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EspañolV asks if she can subpoena tech company to get info on stalker's accounts
If someone is trying to get proof of who is creating accounts for a court case, it may be possible for the person’s lawyer (or the DA if it’s a criminal case) to ask the judge to sign a subpoena to the tech company that hosts the social media account (such as Facebook or Twitter) to get the account holder’s info. Or this can be done by the police if, let’s say there is an active protection order that is violated. The police could open a case for violation of the protection order and get subpoenas that way. I do want to mention that someone can file their own violation petition in civil court for violation of a protection order but it could be harder to get this information from tech companies through a civil court subpoena than a criminally-issued subpoena. This is why: sending subpoenas for information to tech companies is tricky because of the Stored Communications Act (18 USC section 2701), under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (18 USC section 2510). This federal law protects user privacy data held by 3rd party communications companies. The statute is law enforcement friendly and provides them/a criminal investigation the necessary exceptions to pursue consumer information, but it does not allow it on the civil side. Sometimes a person can get a civil judge to sign a subpoena for account holder information and sometimes that tech company will comply with it. However, I don’t know if there are any ramifications for the tech company if they choose to not comply with the civil order. And someone who wants the judge to sign a subpoena will need some level of proof to take to the judge to get them to sign off on the subpoena in the first place.
If you are worried about how to prove that [CHANGE AS NEEDED: your ex] is the one creating the accounts, sometimes there are ways to do it without subpoenaing records. For example, maybe the person references something that only that specific person would know or uses a nickname for the victim that only that person used. Or perhaps the person use words or phrases in the harassing interactions that they have used before in other communications that the victim has and can show the police or courts that they match up, which can help prove the same person wrote them both.
If you are looking to pursue criminal charges, you may want to talk with law enforcement with the help of a domestic violence advocate or lawyer LINK in order to push law enforcement to file for subpoenas as part of their investigation. And for legal advice on what other options you may have, talking to a lawyer (if you can find one) can hopefully help you decide what are the next steps you want to take. In addition, it’s important to keep very detailed evidence of the harassing posts by taking screenshots and printing them out with dates/times in case they are needed for the police or courts and taking photos or screenshots of any other harassing communication.
