The thing is that the German article i read says that the order was not meant to become public, so no one would have known. Also, German media might display the US a little different. For those of you who can speak German, heres the article for reference:
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/0%2C1518%2C738447%2C00.html
So i don't know the correct term for this, but it seems that twitter got the right to tell the users about that recently. The thing is, unrelated to what they may or may not have done, the government demands private information about these people. From what i read in the article, most of them have not done anything I would deem to justify this.
EDIT: fixed the Link
edited 8th Jan '11 11:13:20 AM by ZheToralf
You lost!Well they tried to make the court order secret but Twitter appeared to have fought a court battle over that and made the court order public (in order to follow company policy of telling anybody when they have to disclose information).
Now, this isn't silencing anyone from speaking out against America but it puts some fear into them. I mean once they figure out who is criticising it or releasing its confidential information, what is the logical next step? I personally don't argue for slippery slope fallacies but if there is no social gain from stepping toward a more authoritarian society then you shouldn't do it.
I think if they don't have enough dirt to extradite someone for an actual crime, and don't have reasonable suspicion they'd get to such a point very, very quickly, they have no business coercing other countries or businesses into divulging these things.
edited 10th Jan '11 1:47:52 PM by Pykrete

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20027893-281.html
This is getting shady. If they get through with this, they will have a precedent for future use. While a lot of the cables from wikileaks where just gossip, there was also a fair share of important information that i think everyone has the right to know. Therefore I'm on their side (although im not actively doing anything). Maybe I'm getting a wrong picture here, cause i am from Germany, but the news we get here make it look that the USA are slowly silencing everyone who's criticizing the government.
You lost!