Twitter fights New York Court
Prosecutors in New York have filed a subpoena with twitter to obtain the twitter history for an Occupy protesters named Malcolm Harris. Harris participated in an occupy protest that blocked the Brooklyn Bridge in October and is being prosecuted for disorderly conduct. As part of that prosecution, the District Attorney's Office that is prosecuting the case filed a subpoena with twitter to obtain Harris' twitter history over a few months surrounding the protest.
Harris found out about the subpoena from twitter and tried to stop it on his own, but the judge prosecuting the case blocked Harris saying he didn't have to legal grounds to fight a third-party subpoena. The judge likened Harris to account holder at a bank that doesn't have the legal right to fight a subpoena seeking account details filed against the bank.
Luckily for Harris, twitter is stepping up and fighting subpoena on his behalf. Twitter file a motion in New York state court yesterday asking the judge to block subpoena that would force it to turn over user account data. The prosecutors in the case hit twitter with a 2703 order that allows access to some types of user data without a warrant under the Stored Communications Act.
Twitter is arguing that the data belongs to Harris under twitter's terms of service and being forced to hand over that data would violate those terms of service and the SCA. Twitter is also arguing that handing over the data would violate the fourth amendment protections against search without a warrant. The last argument is that twitter is in California and prosecutors in New York would need to make a case with a California court to obtain twitter data. According to Forbes, twitter actually told Harris the court was seeking his data.
The ACLU is supporting twitter with one of its staff attorneys Aden Fine writing, "This is a big deal. Law enforcement agencies—both the federal government and state and city entities—are becoming increasingly aggressive in their attempts to obtain information about what people are doing on the Internet. And while the individual Internet users can try to defend their rights in the rare circumstances in which they find out about the requests before their information is turned over, that may not be enough. Indeed, even though Twitter provided notice to the Twitter user in this particular case, and even though he was able to get an attorney to file a motion seeking to quash the subpoena, the court found that the Twitter user did not have legal “standing” to challenge the D.A.’s subpoena."
The ACLU also sent the New York Court overseeing the case a memorandum in support of twitter's motion. That document can be viewed here. Whether or not what the ACLU thinks will have any bearing on the case remains to be seen.
via dailytech.com
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