Twitter was not the only company to have been served a secret subpoena, why was it the only company that fought back? The answer might lie in the figure leading Twitter's legal efforts, Alexander Macgillivray (below right), an incredibly mild mannered (really) but sharp-as-a-tack cyber law expert.

Twitter's general counsel comes out of Harvard's prestigious Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the cyber law powerhouse that has churned out some of the leading Internet legal thinkers. The center was founded a little over a decade ago by none other than Charles Nesson, the famous defender of Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg. While at Harvard, Macgillivray helped teach a course on the law of cyberspace, along with Wendy Seltzer, a fellow at Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy. Today Seltzer leads the Chilling Effects clearinghouse, a collaboration between several law schools and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which tracks legal challenges to lawful online activity.

After Harvard, Macgillivray worked as a litigator for Silicon Valley super-firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati before moving to Google, where he first spearheaded legal issues for products like Search and Gmail. He soon found himself enmeshed in the fractious Google Books lawsuit. Observers credit Macgillivray's agile mind and creative thinking with architecting with the Google Books Settlement—a solution that both enabled Google to lawfully scan the contents of university libraries and to create a mechanism for authors and publishers to get their out-of-print books back into circulation.

Twitter wooed Macgillivray away from Google in the summer of 2009, and he now heads a 25-person legal team. Throughout his career, he has remained an avid student of Internet and intellectual property law, and calls himself a tinkerer of sorts—his personal website is called "bricoleur," a French term he says refers to one who "[tries] things out until they figure out how to do something."

Macgillivray also curates a Twitter list of the primary thinkers tangling with cyber issues, and he has occasionally returned to Berkman to guest lecture or speak on topics of the day. Coincidentally, a week before the DOJ subpoena, Macgillivray was tweeting about a government analysis looking at which criminal statutes might apply to the WikiLeaks-style publication of leaked classified documents.

Twitter has declined to comment on the original subpoena and the company's fight to get it unsealed. What we do know is that the original order was faxed to Twitter on December 14. On January 5, the same magistrate who signed the first order, signed a new one, ordering the first to be unsealed. And on January 7, Twitter sent notifications to at least several of the holders of the accounts listed on the subpoena, telling them the company would respond to the order in 10 days, 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."

It's reasonable to assume that Macgillivray is the person who either led or played a significant role in the thinking that resulted in the decision to challenge the secrecy aspect of the order. If so, it's a smart move.

Whatever Twitter might feel about the subpoena (and we at Fast Companyhaven't seen any sign that it feels strongly one way or the other—though the notice to the account holders did conveniently include contact information for both the EFF and the ACLU), by making the subpoena public, Twitter takes itself out of the drama.

With this solution, Twitter gets to act the part of good citizen-both to its users and to the government. But it leaves the job of taking a stand on the appropriateness of the subpoena itself to the targets. And indeed, two have said they plan tocontest it. (One other said he is considering his options. The other two people named in the subpoena—other than the WikiLeaks account itself—are Julian Assange (who it's not clear actually has his own Twitter feed) and Bradley Manning, the accused leaker who is currently being held in a military jail.)

It's impossible to know whether other companies received similar subpoenas and, if so, whether they handed over the required information. That's because the orders' secrecy requirement forbids recipients from even acknowledging their existence. (The original Twitter subpoena reads: "[T]he application and this Order are sealed until otherwise ordered by the Court, and… Twitter shall not disclose the existence of the application and this Order of the Court, or the existence of this investigation, to the listed subscriber or to any other person, unless and until authorized to do so by the Court.")

Indeed, neither Google nor Facebook have responded to requests for comment on whether they were served with similar subpoenas. Which could mean either "Yes, we have but are prevented by law from acknowledging that," or "No, we haven't, and we simply aren't talking about it."

But it's not improbable that both have—and likely others as well. It appears that the attorney general conducting the investigation is interested in discovering who the account holders communicated with. While the Twitter subpoena does not ask for the content of messages—whether public or private—it does ask for records of addresses with which the accounts communicated. (See #B.2. on p. 4of the subpoena.)

To us, this looks like the government is using the records request as a tactic to ferret out who else might have been involved in the leak. If so, it would make sense to request records from Facebook, given that Manning reportedly statedthat, after deciding to leak classified materials, he had reached out to activists on Facebook. Similarly, if we were a U.S. Attorney on a fishing expedition, we would assume that Manning, Julian Assange, and the others named in the Twitter subpoena, might have Gmail accounts—in which case, it would make sense to request those records from Google as well. And to make similar requests to any other companies the targets might have used for similar communications.

WikiLeaks, for its part, certainly seems to think that Google and Facebook were served similar subpoenas. On January 7, WikiLeaks tweeted: "Note that we can assume Google & Facebook also have secret US government subpeonas (sic). They make no comment. Did they fold?"

We may never know. But if they did, it may in part be due to the fact that they did not have a cyber-law bricoleur like Macgillivray helping them think through their possible options.

