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Twitter To Appeal Turning Over Protester's Messages

Posted by samzenpus on from the keep-your-hands-off-my-tweets dept.

angry tapir writes "Twitter plans to appeal a ruling to turn over the once-public tweets of an Occupy Wall Street protester charged with disorderly conduct, a case the company says threatens the First Amendment rights of its users. A New York Criminal Court judge ruled last month that Twitter should turn over the tweets of Malcolm Harris, since his messages were public and are not the same as an email or a private chat, which would require a search warrant."

12 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. Can the Public Become Private? by ohnocitizen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Imagine putting a sign on your front lawn. A month later you bring it inside your house. Since the sign was public, does that mean the police no longer need a warrant? If twitter loses this appeal, the answer to that question will be no. It is essentially saying anything made public can never be made private. Now, if someone took pictures of that sign on your lawn, that's another matter. So a snapshot of a public site would be fair game. So much so, I wonder if the police monitor tweets and store potentially interesting ones?

    1. Re:Can the Public Become Private? by Jerry+Smith · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Imagine putting a sign on your front lawn. A month later you bring it inside your house. Since the sign was public, does that mean the police no longer need a warrant? If twitter loses this appeal, the answer to that question will be no. It is essentially saying anything made public can never be made private. Now, if someone took pictures of that sign on your lawn, that's another matter. So a snapshot of a public site would be fair game. So much so, I wonder if the police monitor tweets and store potentially interesting ones?

      You can't unsay what you have said. If you scream at someone "I'm gonna kill you", it will be used against you.

      --
      All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
    2. Re:Can the Public Become Private? by hey_popey · · Score: 2

      So much so, I wonder if the police monitor tweets and store potentially interesting ones?

      Why wonder? Just assume that some agency, somewhere, does. Maybe not the police, but with all the agencies that could be interested in this, it's likely that this happens!

    3. Re:Can the Public Become Private? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is disorderly conduct. It is several orders of magnitude less than threatening to kill someone. Flipping off a cop, pissing in the street, having a temper tantrum, or being drunk in public are items that would normally be grouped under this crime. In the court that I used to work at the penalty was typically a $100 fine and 1 day in jail (which was credited even if you bailed out immediately). It is basically the judicial system's version of a time-out. With a lawyer, it would almost always result in a deferred sentence (no criminal record).

      There is no value to the state in searching for evidence to this crime. If the state needs anything more than the statements of witnesses, the statements of the cops, or voluntarily turned over camera footage, then the prosecutor is wasting his or her time and scarce resources.

    4. Re:Can the Public Become Private? by cold+fjord · · Score: 2

      Of course members of the "Occupy" movement have engaged in far more serious behavior: Occupy Wall Street Blotter

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    5. Re:Can the Public Become Private? by TapeCutter · · Score: 2

      Why is the parent currently moderated troll?
      It should be obvious to any half-wit that you cannot unsay a public statement when someone calls you on it. You are responsible for your own public utterances. If you run around making death threats or inciting riots, then eventually someone will take you seriously and the rest of us will hold you to account. It's a quaint concept called modern civilization, it's not always logical or fair, and its stubborn rules have been famously compared to an ass. However it does provide us with a superior quality and longer length of life compared to all known alternatives.

      Does any of this mean the parent post or I agree/disagree with this particular ruling? - Hell no, the parent didn't state their opinon one way or the other, and I barely skimmed the summary, let alone checked it's claims.

      Now, just for fun of being a trollish devils advocate let's change the wording of the GP's quote, we can sensationalise it a bit and correct the claim to accurately reflect the situation that is described in TFSummary...Imagine putting a burning cross on your front lawn. A month later you hose it down and bring it inside your house. Since the sign was public, does that mean you can refuse a court order to hand it over?

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
  2. Wayback Machine? by Pichu0102 · · Score: 2

    Have they tried looking into the Wayback Machine to see if it's holding the tweets? It'd hard to imagine that they're not archived somewhere from when they were public. The only question is if they'd be admissible as evidence from a source like Wayback instead of the direct site itself.

    1. Re:Wayback Machine? by silentcoder · · Score: 2

      >The only question is if they'd be admissible as evidence from a source like Wayback instead of the direct site itself.

      I don't see a question there, you can never actually VIEW an original website unless you physically at the server looking at the source files. Any browser creates a copy (downloading the page) and displays that copy. All web pages are already indirectly viewed.

      So either ALL web-based content is hearsay evidence (which is clearly NOT the current position of the courts) or archives should be admissible as evidence.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  3. Not so public by geniusj · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The comment may be public, but clearly his identity isn't, or they'd know it.

    1. Re:Not so public by Barefoot+Monkey · · Score: 4, Informative

      His identity is Malcolm Harris, apparently. That's not the problem. It seems they want to use tweets that he made and later deleted as evidence against him, but those tweets don't exist anymore, which is why they're pressuring Twitter to provide them again.

  4. Twitter should be by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Commended for taking this stance. We should loudly complain when companies like Google and Facebook spit on our data rights but similarly warmly thank the companies that try to protect them. So, thanks Twitter, still prefer to use Statusnet on my own server but at least you're trying or your cunning marketing is working on me.
    On a legal note, could it be argued that the user posts messages with a degree of privacy (albeit small) by the understanding they can retract tweets?

    1. Re:Twitter should be by Dunbal · · Score: 2

      No. They can ask nicely that the citizen turn in his recording. But they can't demand anything. Except a search warrant from a judge.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.