Some Additional Thoughts on the Wikileaks Judgement

I would like to follow-up on Christoper Soghoian’s blog titled “Twitter’s privacy policy and Wikileaks case” which can be found at the below link:

http://paranoia.dubfire.net/

And although I agree with many of the points in his blog, one thing that I think that should be pointed out is that although their accounts were created in 2008 and were bound by a different privacy policy which was stated in the judge’s order, Twitter wasn’t exactly unfair or deceptive in regard to their 2008 privacy policy.  I use unfair very loosely but it did say that it is on the onuses over the end user to frequently revisit the site to see if the policy has changed.  Obviously, this isn’t best practice in regard to following privacy principles, but in 2008 privacy wasn’t on the forefront of anyone’s mind either. Regardless, Twitter does have the right to change their privacy policy and bind end users under that new policy.  Granted, they should have provided a better way to relay this message to end users.  I think what is important here is that no data should be provided to law enforcement between the dates of May 14, 2007 through November 18, 2009; as during this time, the active privacy policy clearly states that, ”We do not associate your IP address with any other personally identifiable information to identify you personally, except in case of violation of the Terms of Service.”  So unless these individuals violated Twitter’s Terms of Service, they are bound by this policy.  If this information has or will be provided to law enforcement, then I believe that these 3 individuals have a very good case for a lawsuit against Twitter under Section 5 of the FTC Act for “unfair and deceptive trade practices”.

Either way, let’s be honest here, when it comes the Federal Government, they will do what they please especially when it comes to matters of national security.