Source: Gawker

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WikiLeaks says its Twitter account details have been subpoenaed by US government

U.S. officials have issued a subpoena to demand details about WikiLeaks' Twitter account, according to court documents obtained Saturday. WikiLeaks says other American Internet companies may also have been ordered to hand over information about its activities.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ordered San Francisco-based Twitter Inc. to hand over private messages, billing addresses and connection records of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and other alleged associates — including the U.S. Army intelligence analyst suspected of handing classified information to the site and a high-profile Icelandic parliamentarian.

Assange blasted the order, saying it amounted to harassment.

"If the Iranian government was to attempt to coercively obtain this information from journalists and activists of foreign nations, human rights groups around the world would speak out," he said in a statement.

A copy of the court order, dated Dec. 14 and sent to The Associated Press by Icelandic lawmaker Birgitta Jonsdottir, said the information sought was "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation" and ordered Twitter not to disclose its existence to Assange or any of the others targeted.

But a second document, dated Jan. 5, unsealed the court order. The reason wasn't made explicit but WikiLeaks said it had been unsealed "thanks to legal action by Twitter."

Twitter has declined to comment on the topic, saying only that its policy is to notify its users, where possible, of government requests for information.

Those named in the order include Pfc. Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private suspected of being the source of some of WikiLeaks' material, as well as Jonsdottir, a one-time WikiLeaks collaborator known for her role in pioneering Iceland's media initiative, which aims to make the North Atlantic island nation a haven for free speech.

The U.S. is also seeking details about Dutch hacker Rop Gonggrijp and U.S. programmer Jacob Appelbaum, both of whom have previously worked with WikiLeaks.

Assange has promised to fight the order, as has Jonsdottir, who said in a Twitter message that she had "no intention to hand my information over willingly." Appelbaum, whose Twitter feed suggested he was traveling in Iceland, said he was apprehensive about returning to the U.S.

"Time to try to enjoy the last of my vacation, I suppose," he tweeted.

Gonggrijp expressed annoyance that court officials had misspelled his last name — and praised Twitter for notifying him and others that the U.S. had subpoenaed his details.

"It appears that Twitter, as a matter of policy, does the right thing in wanting to inform their users when one of these comes in," Gonggrijp said. "Heaven knows how many places have received similar subpoenas and just quietly submitted all they had on me."

WikiLeaks also voiced its suspicion that other organizations, such as Facebook Inc. and Google Inc., had also been served with court orders, and urged them to "unseal any subpoenas they have received."

Google's London office did not immediately return a call and an e-mail seeking comment. Facebook did not immediately return an e-mail seeking comment either.

U.S. officials have been deeply angry with WikiLeaks for months, for first releasing tens of thousands of U.S. classified military documents on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, then more recently posting thousands of classified U.S. diplomatic cables. U.S. officials say posting the military documents put informers' lives at risk, and that posting diplomatic cables has made other countries reluctant to deal with American officials.

WikiLeaks denies U.S. charges that its postings could put lives at risk, saying that Washington merely is acting out of embarrassment over the revelations contained in the cables.

Although its relations with the U.S. government have been ugly, WikiLeaks and its tech-savvy staff have relied on American Internet and finance companies to raise funds, disseminate material and get their message out.

WikiLeaks' frequently updated Facebook page, for example, counts 1.5 million fans and its Twitter account has a following of more than 600,000. Until recently, the group raised donations via PayPal Inc., MasterCard Inc., and Visa Inc., and hosted material on Amazon.com's servers.

But the group's use of American companies has come under increasing pressure as it continues to reveal U.S. secrets — with PayPal and the credit card companies severing their links with site. Amazon.com booted WikiLeaks from its servers last month.

Source: AP

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Twitter Responds to WikiLeaks Document Demand by Feds–But Who’s Next?

Twitter has been ordered by a U.S. federal judge to turn over documents related to several people involved with WikiLeaks to the Justice Department.

Tonight, a Twitter spokeswoman responded to a request for comment on the situation:

“We’re not going to comment on specific requests, but, to help users protect their rights, it’s our policy to notify users about law enforcement and governmental requests for their information, unless we are prevented by law from doing so. We outline this policy in our law enforcement guidelines.”

In an onstage interview I did with Twitter CEO Dick Costolo at aD@CES event last night in Las Vegas, he referenced the issue, but would not give any specifics.

While he said he could not talk about WikiLeaks specifically, he indicated that he disliked government mandates to keep things quiet and reiterated Twitter’s desire to connect people with useful information.

“We’re going to lash out at things that prevent us from doing that, as aggressively as we can,” said Costolo, who also used Twitter crackdowns in China as an example.

It might be a Herculean task to fight the federal government, which is aggressively going after WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange.

Some Web companies, such as eBay’s PayPal unit, have cut off WikiLeaks.

On the other hand, Twitter took legal action to unseal the court order, which allowed it to inform those involved, giving them 10 days to object. Otherwise, the San Francisco microblogging service would have had to turn over information without the knowledge of these users.

There will surely be more of these to other Web companies, with obvious candidates being Google and Facebook.

The order from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia is ordering Twitter to fork over subscriber names, user names, screen names, mailing addresses, residential addresses and more of several people involved with WikiLeaks.

But you can read for yourself–here is the court order, as well as the unsealing order:

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