Crime

Judges Orders Twitter to Turn Over Occupy Protester’s Tweets

NEW YORK (AP/The Blaze) — Twitter must give a court almost three months‘ worth of an Occupy Wall Street protester’s tweets, a judge said in a ruling released Monday after the company fought prosecutors’ demand for the messages.

Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Matthew A. Sciarrino Jr. rebuffed one of Twitter Inc.’s central arguments, which concerned who has rights to contest law enforcement demands for content posted on its site. But the judge said the company was right on a separate point that that will make it tougher for prosecutors to get to see the final day‘s worth of Malcolm Harris’ tweets and his user information.

Judge Matthew Sciarrino Jr Orders Twitter to Turn Over Tweets by Occupy Protester Malcolm Harris In Trial

Malcolm Harris

Sciarrino also decided that he would review all the material he ordered turned over and would provide “relevant portions” to prosecutors.

The decision came in a case that began as one of hundreds of disorderly conduct prosecutions stemming from an Oct. 1 Occupy march on the Brooklyn Bridge, but it has evolved into a closely watched legal tussle over law enforcement agencies’ access to material posted on social networks.

Judge Matthew Sciarrino Jr Orders Twitter to Turn Over Tweets by Occupy Protester Malcolm Harris In Trial

The Manhattan district attorney‘s office said Harris’ messages could show whether he was aware of police orders he’s charged with disregarding. Twitter, meanwhile, said the case could put it in the unwanted position of having to fight for individual users’ rights.

The DA’s office said it was pleased with the ruling, which came after the judge turned down Harris’ own request earlier this year to block prosecutors from subpoenaing his tweets and user information from Sept. 15 to Dec. 31.

Judge Matthew Sciarrino Jr Orders Twitter to Turn Over Tweets by Occupy Protester Malcolm Harris In Trial

Harris' Twitter Account

“We look forward to Twitter’s complying and to moving forward with the trial,” Chief Assistant District Attorney Daniel R. Alonso said in a statement.

Twitter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Harris’ lawyer, Martin Stolar, said he was studying the ruling Monday to determine how to respond.

Harris was among more than 700 people arrested in the Brooklyn Bridge march. Police said demonstrators ignored warnings to stay on a pedestrian path and went onto the roadway. Harris, an editor for an online culture magazine, and others say they thought they had police permission to go on the roadway.

He challenged the subpoena for his tweets, saying the timespan was unreasonably broad, and although the messages were sent publicly, seeking the accompanying user information violated his privacy and free association rights. The data could give prosecutors a picture of his followers, their interactions through replies and retweets, and his location at various points, Stolar said.

Judge Matthew Sciarrino Jr Orders Twitter to Turn Over Tweets by Occupy Protester Malcolm Harris In Trial

Prosecutors said the tweets might contradict Harris’ claim that he thought police were allowing the protesters onto the roadway. And they said he couldn’t claim his privacy rights should shield messages he sent very publicly, though some are no longer visible because newer ones crowded them out.

Sciarrino ruled in April that Harris didn‘t have a proprietary interest in his tweets and so couldn’t challenge the subpoena, which was issued to Twitter.

Then San Francisco-based Twitter went to court on Harris’ behalf, saying he had every right to fight the subpoena. Its user agreements say that users retain rights to content they post and can challenge demands for their records, and it would be “a new and overwhelming burden” for Twitter to have to champion such causes for them, the company argued in a court filing.

The judge said the company‘s argument didn’t overcome his view that privacy protections don‘t apply to Harris’ tweets.

“If you post a tweet, just like if you scream it out the window, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy,” wrote the social-media-savvy Sciarrino, who laced his last ruling with the hashtag marks used to mark key words in tweets.

Twitter prevailed on another argument: that some of the tweets shouldn’t be turned over because a federal law requires a court-approved search warrant, not just a subpoena issued by prosecutors, for stored electronic communications that are less than 180 days old.

Sciarrino found that law did apply — but only to Harris’ tweets and information for Dec. 31, since the rest were more than 180 days old by the Saturday date of the ruling. It was released Monday.

Prosecutors’ bid for the tweets had spurred concern among electronic privacy and civil liberties advocates, and some cheered Twitter’s decision to take up the fight.

“This is a big deal,” since authorities increasingly seek to mine social networks for information, American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney Adam Fine wrote in a post on the organization’s site in May.

“It is so important to encourage those companies that we all increasingly rely on to do what they can to protect their customers’ free speech and privacy rights,” Fine wrote.

Harris’ case is set for trial in December.

Comments (27)

  • tharpdevenport
    Posted on July 3, 2012 at 12:17pm

    Another person lacking critial thinking, this judge Matthew.

