SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – When a Brazilian state prosecutor last year set out to silence anonymous Twitter messages that were revealing the location of drunk-driving checkpoints, he served the social media company’s just-opened Sao Paolo office with a lawsuit.
Sharing sightings of police checkpoints does not violate any rules set by Twitter Inc, which has far fewer restrictions on content than social media rivals such as Facebook Inc. Nor would such Tweets be a crime in the United States. Twitter has traditionally resisted efforts to obtain the identity of users whose words might be regarded as a crime.
But in Brazil, Twitter quickly handed over the Internet protocol addresses of three accounts as a demonstration of its “good faith, respect and will to cooperate with the Brazilian judicial power,” the company’s lawyers said in a legal filing last October.
Even that wasn’t enough: the lawsuit, which demands that the company bar any such accounts in the future, is ongoing.
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