Processing warrantless subpoenas costs time and money. Given that we're talking about fairly rational megacorporations, though, it's likely they've already decided that the legal battle would cost more.
> Processing warrantless subpoenas costs time and money.
You can actually bill police departments for that. It's not as common when it comes to basic records, but it's not uncommon when it comes to wiretaps/trap and trace.
They cover the costs of complying although likely wouldn't cover the costs of determining that a request was warrantless and rejecting it, so the incentives align with just blindly complying with everything.
How would you know it's warrantless without further time investment? It's likely cheaper and safer to blindly process any subpoena originating from an authoritative source than to request and validate proof of warrant. Of course, it would be even cheaper to never receive such a subpoena in the first place. Securing a ruling against their legality would help with that, but as I said, it's unlikely the ends justify the means for a rational megacorporation.
I’m guessing there’s some obvious telltale that there’s a warrant (signed/stamped by judge, possibly on court letterhead instead of police letterhead).
Also possible to separate the streams of input. Maybe can’t force it, but having a “warrants” stream that gets priority triage and another for “other” that works a lot slower because it’s mostly garbage. Can create a shit list for those that abuse the “warrants” stream.
I'm not, at least in the extent I've participated in subpoena response and had conversations with an employer's counsel in that connection.
If you're b2c and past a certain point of scale, it just becomes an overhead, a bit of a pain but no big deal. That's if you respond promptly and completely - any company that screws around with something credibly subpoena-shaped is taking a dangerous risk; that's a great way to draw the interest of courts ("contempt of"), and SDNY in particular is known for being quite proddy.
If you received an illegal subpoena from the government you wouldn’t have any costs associated with it at all? Just throw it in the trash, move on with your day, and surely you will never have to think about it again?
At least where I work, if a random user bypasses the helpdesk with an informal request, my manager will back me up if they complain about no-response because there’s a formal method to follow for a reason.
It’s not an “illegal” subpoena, police can try and ask whatever they want, but I’m assuming there’s no penalties for ignoring.
But I asked a question, maybe there are exceptions and you must respond anyway despite lack of warrant.
While there could be reasons considered valid to respond to an informal request (some urgent life/safety matter), the police can and do lie, but are less likely to do so to a judge.
Lived in a building once where management agreed to police installed warrantless spycams in some hallways and told management it was to investigate a car theft ring, but it was some guy (edit:) storing drugs and keeping to themself.
Sadly, I don’t think there’s any kind of post-review of urgent informal requests to assess validity/accuracy of the request with consequences.
When the subpoena comes from the government, it seems potentially short-sighted to assume that the same government is going to be as kind as your manager regarding a random user's complaint.
Also, like the article explains, it is possibly illegal for them to send this warrantless subpoenas. Further, they are not simply "asking," as you describe - the text of the subpoena starts off "We command you," and ends with the explicit threat of legal action if twitter fails to comply.
Its not illegal to ask for voluntary cooperation. Its illegal to issue a subpoena under color of authority you don't actually have. It clearly stated this happened.
>Its not illegal to ask for voluntary cooperation.
Privacy laws exist, with exceptions for illegal behavior. It may well be illegal to give data to cops unless you have user permission or a warrant (IANAL).
Are those walls bulletproof in the building? If that "keeps to himself" druggie lost his stash or got in a tight spot, you'd be clamoring about how the police didn't "see the signs" and act to stop the illegal activity before the stray bullet claimed innocent lives.
