In a move which the Electronic Frontier Foundation termed a major blow to online privacy, a federal judge today ordered Twitter to turn over private information related to the accounts of three of its users as part of the ongoing WikiLeaks probe.
The three users include a member of Icelandic Parliament, Birgitta Jonsdottir, an outspoken supporter of whistleblower organizations, as well as Dutch WikiLeaks volunteer Rop Gonggrijp and US programmer Jacob Appelbaum.
Prosecutors had claimed that the “Stored Communications Act” granted them unrestricted access to such data without probable cause or a search warrant. The judge said that the prosecutors made a case that whatever information was contained in the secret records might conceivably be relevant to the investigation.
The actual ruling, however, was based in no small part on a conversation the judge had with the defense about the possible data contained within, in which it was determined that none of the three had ever read Twitter’s privacy policy. The judge seemed to feel that having failed to read the privacy policy made the case to keep the information private much weaker.
"failed to read the privacy policy". Fantastic. Shouldn't an inverse burden be placed on any company that sumits perhaps hundreds of pages, with references amounting to thousands of pages, as well as including all hudments in related cases: That the company must PROVE, and be respobnsible for failing to do so with a stiff penalty – say at least 1 million dollars – for presenting shaky terms before any customer.
So when a case like this one comes up, the first burden is for the company to prove everything is relevant, legal, conforms to any law or regulation anywhere – and failing to do so will get the case thrown out of court. As well as the minimum penalty.
I really think such a step is necessary to hinder the skewed stance in favour of corporations, as well as public "servants" in modern societies.