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Penn. AG Corbett Subpoenas Twitter For Bloggers' Names
Dthief writes with this from Pennsylvania's ABC27 News: "The state attorney general's office has issued a subpoena threatening officials of the social networking service Twitter with arrest unless they reveal the names of two bloggers who have been critical of Attorney General Tom Corbett and his public corruption investigation. Vic Walczak of the American Civil Liberties Union told Pittsburgh's WTAE-TV that the court action 'raises grave concerns about abuse of the grand jury process to retaliate against political critics and opponents.' He said Americans 'have a right to criticize government officials and to do so anonymously.'"
In the words of George Carlin "You have no rights"
Twitter doesn't store personal details. Even putting a name in your profile name is optional. How can they provide information they don't even collect?
my other sig is also a porsche
Wow. Way to go authoritarian police state. Let's not even try to hide it anymore.
There is a war going on for your mind.
I doubt this is going to work. There's no way a lawyer could write a subpoena in under 140 characters.
My webcomic
Let me be the first say that Tom Corbett is an asshat. He is also the Republican nominee for Governor of Pennsylvania. One has to wonder how much of this is motivated by his candidacy.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Here's the two people he's requesting subpoenas for:
http://twitter.com/bfbarbie
http://twitter.com/CasablancaPA
Let's see if we can make them go from 300-500 followers to 3,000-5,000.
I can't believe he's making such a huge stink over someone with a few hundred followers.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
According to Wikipedia, Twitter is based in California. Why is the attorney general of Pennsylvania threatening Twitter's higher-ups with arrest? There must be something here I don't know.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
Hey, Mr. Corbett? Let me teach you about a little something called the Streisand Effect.
Something tells me you're going to be very well acquainted with it in a day or so.
That's kind of old, according do ACLU helping keep Twitter users' IDs secret in Pa. a judge will decide whether the subpoena is thrown out.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
He is looking for the names of people who have criticized him? Really? Because I am pretty sure that by doing this, half the Internet will be speaking poorly of him. And I for one, am drinking the cool-aid.
Fuck Attorney General Tom Corbett and his public corruption investigation. Fuck him in his stupid ass. He is fucking clown shoes.
Come get me Tom. I dare you.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
If there is reasonable suspicion to believe that grand jury proceedings are being UNLAWFULLY disclosed to the public via the twitterers, then the Attorney General is merely doing his duty. Secrecy of grand jury proceedings is absolutely vital to provide fairness to the targets and to the witnesses. Reputations can be destroyed by a leak of grand jury information. The movie 'Absence of Malice' is a good illustration of how the grand jury process can be abused by illegal leakages and result in damage to innocent people.
On the other hand, the secrecy of the grand jury process gives the prosecuting attorney ENORMOUS power that can be abused by bad men or women.
Before I jump on the "enemy of freedom" bandwagon, I'd need to see the tweets. If it looks like they have an 'inside man' in the grand jury room, then I am totally on the side of the Attorney General. On the other hand, if they're just complaining about his behavior based upon what witnesses have reported about their own testimony (that's legal), then you can count me in among the haters.
There's just not enough information available yet.
I do hope Twitter moves to quash the subpoena. That way the Judge overseeing the grand jury proceedings will have to examine the prosecuting attorney's actions. If twitter caves in, then nothing is private on that website.
Isn't free speech allowed unless you're directly threating someone?
Apparently you haven't RTFA or done any other checking.
The particular Twitter ID's in question are linked to an ongoing corruption case against a number of Democrat politicians/operatives, and it's suspected that a defendant in that ongoing case has been tweeting & blogging anonymously about the prosecutor & AG and the investigation itself.
In many courts/proceedings, revealing proceeding-related information or attempting to poison the proceedings outside the courtroom is cause for prosecution and/or contempt-of-court charges.
If this is true and the AG has probable cause to legitimately suspect criminal actions have taken/are taking place, would he not be remiss if he did nothing?
This submission appears to be quite partisan and one-sided, as well as sparse on the facts and context.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
But what if the twitterer ISN'T at all connected to the investigation?
What if they are just a person who reads the papers and is pissed off, or who hears rumors from others or whatever?
Does a person lose their right to anonymous speech merely because someone SUSPECTS that they might someone else?
This space available.
He's a Republican. Draw your own conclusions. I'm kidding of course, as a Republican he wouldn't dream of being in an association that has anything to do with the letter "N".
The other bit of information that doesn't appear in this summary is that he just won his parties nomination as candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania. About this, I am not kidding.
It's a very interesting story, and worth examining. His office just released a statement that he has reason to believe one of the twitter accounts that he's trying to subpoena belongs to the defendant in a case he is prosecuting. He doesn't mention anything about the other account. But since there aren't any threats alleged in these tweets, just a lot of the usual political criticisms and slams, it would seem that his cause of action, if any, would be regarding libel, which would be civil court. Instead, he uses the criminal law enforcement powers of his office to subpoena two twitter accounts, which seems to pretty much violate the First Amendment. His case would seem to question the right of anyone to make an anonymous comment on the Internet, which might be of interest to readers of Slashdot.
He's been accused of using the powers of his office to advance his political career before, and also of corruption and overreaching his constitutional powers in prosecuting a lot of Democrats and a very few Republicans. This incident is some pretty dangerous stuff, though, if you care about free speech.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Anonymity is extremely important. On more occasions than I can count, I've espoused the virtues of (pseudo)anonymous communications techniques, coupled with strong encryption. Note that this shouldn't be construed to say I believe people should be absolved of being held accountable for their actions if they do something wrong. I do, however, acknowledge that under certain circumstances (repressive regimes for example) local law may not be in line with what the rest of the planet finds remotely reasonable. Like everything else that involves people, these things require careful consideration and deliberation amongst the citizens affected by them.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
I wasn't aware that the definition of "free speech" included "the right to remain anonymous".
It is, in certain cases. Here are several examples.
If you want to say something, just fucking say it. If you're in a position where saying something is illegal (e.g. criminal libel), why should you expect to be protected by the law?
That's essentially the rule. Free speech can have a reasonable expectation of privacy. However libel, slander, violating gag orders, revealing sensitive information, and other actions are not free speech, and thus don't have any of these protections.
In cases like this, where the illegality of the speech is determined by the identity of the author (if they are a juror speaking of a case, it is illegal, but not if they are a random dude) it should be up to a judge to weight the burden of prosecution if they are acting illegaly, with the reasonable protection of someone who wasn't involved's privacy. That's why the users have the chance to file a counter-motion.
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