> The notification included a copy of the subpoena, which warned X not to tell Clancy of its existence. "You are not to disclose or notify any customer or third party of the existence of this subpoena or that records were provided pursuant to this subpoena," the document read.
> But X, following its own corporate policy, told Clancy anyway, and suggested he might want to get some legal representation to fight the subpoena, recommending the American Civil Liberties Union.
I too was surprised by this!
When the police dept wrote: "You are not to disclose or notify any customer..." is that a legal demand backed by law, or simply a request? I wish I knew more. I suspect it is a request, and that is why Twitter would ignore it. I am sure that Twitter has very conservative internal and external legal counsel to advise on these matters. Plus, there must be many, many of these requests from NYPD.
> Last Wednesday, Sachs wrote to the NYPD to challenge the administrative subpoena, which the NYPD had sent on its own authority, without any warrant or judicial approval. If the NYPD did not withdraw the subpoena, Sachs told the NYPD, Clancy would go to court with a motion to quash it.
If it's not backed by a court order, it's a polite request.
But even when it's a court demand, companies have several different counter-measurements. For example, they can tell the court "we can't provide data because we don't have that data" (Signal does this), or "we do have that data, but extracting it is resource-intensive, so the court should pay up" (some of the "Twitter Files" were precisely about this), or straight up ignoring non-American court orders (this is or at least was Reddit's general policy).
When the police dept wrote: "You are not to disclose or notify any customer..." is that a legal demand backed by law, or simply a request? I wish I knew more. I suspect it is a request, and that is why Twitter would ignore it. I am sure that Twitter has very conservative internal and external legal counsel to advise on these matters. Plus, there must be many, many of these requests from NYPD.