8

The other day I was reading about how rightsholders sometimes try to subpoena tech platforms for info on their users over issues of copyright. It got me thinking about privacy issues that don't involve your data being sold or hacked.

With that in mind, I'd like to know: in what situations could DMs between users on a chat service be legally disclosed to a plaintiff in a civil suit without the participant's permission? You can assume that:

  • The messages are not end-to-end encrypted, therefore compliance is technically feasible.
  • The service is American, but not necessarily the users.
JesseTG
  • 721
  • 1
  • 7
  • 17

2 Answers2

17

This could be done (and routinely is done) in any kind of lawsuit whatsoever.

The legal standard is whether the request is reasonably calculated to provide information that might lead to relevant, admissible evidence, which is very low. See, e.g., Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(1), which applies in federal court, and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 45(d)(3) (governing grounds to quash a federal court subpoena). Most state courts have closely parallel state rules of civil procedure.

ohwilleke
  • 257,510
  • 16
  • 506
  • 896
6

Any party can apply to have a social media platform disclose relevant data, even of non-parties

The precise test varies between provinces but private messages hosted by a social media platform may be obtained by any party (not only by a plaintiff, which you've asked about). Production would be according to the ordinary rules for production of non-party records. See e.g. Ontario Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 30.10:

The court may, on motion by a party, order production for inspection of a document that is in the possession, control or power of a person not a party and is not privileged where the court is satisfied that,

(a) the document is relevant to a material issue in the action; and

(b) it would be unfair to require the moving party to proceed to trial without having discovery of the document.

Relevant information that either party has access to must be disclosed by that party

If the message is relevant to the action and is under the control of one of the parties, then it would fall under the primary disclosure obligations of parties in civil litigation. The party whose message it is would be obligated to list it for production and then produce the message themself as part of the litigation. There would be no need to force the service provider to produce the record in this case. And this would be required no matter what encryption is involved.

Jen
  • 87,647
  • 5
  • 181
  • 381