Twitter has failed to respond to Milo Yiannopoulos’s information request on his suspended account within the 21 day period as specified under the 1988 and 2003 Data Protection Acts, meaning the company has effectively broken the law.
The law means that the company is obliged to hand over any information surrounding Milo’s account. However, Twitter rejected this request by claiming they could not hand over information to someone who resided in the United States, despite the fact his official residence is in London.
Milo has now demanded that Twitter apply immediately under his expired Irish data request application, as well as making a separate parallel application under the UK Data Protection Act for which the penalties are far more severe.
He has threatened to escalate the matter to the Information Commissioner to the United Kingdom should he not receive the information within the expected timeframe.
“Be under no illusion, should you fail to comply with this request in a timely manner I will escalate this matter to the Information Commissioner for United Kingdom whom has wide ranging power to enforce my request, and, if necessary, the courts,” he wrote in a letter.
In an email to VentureBeat, Milo said, “I want Twitter to release all the information they hold on me, as they are required to do by European law, because I believe that the company’s decision to suspend me was fuelled by politics and has nothing to do with ‘abuse’ or ‘harassment’ as they disingenuously claim.”
Twitter has yet to publicly respond to the claims.
The request is a result of Twitter’s double standards when it comes to dealing with Milo and conservatives in general, after he was permanently suspended from the social network for supposedly “harassing” Ghostbusters (2016) actress Leslie Jones after he wrote a critical review of the film.
You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at ben@yiannopoulos.net