By now, you must have heard that USDOJ has issued a subpoena to Twitter and is asking for various types of information about Julian Assange, Rop Gongrijp [sic], Bradley Manning and Birgitta Jonsdottir from their Twitter accounts. This subpoena was issued under the seal because of which Twitter could not tell about the subpoena to anyone. In this situation, Twitter could have just followed the subpoena and none of these people wouldn’t even have known about it.
Instead, what Twitter did is, it apparently made a motion to unseal the subpoena. Twitter had been standing to do this because the sealing of the subpoena infringed upon its own ability to interact with its subscribers or customers. Twitter and other companies have a policy to notify the users before responding to a subpoena, or similar requests. It notified its users about the subpoena. In this way, Twitter has protected the privacy of its users, no matter who are they.
The act of WikiLeaks is not against the cyber laws. Their action can’t be considered as a cyber crime. According to the 19th article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, everyone has the right to give and receive information through any media, regardless of frontiers. So, is it something wrong which WikiLeaks has done by releasing the United States diplomatic cables? What government did with Twitter is not technically a subpoena, but a judicially-authorized order.
Of course, this isn’t the first time that tech companies have stood up to requests for customer or user data. From Twitters response to WikiLeaks subpoena, we come to know that there is at least one company which is respecting our rights. Though Twitter can’t really defy the subpoena, but at least they fought for disclosure. By standing up for its customers, Twitter showed the guts and principles. Twitter deserves recognition for its principles. We can hope that Twitter doesn’t face punishment for asking the judge to rule on the law in this case. Somehow, if Twitter is punished, we could guess what the industry norm can become.
