Feds Can Get Twitter Users’ Data Without Warrant, Judge Says

The Twitter page of Birgitta Jonsdottir, one of the WikiLeaks associates involved in the case.

Should the government be able to collect information related to your Internet use without a warrant?

According to a U.S. District Court opinion in the case of three WikiLeaks associates, it should.
Judge Liam O’Grady ruled Thursday that the associates had no reasonable expectation of privacy when they used Twitter services, even if the information in question was known only to Twitter and not publicly disclosed. The government is seeking data from their accounts including their devices’ Internet protocol (IP) addresses, which can reveal information about location, and data on people with whom they communicated.

The WikiLeaks associates – Jacob Appelbaum, Birgitta Jonsdottir and Rop Gonggrijp – “voluntarily chose to use Internet technology to communicate with Twitter and thereby consented to whatever disclosures would be necessary to complete their communications,” Judge O’Grady wrote.

Judge O’Grady also denied the trio’s petition to unseal the parts of the government’s secret requests to Twitter and other service providers.

The ruling represents a setback for the WikiLeaks associates, who have not been charged with wrongdoing. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that the government also has made requests to other Internet companies for information on Mr. Appelbaum, a computer developer for a nonprofit that provides free tools that help people maintain their anonymity online.

More broadly, the order raises questions about how much privacy people can expect as they use technology. The requests for information in this case were made without a search warrant, which requires a finding of “probable cause.” Instead, the government relied on a law that allows access to certain data if law enforcement shows “reasonable grounds” that the records would be “relevant and material” to an investigation – a lower standard.

That law is used routinely to get data such as IP information, addresses of people a user has emailed and messages that have been stored at a service provider longer than 180 days. It does not allow the collection of newer message contents or wiretaps of communications without a warrant.           More

Warrantless Wiretapping Cases Back in Court on August 31

More than five years ago, EFF filed the first lawsuit aimed at stopping the government’s illegal mass surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans’ private communications. <=”" a=”">Whistleblower evidence combined with news reports and Congressional admissions revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) was tapped into AT&T’s domestic network and databases, sweeping up Americans’ emails, phone calls and communications records in bulk and without court approval.

Hepting v. AT&T, our case challenging the telecom giant’s illegal collaboration with the NSA, faced a barrage of attacks from the government — including outrageous claims that national security prevented the courts from considering whether AT&T and the government were breaking the law and violating the Constitution. When that gambit seemed to be failing, the White House and the telecoms led a lobbying campaign to convince Congress to pass a law threatening to terminate our suit. When that law passed we filed a follow-up suit directly against the government, Jewel v. NSA, to open a second front in our fight to stop the spying.

On August 31, 2011, at 2 pm in Seattle, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear a warrantless wiretapping double-feature, to decide whether the Hepting and Jewel cases can proceed. At stake will be whether the courts can consider the legality and constitutionality of the National Security Agency’s mass interception of Americans’ Internet traffic, phone calls, and communications records.

Jewel v. NSA, EFF’s case directly against the government and government officials, will be argued by EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. The District Court dismissed Jewel on the grounds that, because millions of Americans had been illegally spied upon, no single American had standing to sue. The alarming upshot of the court’s decision is that as long as the government spies on all Americans, the courts have no power to review or halt such mass surveillance even when it is flatly illegal and unconstitutional. EFF will argue that the number of people harmed should have no bearing on whether each individual — whose own communications and communications records are being intercepted and diverted to the government — should be able to sue.              More