LinkedIn Launches Lawsuit Against Unknown Hacker Defendants

I know very little about American law and jurisprudence. My sketchy understanding suggests that a court case involves a named plaintiff and a defendant. (One exception is the concept of unindicted co-conspirators, first made famous during the Nixon Administration.) Today's twist from the land of the "rule of law" comes from (surprise) Silicon Valley. According to a Bloomberg News report picked up by siliconvalley.com, LinkedIn has initiated a lawsuit against unknown hackers. The suit alleges that the computer pirates created thousands of fake profiles, from which they scraped data from legit profiles.

One curiosity in the case in the connection to Amazon.com. The complaint charges the defendants "accessed LinkedIn using a cloud computer platform offered by Amazon Web Services." The report notes LinkedIn's intention to serve subpoenas on the AWS service, even though Amazon is not named as a defendant. It's an ironic position for the "world's largest retail company," don't you think? (In fairness, Amazon.com has always claimed it's a tech company.)

It's not everyday a subpoena is sent to an unknown counterpart via electronic communication. What's truly baffling in the Bloomberg News report is that no one thought generating subpoenas to unknown recipients was odd, unusual, or noteworthy. Is this really just another day at the Silicon Valley ranch?