Court Decision Forcing Twitter To Give Up Info On Wikileaks Associates Challenged In Europe
from the jurisdictional-mess dept
You may recall that the US government has been seeking all sorts of info on some folks who were somehow connected to Wikileaks as a part of its grand jury investigation, using the obscure 2703(d) process, rather than a standard subpoena (the 2703(d) process has fewer privacy protections, of course). Last week, a US district court judge, Judge Liam O'Grady, said that Twitter should hand over the info (it's believed that others have already handed over info as well).It appears that at least one of those whose info is being sought, Icelandic Member of Parliament (MP) Birgitta Jonsdottir is now trying to challenge this in Europe, where privacy protections are much stronger. This could get interesting for a variety of reasons. While the US does not have such privacy laws, many companies in the US agree to abide by the basics of European privacy laws, in order to be allowed to offer service in Europe. It would be interesting to see what happens if the process in Europe says that Twitter can't give up such info without violating European privacy laws. While I don't think they could stop the handing over of the info (US company, US court...), I wonder if there could be further implications for Twitter, in that it may no longer be able to comply with European privacy rules. That might create quite a mess.
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Filed Under: birgitta jonsdottir, eu, jacob appelbaum, privacy, us, wikileaks
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Double standards...
While I honestly respect that they have better privacy than what our judges seem to advocate, it seems to me that we should criticize the laws that make Twitter need to collect information in the first place.
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Re: Double standards...
It's bizarre, unhelpful and possibly insane.
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Re: Re: Double standards...
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Not Really Double standards...
Here you have a EU citizen that give information while in the EU to a company operating in the EU and you are complaining because she is asking that EU law is respected?
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Re: Double standards...
But Twitter seems to have been the most honest of the lot in this particular case actually asking for the secrecy to be lifted unlike Facebook for instance. As such Twitter is the last company that should be sued in Europe, she should sue Facebook instead.
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Where Is The Data Stored
If the data is stored on American servers, the Europeans are out of luck.
Either way, I expect big legal trouble for Twitter unless it just hands over the information quietly and then just lies about it.
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Re: Where Is The Data Stored
Fairly certain that there will be boilerplate in the ToS for twitter etc with that sort of disclaimer.
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Re: Re: Where Is The Data Stored
https://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/243566/eu_data_protection_reform_will_put_ pressure_on_foreign_companies.html
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Privacy in Iceland
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Re: Privacy in Iceland
Just like everywhere else, those in the ruling class get more rights than everyone else. This is a MOP. I wonder if it would be different for an average citizen.
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It would be able to comply if it moved its operations to some better place.
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Wikileaks
http://explainlikeakid.blogspot.com/2011/10/wiki-leaks.html
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