Whatever Twitter might feel about the subpoena (and we at Fast Company haven’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 to contest 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. 4 of 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 stated that, 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 from Fast Company