Judge Says Gov't Can Get Access To Twitter Account Data Of Wikileaks' Associates

from the data-vs-speech dept

Earlier this year, it came out that the government was seeking data from Twitter on various users who had some form of connection with Wikileaks. It's actually quite likely that other social media companies received similar orders for data and just handed it over, but Twitter actually fought to unseal the order demanding the data, so that it could inform those whose data was being sought. Once that came out, the EFF and ACLU teamed up to protest the government's data seeking. However, the judge has denied their attempts to block such data collection, saying that since the government is seeking data about the account, rather than information in the account, the individuals don't really have any case at all. The EFF and the ACLU plan to appeal. At this point, it seems unlikely that they'll prevail. It seems like the government tends to be given pretty wide latitude in these kinds of cases to get all sorts of info.