Twitter has warned users that it is prepared to hand over their personal information to authorities if required by law, although it would notify them before they do so, following the recent controversy surrounding multiple breeches of gagging orders on the micro-blogging site.
Speaking at a conference, Twitter’s general manager of European operations, Tony Wang, said: “Platforms should have responsibility not to defend the user, but to protect that user’s right to defend him or herself.”
Speaking at the eG8 internet forum in Paris on Wednesday, Wang added: “”If we’re legally required to turn over user information, to the extent that we can, we want to notify the user involved, let them know and let them exercise their rights under their own jurisdiction.
“That’s not to say that they will ultimately prevail, that’s not to say that law enforcement doesn’t get the information they need, but what it does do is take that process into the court of law and let it play out there.”
Twitter’s clarification on its stance over gagging orders comes after Dominic Grieve, the Attorney General said earlier this week that people who broke super injunctions on the site should not expect to get away with it.
“It is quite clear, and has been clear for some time in a number of different spheres, that the enforceability of court orders and injunctions when the internet exists into which information can be rapidly posted, that presents a challenge,” Grieve said.
“But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the right course of action is to abandon any attempt at preventing people from putting out information which may in some circumstances be enormously damaging to vulnerable people or indeed, in some cases, be the peddling of lies.”
Twitter became the centre of the storm over privacy injunctions when some of its users named a footballer in connection with an alleged affair with the former Big Brother contestant, Imogen Thomas. The footballer launched legal action to prevent himself being named.
The footballer’s lawyer Schillings filed the legal action against Twitter and its users on Friday, after tens of thousands of internet users allegedly exposed details of his alleged extra-marital affair.
The court order – known as a Norwich Pharmacal order – could force Twitter to hand over the name, email address and IP address of the person behind the account.
The MP who named the footballer in the House of Commons this week, John Hemming, Liberal Democrat, was reported on the Financial Times website (paywall) as saying UK courts would have difficulty in prosecuting Twitter users who had broken the embargo.
“With about 75,000 people having named Ryan Giggs on Twitter it is impractical to imprison them all,” he said.
The news comes as another Twitter account has begun to post alleged details of privacy injunctions involving the rich and famous.
The latest tweets claim to reveal extensive details about 14 injunctions allegedly obtained by politicians, musicians and sportsmen. The feed has already acquired nearly 7,000 followers.