Pennsylvania Attorney General Tries to Unmask Twitter Critics

[n2doc]

By David Kravets May 19, 2010 | 4:50 pm | Categories: Censorship, privacy


An anonymous blogger critical of Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett plans to challenge a grand jury subpoena ordering Twitter to reveal the blogger’s identity.

“It doesn’t really matter why we are criticizing him,” said ”Signor Ferrari,” one of the two Twitter users targeted in the subpoena from Corbett, who won the Republican gubernatorial primary Tuesday. ”It’s our First Amendment right to criticize him no matter who we are,” said Signor Ferrar said in a telephone interview Wednesday. He uses that pen name on the CasablancaPA blog.

The bloggers received an e-mail from Twitter on Tuesday evening saying the micro-blogging service would respond to the subpoena (.pdf) in a week “unless we receive notice from you that a motion to quash the subpoena has been filed or that this matter has been otherwise resolved.”

The subpoena follows a string of similar efforts to unmask anonymous writers, with mixed results. A Louisiana politician dropped a defamation suit Tuesday against 11 anonymous commenters on The Times-Picayune website after the outlet refused to release their identities. In August, however, Google unmasked the operator of the “Skanks in NYC” blog after being subpoenaed by an Australian model who claimed the site defamed her. And on Monday, a federal judge prevented Yahoo from revealing the identity of a message-board poster critical of USA Technologies.

While those efforts involved civil subpoenas, Corbett is apparently treating his online critics as potential criminals, using his power as the state’s top law enforcement official to issue a grand jury subpoena.



Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/05/twitter-subpoena/

[BakedAtAMileHigh]

1. wasting taxpayer $ on a personal vendetta

He's a winner alright.

[HopeHoops]

2. Corbett is a sleaze ball dickhead - subpoena THAT asshole!

Everything he does is for his own political gain. I hope he goes down in flames in November.

[n2doc]

3. kick n/t