    Tweeting is not like shouting out your window. For starters, no two windows are the same. What if that person shouting out their window is at a farm, where there is nobody to hear them? Or in a high rise where their voice is cancelled out?

    But putting that aside, let us say you shout out your window and you have people living around you and they hear you, every single time. You have fixed neighbors (no matter if they move, someone else becomes fixed in their place) and you can always be heard by at least one of them during any given time of the day. Everybody knows you live there. Everybody with a view of your house, knows where your window is.

    Twitter, however, has no fixed neighbors, no known house or window — unless you have followers and regular readers. You can Tweet/shout all day long on Twitter, but unless everyboyd knows your Twitter address, nobody but your followers & readers will know what you are saying, and even then — they may not read every Tweet.

    Posting a Tweet on Twitter is more akin to a pastor posting a bulliten in the hall of his church — only the followers and readers will see it. It is posted openly, but the public is not going to see it.

    Report Post » tharpdevenport  
    • Firesaber
      Posted on July 3, 2012 at 2:22pm

      And if the pastor posts that bulletin, it can be used against him. Unless this guy had a closed account that cannot be subscribed to, it doesn’t fly. If I post something in the local paper, and someone from across the country happens to see a copy and sues me, I cannot claim that I assumed that no one outside of the community I’m from was going to see the paper as a defense. If it’s public, it’s public.

      Report Post »  
    • tharpdevenport
      Posted on July 3, 2012 at 5:03pm

      Well, you missed the whole point — it’s not public. That’s like saying the whole internet is public. The whole internet, I’d say something like 99.5% of it, has never been explored by the average user.

      Saying it is public is like saying somebody with a cross in their backyard where nobody can see it, is ACLU suing material because the cross is public. You only know it’s there if you find it. It’s hidden. Just like his Tweets. I’d say Twitter is the same — 99.5% of all Twitter accounts have never been seen by the average user.

      And it’s not about Twitter, ultimately. It sets legal presidence. If you can claim Twitter tweets can be subpoenaed and used in court, then why not your message board posts, MySpace posts, private forums where only approved members can view material (“public” to the members, if we follow your logic), or mass e-mails; where you might say something, for the fun of it, or because you’re angry, or you just weren’t thinking right — things you’d never do in reality even if somebody paid you, and suddenly it is before a court of law and it’s the Prosecutions case to make you out to be a crazy Nidal Hasan, psychopath, etc. And when that wider president is set, it opens even wider invasions of privacy from the Federal Conglomerate.

      Report Post » tharpdevenport  
    • Rampart
      Posted on July 4, 2012 at 1:36am

      Is this guy related to Andy Dick…?

      Report Post » Rampart  
  • votingusmcvet
    Posted on July 3, 2012 at 10:04am

    Lets See…..OWS wanted everyone to know how they felt about what they were doing even stating things like “get the word out”…..”use twitter it is free speech for all to hear they can’t block it”…..but when they must answer for what they said and did they want to claim they didn’t want everyone to hear or see what they were doing????

    Public School educated, including Harvard, Yale, and all of those other commie organizations, MORONS……of course the ACLU is weighing in on not being held accountable for one’s actions…..just like elected Democrats….”IT WASN’T ME”

    Report Post »  
  • newview
    Posted on July 3, 2012 at 9:47am

    If government solution to border issue is “run and hide” who would be afraid to challenge them on any issue? We as a people have lost all credibility and there is not even a mirage of standing for anything anymore.

    Report Post »  
  • Seagal45
    Posted on July 3, 2012 at 9:15am

    If you don‘t want people to know what you are doing don’t post it on a public website. That said; the morons kept crying for government to take over everything and now they are getting their wish and don’t like it and are crying like a bunch of babies. Should have thought about rights under our Constitution before you dismantled it. IDIOTS.

    Report Post »  
  • Detroit paperboy
    Posted on July 3, 2012 at 7:50am

    All these little occupiers look like the kid who never got picked for dodgeball, and the girls never got asked out on a date…….I have found the root of their anger…….

    Report Post »  
  • toomuchgovt
    Posted on July 3, 2012 at 7:49am

    These goes yet another privacy right. Those who exchange safety for security deserve neither (paraphrasing B. Frankilin).

    Report Post » toomuchgovt  
    • IceIceBeavis
      Posted on July 3, 2012 at 7:58am

      How is it a privacy issue when he said it publicy?

      Report Post »  
    • Landon410
      Posted on July 3, 2012 at 9:31am

      I’m with ICE, he stated it on the freaking internet, guess what, its out there. All this does is save time and money, because if the court wouldn’t have made twitter give it over, they would have hire some computer nerd to go pull all these deleted tweets from the void that is the internet, because delete it if you want, but its still out there in the public domain.

