Government Appetite Growing for Twitter User Data

via Stop LAPD Spying: Campaign to Rescind Special Order 1


http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/01/twitter-data-warrants/

Twitter said Monday that just 19 percent of federal and state government requests for user data were accompanied by probable-cause search warrants during the six months ending in December 2012.

In all, the San Francisco-based micro-blogging service, in its second so-called transparency report, said there were 815 demands for Twitter account-holder data. Twitter did not say what type of user data was sought in those 815 requests, but it likely includes a mixture of e-mail addresses associated with accounts, IP logs, tweets and direct messages.

Twitter did not say what data it hands over. But it said it demanded a probable-cause warrant for tweets and direct messages — although the courts don’t always see it that way.

The disclosure came a week after Google and Yahoo told Wired that it requires probable-cause warrants to divulge to the authorities e-mail and cloud-stored content of its account holders, despite federal law not always demanding that.

(More at the link.)