Intellectual Property Law

Pennsylvania Attorney General Tries to Unmask Twitter Critics

By David Kravets

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,” Signor Ferrari said in a telephone interview Wednesday. Signor Ferrari 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. The subpoena does not state what kind of crime the grand jury is investigating.

The subpoena to Twitter was dated May 6 and required Twitter to respond by May 14 with all identifying information it has on the Twitter accounts of bfbarbie andCasablancaPA, which is also Signor Ferrari’s handle on Twitter. The deadline had been extended, Signor Ferrari said.

“We have a constitutionally protected right to speak anonymously,” Signor Ferarri said.

The Twitter account of bfbarbie is not affiliated with the CasablancaPA blog, said Signor Ferarri.

Bfbarbie could not be reached for comment. That account, along with Signor Ferrari’s, is highly critical of the attorney general.

CasablancaPA’s tweets include, “Is it wrong to mix campaign work with taxpayer business? Apparently not when Tom Corbett does it.”

The subpoena, first reported by TechCrunch, demands “all subscriber information” regarding the two Twitter accounts, including “name, address, contact information, creation date, creation Internet Protocol address and any and all login Internet Protocol addresses.”

Signor Ferrari said in the interview that the CasablancaPA blog, which also targets the attorney general, is produced on Google Blogger’s platform. Google has not sent a notice stating whether it was subpoenaed in the matter, said Signor Ferrari, who was planning to move to quash the subpoena.

Twitter did not immediately respond for comment.

A spokeswoman said Corbett’s office was not immediately prepared to comment.

See Also:

• TSA Threatens Blogger Who Posted New Screening Directive
• Unmasking Anonymous Posters
• Chat Room Rants Protected
• Can John Doe Stay Anonymous?
• ‘Skanks’ Blogger Unmasked by Google Vows to Sue Company
• TSA Withdraws Subpoenas Against Bloggers
• Office Space Actor Sues Anonymous Wikipedia Vandal

Full post as published by Threat Level on May 19, 2010 (boomark / email).