It’s no secret that Twitter’s star has rapidly ascended to become a beacon of information coming out of Iran during the June elections. Faced with state enforced censorship of traditional communication channels such as cell phones and text messaging, opposition bloggers have turned to new mediums such as Twitter to post photos, videos and messages from the streets of Tehran.  As Western media was largely banned from leaving their offices, the flood of news, live from the protests, has likely had Iranian authorities trying to track down rogue tweets.

Finding an anonymous party on a social network
In civil litigation it might be challenging to track down the identity of someone who’s posting defamatory or libelous material. If a suspect is the focus of a criminal investigation, it’s relatively simple for law enforcement to issue a subpoena to a social network such as Facebook, MySpace or Twitter and then collect the log files of IP addresses and messages for computer forensic analysis.

However, in a civil matter, learning the true identity of a blogger will typically require serving  a subpoena in connection with a John Doe suit to the social networking site, demanding the IP addresses of the poster. Once you’ve got the IP address of the blogger from Facebook or Twitter, you can then send a second subpoena to the ISP hosting the IP address, such as Time Warner, AT&T or many others. Typically, the ISP will inform their subscriber that a request has been made to reveal their identity. Generally speaking, if the subscriber does not object, the ISP will provide the requested information. If the subscriber does object they will have revealed their identity in the process.

Protecting your privacy on a social network
If you’re an attorney with a client who uses Facebook, MySpace or Twitter you might be surprised at what can easily be found out about them on the web. You don’t need a computer forensics specialist to see what’s out there. Simply Google their name and see what information is available. PC World reports that 78% of social networkers have their profiles visible in a Google search.  Ironically, Facebook is currently testing some privacy controls in beta that would make “status updates” available to everyone by default.  It’s clear Facebook is moving toward less privacy, not more. Facebook is in the business of selling ads and the more content they can make available to the general public the more pages they can serve up for advertisers. In order to increase privacy on Facebook from the low default settings go to Settings: Privacy. You can dramatically alter who can see or search for information.

The amount of discoverable data available has dramatically increased with the rocketing popularity of social networks. Computer forensic experts from the private and public spectrum are rapidly adapting to the new landscape and it will no doubt be a challenge for litigation to keep up with the pace of change.