Facebook, Google Face Calls to Confirm WikiLeaks Subpoenas

Twitter's Confirmation of 'Secrecy' Order Fuels Speculation

by Jason Ditz, January 10, 2011

Twitter’s reputation is decidedly on the rise in the wake of the WikiLeaks Subpoena scandal, as the organization fought to reveal the Obama Administration’s efforts to obtain data on the whistleblower and its followers, but it is also raising questions about other companies.

Given the broad nature of the subpoenas, it is widely assumed that the administration is looking to cull information from wherever it may be found, and this is leaving sites like Facebook and Google facing questions about where their announcements are.

Google’s own user privacy rules would suggest they would follow a similar tack of Twitter in challenging the legality of “secret” orders to obtain user data, but so far neither this company nor any of the other likely targets has come forward to confirm or deny this.

In addition to Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, and others directly associated with WikiLeaks, the terms of the Twitter subpoena could potentially cull data from hundreds of thousands of other users who read the tweets of such users.

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