Twitter Forced To Hand Over Occupy Protestor's Info

from the privacy? dept

We recently wrote about Twitter standing up for a user, Malcolm Harris, who had participated in the Occupy Wall St. protests, and whose info was sought by the government under a 2703(d) order (which has fewer protections than an ordinary warrant). Twitter told Harris about the order, and Harris sought to have it blocked — but the court claimed he had no standing to do so, as it was just an issue between the government and Twitter. Twitter pushed back, noting that individuals control the content of their own account, so Harris should have standing. Unfortunately, a NYC judge has told Twitter to give up Harris’ info, though it did say that the government would need to get a warrant for the last day’s worth of info, due to a technicality on timing. The court basically punts on the larger issues, focusing on the fact that most of the information requested, Harris’ tweets, are already public, and thus there’s little to be concerned about. Of course, if that’s the case, it’s unclear why the government needs to request info from Twitter in the first place…

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Companies: twitter

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Comments on “Twitter Forced To Hand Over Occupy Protestor's Info”

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19 Comments
Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: DECISION AND ORDER

Er, it’s also embedded in the post where you can download it…

Not on my platform.

I browse without javascript. And flash isn’t even installed at all?have to switch to a different machine to watch C-SPAN.

I suppose I’m in a minority here. But the inconvenience is a whole lot less than the inconvenience of getting pwnd.

ComputerAddict (profile) says:

“…focusing on the fact that most of the information requested, Harris’ tweets, are already public…”

I like that… “Most” … Most of the information on my driver’s license is “public” you can find my name / address in the phone book, you can find my photo / eye color / etc on facebook profile photo which is public… so since 90% of the information is public why should they need a warrant to get Drivers license # and D.O.B. Or if you have an older license from NH they used to put SSN on there (Clarification, I am not from NH, but had friends that had these licenses, you could request that they not put it on there, but had to proactively say so).

But hey “Most” of that information is public so its okay to just hand out.

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