Twitter sued for scanning private messages

Jessica Guynn | USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — A lawsuit filed this week in San Francisco federal court alleges Twitter is "surreptitiously eavesdropping" on people who send private messages on the social media service in violation of federal and state privacy laws.

The lawsuit alleges Twitter is "systematically intercepting, reading and altering" messages without the knowledge or consent of users.

For example, Twitter scans messages to replace a URL being sent with a custom hyperlink of its own. The lawsuit alleges Twitter does that to show it's the source of the traffic and generate "better advertising rates."

"We believe these claims are meritless and we intend to fight them," Twitter said in an emailed statement.

The lawsuit is seeking class action status. It's similar to a lawsuit filed in San Jose federal court against Google's Gmail service for improperly scanning emails to serve ads to its users.

In 2013, U.S. District Court judge Lucy Koh rejected Google's argument that Gmail users, and the users with whom they communicated, had consented to having their email read for the purpose of targeting advertising. But in 2014 Koh decided not to combine several lawsuits into a single class action, saying they were too dissimilar to group together.

The Twitter lawsuit is being brought by Jay Edelson's firm, Edelson PC, which specializes in suing technology companies for alleged privacy violations.

University of Washington law professor Ryan Calo says the Twitter lawsuit will not succeed for two reasons: Either the judge will decide an algorithm changing links or scanning for keywords is no different than a spellcheck or other automated program that people don't object to or the plaintiffs will not be able to demonstrate harm that a court would remedy.

"What Twitter is doing is probably not legally actionable any more than Gmail scanning emails for advertising," Calo said.

However, Calo says, even if it's not "legally actionable" when an algorithm, and not a person, scans messages, that does not mean that in certain circumstances an algorithm might not cause harm.

"It would be unwise to have a blanket rule," he said.

The lawsuit was first reported by the Hollywood Reporter.