A mysterious company that launched legal proceedings against Twitter in Australia to hand over user information, also attempted to obtain what is known as a "super injunction" to prevent any details of the case ever being publicly revealed.
In an unusual case in the New South Wales Supreme Court in Australia, a company known only as "X" launched proceedings against Twitter seeking an injunction against the social media company; a demand for several user's information; and a sweeping non-publication order over the proceedings.
The company launched the proceedings after a Twitter account was created in May 2017 that published sensitive commercial information.
The fake account purported to represent company X's CEO, and was described by the court as "manifestly dishonest conduct". The account was removed by Twitter at the request of X, but several other accounts were subsequently created. They also disclosed similar information, and followed some of the same people as previous fake accounts.
A super injunction is an order that prohibits even information about the existence of the order itself being made public.
The decision records that the company "wishes to prevent the publication of information tending to reveal the identity of the parties, the summons, the orders of the Court and certain confidential affidavits and exhibits".
Had the order been granted, it may have prevented the court proceedings from ever being disclosed publicly.
The super injunction was denied by the NSW Supreme Court, and details of the proceedings were recently published online.
Justice Michael Pembroke found that "neither the evidence nor the plaintiff’s submissions revealed a sound, rational basis for any reasonable likelihood that the mere identification of the names of the defendants, including the use of the word ‘Twitter’, would be likely to have the same consequence and cause the same prejudice.
"And there is a public interest in general awareness of the facts and circumstances of this case; knowledge of the identity, role and liability of Twitter arising out of those facts and circumstances; and an understanding of the nature of the orders that I have made against Twitter."
The judge did grant a non-publication order over the identity of company X. He also granted an "identity disclosure order" to the company. This required Twitter to disclose subscriber information of the Twitter accounts and the names, IP addresses, phone numbers and location data associated with them.
The judge also ruled that Twitter needed to comply with an order not to publish any of the "offending material" anywhere on Twitter's platform and to remove everywhere in the world any accounts held by the individuals responsible for the original account.
The unusual case raised a number of challenges for Twitter and its users. Twitter declined to appear in the proceedings, leaving company X's submissions on all fronts largely unchallenged in court. Twitter did direct some responses to the company outside the proceedings that the judge said he had taken into account.
They show that Twitter did object to the breadth of the order about not publishing any further material. But the company did not challenge the identity disclosure order and does not appear to have challenged the terms of the suppression order sought.
When tech companies choose not to intervene in proceedings where broad orders are sought to disclose user information, the claims of the plaintiff may not always be challenged.
While the Australian judge declined to grant the broader suppression order sought by company X in this case, it remains a risk that such an order could be granted in future proceedings, and that the orders will go unchallenged.
Twitter regularly publishes a transparency report that outlines when and where it receives government requests for user information around the world. The company's privacy policy states that it does not disclose user information unless "we believe it is reasonably necessary to comply with a law, regulation, legal process … [or] to address fraud."
BuzzFeed News has contacted Twitter for comment.