Internet Legal Trends to Watch. Part 2A: More on Wikileaks and Online Privacy

In previous postings in this Internet Legal Trends to Watch series, I discussed Online Privacy and Wikileaks. A development in the Wikileaks story has some interesting overlap with the question of how much of our personal information is available online.

Evidently, the federal government subpoenaed information from the Twitter accounts of Julian Assange and other Wikileaks associates. When a private individual or organization tries to obtain your anonymous online identity or online information, you must be notified of the subpoena request so you have an opportunity to “quash” the subpoena and keep your information private. In the Wikileaks case, the government got the subpoena with a gag order prohibiting Twitter from notifying Assange and the other individuals of the subpoena request.

We only know this because Twitter successfully fought to remove the gag order and then informed Assange of the subpoena request. The disturbing part of the story is that the government likely subpoenaed other social networks used by Assange and that those social networks may have handed over personal information without making any attempts to fight the gag order.

Reporter, Barton Gellman, offers a more detailed overview in the article “Twitter, Wikileaks, and the Broken Market for Consumer Privacy”.