Free speech advocates find themselves on a precarious perch when it comes to Twitter. You can’t blame the blue bird for it though, they try their damnedest to protect users, but they have their work cut out for them.

And they’ve just hired a First Amendment pro to help even the odds.

Nicole Wong just joined Twitter:

Who is she? Well, as of today she’s the new director of Twitter’s legal team, and according to All Things D she’s the former deputy general counsel at Google.

It’s likely Wong was chosen in part for her extensive background on issues of free speech, a topic Twitter’s legal team has continuously and increasingly dealt with in recent years. As detailed in a profile on her from the New York Times Magazine in 2008, Wong and colleagues worked deeply with First Amendment issues at Google’s YouTube unit.

Also of note: Wong has experience in testifying before congress and being the target of public heat. She played a key role during ongoing litigation issues of censorship between China and Google in 2010, wherein Google no longer agreed to continue censoring search results for Chinese Google users.

So the next time someone tries to back Twitter into a corner and forces it to hand over what it feels is protected information, Wong can step forward and say, “no one backs Twitter into a corner!” Score one for the people (but hopefully not for the trolls).

(Superhero image from Shutterstock)