Concern over what it considers to be illegal hate speech has been growing in France following particularly unsavory trending hashtags. Earlier this month the French minister for women’s rights, called on Twitter to take proactive action against tweets that are illegal under French law. Now this request has been made explicit by a court order on the micro-blogging company to provide information that could identify the tweeters, and implement a mechanism that would alert the authorities of illegal hate messages.
“The court stopped short of recommending screening, but said that Twitter should ‘set up, within the framework of its French platform, an easily accessible and visible system enabling anyone to bring to its attention illegal content, especially that which falls within the scope of the apology of crimes against humanity and incitement to racial hatred’,” reports the New York Times.
This places Twitter in a difficult position, and it is reviewing its legal options. It has already implemented a method to block out individual users in individual countries in order to comply with different national laws (in October 2012 it blocked a neo-Nazi group in Germany following a request from the German government.) But the problem here is with tweets rather than users; and Twitter prides and promotes itself as a defender of free speech and privacy.
Its current policy, as a US company, is to abide by correctly issued US subpoenas – but even here it doesn’t always do so without a fight. It is still considering what to do with the French court order – but the ‘correct’ route would be for France to use the mutual legal assistance treaty to obtain a US subpoena. This was successfully used by UK authorities in 2011 in order to obtain details of a user accused of defaming members of a local council.
The irony of the current situation is not lost on the New York Times. “European lawmakers,” it writes, “worry about American companies sharing data about Europeans with the United States government under American laws that authorize surveillance on foreign citizens. This case flips that objection on its head, with European authorities seeking information on its citizens from an American company.”