      Report Post »  
  • IceIceBeavis
    Posted on July 3, 2012 at 7:46am

    I totally agree with the judge on this one. Tweeting something just like posting it on your facebook or stapling it to a telephone pole is the same thing. You put something online that is available to the public then you have no expectation of privacy. It’s not like this moron was sending emails to specific people he was tweeting for EVERYONE to see.

    Report Post »  
  • nzkiwi
    Posted on July 3, 2012 at 4:39am

    This will set a very dangerous precedent.

    No-one likes the occupiers. They are a motley collection of simpletons, drug-abusers, and young useful idiots who have yet to learn better, and they cause a lot of expensive damage (to say nothing of the sexual assaults and one murder somewhere, but I won’t hang those on the main group).

    Never-the-less, it is important to stand up for these numbskulls. To fail that is to fail your Constitution.

    Tweeting is not a shout in public any more than a reporter’s off-the-record source is in the public domain just because the source’s words are. And if they have to demand the records, then I guess they don’t have the “public shout”.

    Your Constitution was created to protect individuals from abuse by the government. Hold your noses and support these clowns.

    In the end, you will be protecting yourselves.

    Report Post »  
    • nzkiwi
      Posted on July 3, 2012 at 4:48am

      Actually, support Twitter rather than the “clowns”, would be the more accurate position, I suppose.

      Report Post »  
  • JACKTHETOAD
    Posted on July 3, 2012 at 3:38am

    “…We dug in deep… And shot on sight…And prayed to Jesus Christ with all of our might..We said we’d all go down together…Yes we would all go down togther.”

    Report Post » JACKTHETOAD  
  • Conservative2
    Posted on July 3, 2012 at 12:46am

    The ends, justify the means!

    Report Post » Conservative2  
    • booger71
      Posted on July 3, 2012 at 12:58am

      As much as I think this guy is a clown, tweeting is not screaming out a window.

      Report Post » booger71  
  • jman-6
    Posted on July 2, 2012 at 10:50pm

    How ironic is it that these occupy commies want the BIGGOVT to control everything an give them free stuff but dont want BIGBRO looking over their shoulders. This is a true sign that they’re MORONS!!!

    Report Post »  
  • vox_populi
    Posted on July 2, 2012 at 10:39pm

    Have fun when they come for yours, Tea Partiers.

    Report Post » vox_populi  
    • Mannax
      Posted on July 2, 2012 at 10:57pm

      Except that the Tea Party protesters are not breaking the law and using Twitter to spread and organizing their law breaking. So I don’t see the issue. Its not as if the prosecution broke the law with its subpoena, nor did the judge in granting it. The judge in the case is even reviewing them so that the prosecution doesn’t get information from other people.

      The real lesson here, kiddies, is do not put into print (even electronically) what you do not wish to be used against you in the future. Also do not break the law. And be prepared to accept what ever punishment you earn if you do willingly break the law. You have a right to protest, but if you are going to break the law in your protest, prepare to accept the consequences of your actions.

      Report Post »  
    • sy212
      Posted on July 2, 2012 at 11:26pm

      Not a problem, we aren’t trying to blow up fkn bridges dude…..

      Report Post »  
    • staythecourse
      Posted on July 2, 2012 at 11:32pm

      MANNAX.

      What is legal one moment becomes illegal the next. The teaparty is being villanized…. and yes, ‘THEY’ will come for teaparty ‘tweets’ and twist things around so even the most innocent ‘tweet’ becomes treason. The Feds are getting ready….the IRS will be the first clampdown.

      Report Post »  
    • Rickfromillinois
      Posted on July 3, 2012 at 8:42am

      Come for what? My “tweets”? Go ahead. Were I going to do something against the law I am not STUPID enough to “tweet” about it. To me tweeting about anything is on par with printing it in a magazine that is for subscribers only. Not exactly what I would call private correspondence. Twitter is advertised as a social meeting place. I fail to see how anyone could reasonably have expectations of privacy using it.

      Report Post » Rickfromillinois  
  • Smokey_Bojangles
    Posted on July 2, 2012 at 10:34pm

    Coming to a Tea Party rally near you…………………..

    Report Post » Smokey_Bojangles  
    • jman-6
      Posted on July 2, 2012 at 10:47pm

      Sad but sooo true

      Report Post »  
    • Snowleopard {gallery of cat folks}
      Posted on July 2, 2012 at 11:16pm

      Unfortunatly; and with Obama you can all but be assured they will be political prosecutions for the sake of his base, and the absolute intimidation of anyone standing in his path.

      Report Post » Snowleopard {gallery of cat folks}  

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