1. Data requests rise, and companies comply – San Francisco
Chronicle
Government agencies around the world are requesting more information about users of popular
services like Twitter and Google, and in the majority of those cases, the companies hand over
the data.
On Monday, a date recognized by Congress as “Data Privacy Day,” Twitter reported that
government agencies increased their requests for user information by nearly 19 percent in the
second half of 2012.
Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, also used the day to reiterate the search giant’s
key initiatives to protect users’ privacy and security in the face of government probing.
In the second edition of Twitter’s biannual Transparency Report, the company noted that 815 of
the 1,009 requests made to it by a government from July to December 2012 came from within
the United States – 90 percent of them from subpoenas, search warrants and court orders filed
by law enforcement agencies. Twitter notifies affected users unless the company is prohibited
from doing so by law.
Twitter has made efforts to position itself as a protector of free speech, and it hopes to use its
report to show the implications of government agencies increasing “invasive requests” about
Twitter members.
“It is vital for us (and other Internet services) to be transparent about government requests for
user information and government requests to withhold content from the Internet,” Twitter legal
policy manager Jeremy Kessel wrote in a company blog post. “These growing inquiries can
have a serious chilling effect on free expression – and real privacy implications.”
Details of requests
Twitter released its first Transparency Report seven months ago. Monday, it posted more
refined data and created a website to post the report: https://transparency.twitter.com.
Along with government inquiries, the report said there were 3,268 notices filed in the last half of
2012 asking Twitter to take down copyright-protected material, mainly by the Recording Industry
Association of America or outside firms working on that trade group’s behalf. The number of
notices filed was slightly down from the first half of the year, but Twitter still had to take down
5,557 tweets from 7,205 accounts.
There were also about two dozen requests by courts and law enforcement agencies to remove
tweets that might have been illegal in their jurisdictions, but Twitter removed only the 44 tweets
objected to in France.
Recently a French judge ordered Twitter to hand over details of accounts used to tweet
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2. anti-Semitic messages, even after those tweets were removed from public view within France.
Outdated law
Twitter is not alone in dealing with requests from U.S. government agencies. Due to ambiguities
in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Stored Communications Act, law
enforcement agencies can employ a subpoena – not a court-ordered warrant – to request most
e-mails and documents stored in cloud services like Google’s Gmail and YouTube, Twitter and
Facebook, and file storage services like Dropbox.
The law was written in 1986, well before cloud computing or e-mail were household terms.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who authored ECPA, calls its reform “essential.” Though no
meaningful changes were made last year, Leahy says he will make it a congressional priority
this year.
Digital Due Process, a group comprised of tech companies, government watchdogs and
advocacy groups from both political parties, fights for ECPA reform, calling it “a patchwork of
confusing standards that have been interpreted inconsistently by the courts, creating uncertainty
for both service providers and law enforcement agencies.”
Twitter, Microsoft, Facebook, Oracle, Amazon, Adobe and Google are just a sample of the
group’s 75-plus members banding together to change the law.
Much asked of Google
In terms of user data requests, Google seems to bear the heaviest burden. From July to
December of 2012, law enforcement agencies in the United States made 14,791 requests for
information on Google users or accounts, about 70 percent via the less stringent route of
subpoena. Google complied with about 90 percent of all requests, noting that it doesn’t comply
with requests that are “overly broad.”
Like Twitter, Google says it notifies users of government requests for their information, though
sometimes it doesn’t have up-to-date contact information or is legally prohibited from doing so
by the order.
Google’s Drummond noted in a blog post that most government requests are made during a
criminal investigation:
“But it’s just as important that laws protect (people) against overly broad requests for (their)
personal information,” he wrote. “… We believe a warrant is required by the Fourth Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure and overrides
conflicting provisions in ECPA.”
Government requests for information put many Internet companies in an awkward position,
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3. especially those that have prompted privacy concerns regarding their own products and
reselling of user information. The requests also can take up employee time and company
resources.
Caleb Garling and Benny Evangelista are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. E-mail:
cgarling@sfchronicle.com, bevangelista@sfchronicle.com
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