Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Twitter turns over Occupy tweets to court
Do you have freedom to hide your speech? It appears not so far but what SCOTUS might decide could well be different
An interesting question that flows from this episode is what happens when you "delete" an online comment? Why is it not in fact deleted? Why is it retained on the servers of the hosting company? There have been efforts in Congress to force such retention but none have succeeded. Is it another Obama decree?
Earlier today, Twitter gave in to a New York court subpoena requiring it to turn over more than three month’s worth of tweets posted by user Malcolm Harris, 23, who was arrested last September during an Occupy Wall Street Protest. The surrender of the tweets, which Harris deleted from his public profile, follows a months-long battled by Twitter to keep the information from landing in the hands of prosecutors.
The surrender of the tweets was the result of presiding New York State Supreme Court Judge Matthew Sciarrino’s threat to hold the company in contempt and impose a fine on Twitter if the tweets were not handed over by today.
To assess the amount of the fine, Sciarrino demanded that Twitter disclose its earnings statements from the past two quarters — financial data that Twitter, as a privately-held company, does not want to be made public by the court.
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11 comments:
The OWS svumballs the favorite of the demacRAT party
Twitter, like Facebook and YouTube, are basically public forums, and legally speaking, there is no expectation of privacy in a public place.
If stupidity and a complete lack of commonsense were crimes, the majority of those who use these sites would be in prison.
The TEA PARTY svumballs the favorite of the reTHUGlican party.
Ah Bird and 4:21 AM. Such an exquisite intellectual statement. And the humorous response! I nearly smiled.
As for expectation of privacy on social media, 3:29 AM is on the mark.
If you don't want a particular individual or group to see your opinion/activity/idiocy - don't post it.
To be really sure it isn't published, make sure nobody else is around when you say or do it. There's always someone in a group with a camera to record what you say or do and post it.
Short take: we have no privacy, even when it should be expected we do.
Additional comment: In regards Kate's topless pic flap and her expectation of privacy - paparazzi are about one step above drug dealers and white slavers on the scumbag scale. Those who purchased and published the pictures are in that same group.
Dean,
With Bird, ya gotta fight stupid with stupid. Everything else does not seem to work.
11:20 AM
Yeah, you're right. I shouldn't even have tried.
Who hasn't said something outloud that you wished you could take back. The problem is once you've put it out there, you can't. Online its exactly the same. For people to think otherwise is foolish.
The TEA PARTY broke no laws but the occupiers have
"The TEA PARTY broke no laws but the occupiers have"
Yeah, so? Activists throughout history broke laws for their cause. You can start with a fellow 2000 years ago named JESUS CHRIST, a liberal.
Actually there are some pretty big issues at stake here...
The right against self-incrimination and the protection of due process amongst others.
Is a Tweet akin to speech? If these statements had been made aloud, they would be gone. The State could not force Harris to repeat those statements (with some exceptions). Nor could they get access to his private materials without a search warrant. A mere subpoena to produce would not be sufficient.
But because that speech was written, electronic and - like basically all electronic communications nowadays - permanently recorded on back-up drives, the State can get full transcripts of that speech by hitting Twitter with a subpoena. They do not have to question the accused, or witnesses, or get a search warrant.
Harris may well be convicted based on his own speech.
Remember this next time you want to post something online.
Although I do not want to go down the slippery slope of what is speech and what is not, his case seem to hinge on the defendants attempt to remove tweets for the specific purpose of destroying evidence of his actions. (like the Clinton aid shredding documents).
If this was the case then the court has every right to ask for those deleted messages. I am at least glad they got a court order and didn’t just get a presidential decree.
That being said the simple solution is not to post stupid and incriminating statements on social sites. Like smoking, by now the average inelegant person knows the effects and should not post something they would not want their employer of the cops to read!
But again, the OWS group is not known for their intelligence!
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