Slashdot Mirror
Twitter Hands Over Messages At Heart of Occupy Case
another random user sends this excerpt from a BBC report:
"Legal pressure has forced Twitter to hand over messages sent by an Occupy Wall Street protester. Twitter spent months resisting the call to release the messages, saying to do so would undermine privacy laws. The Manhattan district attorney's office wanted the tweets to help its case against protester Malcolm Harris. It believes the messages undermine Mr. Harris' claim that New York police led protesters on to the Brooklyn Bridge to make it easier to arrest them. It claims the messages will show Mr. Harris was aware of police orders that he then disregarded."
This isn't like the way Yahoo responded to the Chinese government -- Twitter didn't hand over the documents immediately. They tried to defend their case and ultimately lost.
If you want to chastize American companies for selling out their users to the authorities, you've picked the wrong target.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
The data will remain uninspected until after an appeal by the defendant. Not that I think the appeal will work mind you, but I feel this needs to be said, since the headline is misleading and makes it sound like the NYPD are tearing through the turned over twitters as we speak. This is not the case: twitter was forced to turn over the requested data to the court by today, or face stupidly high fines and a few contempt of court charges. It's actually rather interesting: the Government is pretty used to Corporations lining up to give them all the data they ask for. These same companies steal millions from the public, and get a slap on the wrist. Then when somebody doesn't play ball, suddenly this corporation is obviously deserving of crippling fines!
"Legal pressure has forced Twitter to handed over messages sent by an Occupy Wall Street protester."
Where are the editors...
You must be new here.
The editors, I mean...
Editors are the 1%, living off the revenue from the traffic generated by our typing, while doing no useful labor on their own.
DOWN WITH THE SYSTEM!
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Correcting grammar to avoid confusion or unnecessary arguments is anathema to everything which /. holds dear.
Are you arguing that ignorance of the law... errr... technology is an excuse?
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
I'm as much a fan of privacy as anyone else on Slashdot, but this is different.
There's no expectation of privacy on a twitter message nor should there be. Further, this is evidence of a crime. No, it's not a serious crime (murder etc), but if the claim made by the prosecution is shown to be valid then it is a crime. The tweets will probably do that. If they exonerated him he would present them himself I'd wager, so in all likelihood they do not.
You're missing the point of what people mean when they say "if you have nothing to hide...". They're not saying we need to stop legitimate, specific, limited, manually approved warrants from being executed with the aim of finding the truth of a legal matter. Instead, we need to stop illegitimate, broad-sweeping, unlimited, automatically approved acquisition of data from people who are not (as this guy is) under genuine suspicion of committing crimes.
A very important difference.
If you have a problem with the crimes, that's different. Totally different. Immoral crimes exist and one of the ways to change them is to break them. This guy obviously has principles and, you know what, good on him. The problem is, you should be prepared to be punished for civil disobediance no matter how legitimate (nobody who goes into this kind of thing should expect a trouble free ride) and you certainly shouldn't co-op the cause of legitimate privacy concerns to protect yourself when you do.
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Freedom of speech isn't at issue. Nobody is claiming Harris said something bad and should be prosecuted for saying it.
Someone is claiming that Harris publicly said something that is evidence that other claims he is making are false. Harris has a right to privacy. The prosecution has a right to search for evidence. These are the kinds of conflicts the courts are supposed to be deciding. Generally if the prosecution can show specific enough cause for their belief that the evidence exists they will be given permission for the search which seems a pretty fair balance to me.
The article didn't go into details about why the prosecutor thinks the evidence is there in this case, so I don't have an opinion on this particular decision.
A something happened that to a group that I believed in. There must be some dark reasoning behind it. But if the same thing happened to a group I hated they deserved it.
for example...
"Legal pressure has forced Twitter to handed over messages sent by an Tea Party protester. Twitter spent months resisting the call to release the messages, saying to do so would undermine privacy laws. The DC district attorney's office wanted the tweets to help its case against protester Joe Redeck. It believes the messages undermine Mr. Redeck' claim that DC police led protesters on to the Washington Monument to make it easier to arrest them. It claims the messages will show Mr. Redeck was aware of police orders that he then disregarded."
How dare tweeter hold onto an avoid hinder the investigation against Joe Redeck!!!
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
But this isn't just the tweets.
It's all the data Twitter holds on the user. Location data. Friends who follow, association or links with others etc.
To portray this as only revealing the public tweets is wrong. I'm not sure if that's deliberate or intentional, but it's a misstatement of fact.
The WP article as light as it is on details makes clear that Harris was most concerned about user information, not the public tweets.
Actually, it's different but in a completely different way than you suggest. What actually happened was the government demanded this guy's personal info, Twitter informed the guy the government was trying to get it, and the guy then moved to quash.
The Judge then ruled that the guy has no interest in his own data, since it's on Twitter's servers and he gave them a license, and therefore he has no standing to file a motion to protect his own information.
The judge then said Twitter had to hand over the information, since they had no reason to protect him. Twitter and this guy appealed the decision, since it's obviously kind of boneheaded that a judge would say "You don't have a right to prevent us from asking for your information if someone else has it." That appeal is pending.
The judge then sent Twitter a letter, asking why he shouldn't find them in contempt for not turning over the information. Twitter pointed to the pending appeal, and he essentially said "I don't care about your appeal, I'm the judge here, which means I'm right, you're wrong. Turn it over or face sanctions."
So while I agree with you that people performing civil disobedience should be prepared to face the consequences for it, this case isn't even at that point yet. This is all over the government completely abusing due process and trying to prevent the guy from even having a say in the investigation!
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them