Ryan Singel gives clear voice to what many of us have felt:
Twitter introduced a new feature last month without telling anyone about it, and the rest of the tech world should take note and come up with their own version of it.
Twitter beta-tested a spine.
[…]
But there’s not yet a culture of companies standing up for users when governments and companies come knocking with subpoenas looking for user data or to unmask an anonymous commenter who says mean things about a company or the local sheriff.
In the WikiLeaks probe, it’s not yet clear whether the feds dropped the same order on other companies.
Regardless, Twitter deserves recognition for its principled upholding of the spirit of the First Amendment. It’s a shame that PayPal, Amazon, Visa, Mastercard, Bank of America and the U.S. government all failed — and continue to to fail — at their own versions of that test.
Read more on Threat Level.