Doing Business In.. The Internet: Twitter ordered to hand over account info

STC went to court not in England but in California, where twitter.com has its main offices. And it didn't mess about : it went straight to the California Supreme Court which has now ruled that twitter.com must hand over details of the owners of the offending account(s).

Last week, Twitter said in a statement that it would hand over details if required by "lawful authority" but that, if a request was made for information, it felt that it had an obligation to its users to inform them that someone was trying to find out their personal information.

California is unusual in the USA in that it does have some (albeit rudimentary by European and Hong Kong standards) data privacy laws.

It is alleged that the offending comments were posted by an elected representative, Coun Ahmed Khan, who is not aligned with any of the major political parties. He has said that twitter.com has told him that information has been handed over and the council says that it has received data which it is now analysing.

Quoted in local media, Khan says "This is Orwellian. It is like something out of 1984. If a council can take this kind of action against one of its own councillors simply because they don’t like what I say, what hope is there for freedom of speech or privacy?... and it not only breaches my human rights, but it potentially breaches the human rights of a number of whistle-blowers who have sent me private messages, exposing wrongdoing in the council, and the authority knows this."

But Khan's conduct is open to question: he is not a whistle-blower, but a public figure and, if he did indeed post the comments, then he might have been expected to do so in public or, better, to have made the allegations in council meetings where he has a degree of privilege (i.e. safety) for his comments.

There have been scurrilous personal attacks on individuals who hold office including allegations that one senior member of the Council is a drug addict.

The Council and individual councillors intend to use the information obtained from twitter.com to support an action for damages in the UK. One of them, Councillor David Potts (formerly Conservative, now Independent) says that the plaintiffs will hand over the damages that are recovered.

It is alleged that the "Mr Monkey" blog hosted (and still present) on Wordpress which includes allegations of ballot rigging is also related to Khan. The owner of that site ceased posting to it in 2009 but not before writing that he " is especially happy to know that every senior council officer, councillor and the editor of the Shields Gazette are scared shit less at the thought of being featured on Mr Monkey’s Blog. But the icing on the cake was knowing that Mr Monkey put an end to the Westminster ambitions of councillors David Potts and Ed Malcolm and exposed council leader Iain Malcolm as an election fraudster."

The Shields Gazette, a local newspaper, carried an article about the Californian decision that was devoid of emotion or crowing.

The case raises a question: if twitter.com is in the USA, then it is subject to the US constitution which is often prayed in aid when lunatic comments are made e.g. the leader of a fringe "church" who it was generally agreed had a right to free speech when he said he would burn copies of the Koran. Outrageous attacks on individuals are rarely regarded as beyond the limits of that right, leading many "celebrities" to bring libel claims in the UK in the absence of effective redress in the USA.

Why, then, is the posting of comments in the US by a foreign user not protected in the same way?

The answer may have come from Khan himself: while twitter.com argued its own case on broad principles of privacy for its users, etc, it did not argue that individual users have a right to post whatever they like with impunity. Khan was notified of the hearing but decided not to fly to California (at, of course, his own expense) to defend the claim nor to instruct local lawyers.

Therefore, it appears, the question was not before the Court and as a result was not decided upon.