Twitter releases user information to South Tyneside Council

Social network Twitter has agreed to a request from South Tyneside Council to identify the individuals behind a blog called "Mr Monkey”, which the council said was libelling three of its members and a senior officer.

In April, the council applied to the 9th Circuit court in California, the state in which Twitter is headquartered, to force the company to reveal the identities of those making comments on the Twitter-hosted blog.

The Mr Monkey blog had made a number of accusations against three councillors - leader Iain Malcolm, former leader David Potts and Anne Walsh, as well as the council's head of enterprise and regeneration Rick O'Farrell.

One of those suspected by South Tyneside of posting comments on the blog, independent South Shields councillor Ahmed Khan – who denies being involved with the blog – told the BBC that the information requested included IP identities, mobile phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

The case differs from that of Ryan Giggs, who recently attempted to enforce an injunction granted in an English court against Twitter in California. Instead, South Tyneside approached the Californian court directly to help it uncover the sources of defamatory material.

A spokesman for South Tyneside Council said: “This legal action was initiated by the council’s previous chief executive and has continued with the full support of the council’s current chief executive. The council has a duty of care to protect its employees and as this blog contains damaging claims about council officers, legal action is being taken to identify those responsible.”

The council has denied reports that the action has cost it hundreds of thousands of pounds, saying that costs so far had not exceeded £75,000.

Twitter and other social media hosts have provided details of users in response to requests from US-based organisations and enforcement agencies in the past, but it is thought that this is the first time that a request from a UK organisation has been made successfully.

It said that its policy when such requests are made is to inform the users concerned to enable them to oppose the request in court, allowing them 21 days before agreeing to the request. In this case, it is believed that none of the people identified chose to  do so.