Colin Crowell:

We probably get fewer requests for user data than some of the other services, only because the nature of Twitter is that most of what happens there is already public anyway. Law enforcement oftentimes simply has to go to the web on its own and can obtain the relevant Tweets that they were looking for. We probably get fewer requests there.

With respect to the gap and a request for greater data collection and retention, Twitter also tends to collect less user data than perhaps some of the other services. For example, we do not collect information from our users about gender, age, home street address or things of that nature. If there are personal data that we have no legitimate business reason to collect, we do not gratuitously collect it.

The irony, in looking at this Bill, is that on most of the other panels that I tend to appear, the policy makers and elected officials are urging us to collect less data and engage in data minimisation, rather than to collect more. The provisions of the Bill that hold out the possibility that we may be compelled to collect data that we have no legitimate business reason to collect is also a concern for us. We would have to explain to our users why we were collecting it and for whom.