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Twitter Fights PA Attorney General Subpoena for Users' Names

by Susan Marie Kovalinsky | May 21, 2010 at 05:35 am

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140 characters of Twitter messages, critical of him: And Pennsylvania’s attorney general and GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Corbett wants to know the real names of two Twitter users. Twitter doesn’t want to give them up.

The New York Times reports that state attorney general Tom Corbett demands to know the identity of two anonymous Twitter users who wrote statements criticizing him on the popular social-networking site.

Corbett, the GOP PA gubernatorial candidate in the fall, has asked a grand jury to subpoena the information from San Francisco-based Twitter, who is fighting the court order.

In a statement to Techcrunch, Twitter legal council Tom Yip said the company protects the identity of its users: “We protect and do not disclose user information except in limited circumstances.”
A spokesman for Corbett’s office told the Times that the subpoena was related to the an open case heading for sentencing and that the point of the subpoena was not to silence any criticism of Corbett.

The two users, known only by their Twitter handles of @bfbarbie and @Casablancapa, have turned their Twitter streams into a running list of links and statements further condemning Corbett’s actions.

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Spydermonkey

at 08:04 on May 21st, 2010

Looks like Tom kicked over an ant mound & kept his foot in it !

And the Ants go marching on :)

YankeeJim

at 08:23 on May 21st, 2010

I think that if you psot something in public, you should have the guts to say who you are. If you don't have conviction and courage, then silence yourself.