"Your Honor, someone stole my password. I never posted any of those things."

OK, Mr. Prosecutor...prove he did.

Ok, first off, there's a bit of a misconception here. The state's attorney did file a subpoena for the records, so this isn't just a straight up seizure with no judicial review. Defendant moved to quash the subpoena, and the judge denied his motion, saying that he lacked standing to challenge the subpoena. Reuters has a better article, which explains that the judge ruled that Twitter owned the tweets because they'd been licensed to reproduce them.

Buzzfeed snagged the opinion, but didn't reproduce it in full, but from what I can tell, the judge ruled that unlike private emails, SMS messages, or other modern communications that have been granted 4th amendment protections, this guy didn't have a reasonable expectation of privacy over the content of his messages, and therefore, couldn't step in to stop the gov't from accessing the records of a third party. Basically, the argument goes, there are some records that are kept by a third party that you have a legitimate interest in protecting, even though they're not your records, per se. This judge ruled that you don't have an interest in protecting a public tweet.

FTFA: A Manhattan judge has ordered Twitter to turn over three months of postings by an Occupy Wall Street protester arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge in October.
...
Sciarrino ordered that relevant tweets be turned over to Manhattan prosecutors, who want to use them at trial to show that the protesters knew they were not allowed to march on the bridge roadway - an alleged violation for which some 700 protesters were charged with disorderly conduct.

Now, this is the part that baffles me. The judge didn't actually get to the argument about whether the request was overbroad or reasonably likely to turn up admissible evidence, because he just said that the guy who DID fight the subpoena didn't have the capability to object. Twitter hasn't done anything to set up a fight over the relevance of the subpoena, but they have standing to make a fight out of it if they wish. There's certainly an argument that three months of tweets are not relevant to one day's activities.

OgreMagi: ArkAngel: Actual Farking: ArkAngel: Actual Farking: ArkAngel: Um... no. Illinois's law just got struck down. You can now legally record cops in public everywhere in the country. Whether they try and stop you is up to the stupidity and assholishness of the individual cops, but it is legal. And if they stop you, it's lawsuit time

Newsflash, slick. Different states have different laws.

Um...no. In all states, if you are in public, you have a right to record anyone, including the police. Illinois was the last state to ban it and their law just got struck down.

Illinois' law was one of the strictest, but most other states and the federal government still have wiretapping laws that are being interpreted in varying ways.

Every state allows public recording. In order to violate wiretapping statutes, you must have a reasonable expectation of privacy (i.e. in your home, bathroom, changing room)

Some states (I'm looking at you Illinois) have declared the activities of the police in public, while on the job, is a private matter and you can not record them. I'm wating for the courts to hand them a major biatch slapping over this. Here in California, it's a bit more vague. Supposedly, we can record the police, but it's not exactly clear and there is good chance a DA will side with the police and charge you with wiretapping based on the state law that both parties must agree to a recording. The law was meant to apply to telephone conversations, but LEOs love to twist laws to cover their asses.

Illinois's wiretapping law was just struck down. Link

California law also requires a reasonable expectation of privacy, which doesn't occur in public places.

Anyone that 'Tweets' or followers other inane fools on Twitter - deserves a life of public scorn and ridicule.

ArkAngel: OgreMagi: ArkAngel: Actual Farking: ArkAngel: Actual Farking: ArkAngel: Um... no. Illinois's law just got struck down. You can now legally record cops in public everywhere in the country. Whether they try and stop you is up to the stupidity and assholishness of the individual cops, but it is legal. And if they stop you, it's lawsuit time

Newsflash, slick. Different states have different laws.

Um...no. In all states, if you are in public, you have a right to record anyone, including the police. Illinois was the last state to ban it and their law just got struck down.

Illinois' law was one of the strictest, but most other states and the federal government still have wiretapping laws that are being interpreted in varying ways.

Every state allows public recording. In order to violate wiretapping statutes, you must have a reasonable expectation of privacy (i.e. in your home, bathroom, changing room)

Some states (I'm looking at you Illinois) have declared the activities of the police in public, while on the job, is a private matter and you can not record them. I'm wating for the courts to hand them a major biatch slapping over this. Here in California, it's a bit more vague. Supposedly, we can record the police, but it's not exactly clear and there is good chance a DA will side with the police and charge you with wiretapping based on the state law that both parties must agree to a recording. The law was meant to apply to telephone conversations, but LEOs love to twist laws to cover their asses.

Illinois's wiretapping law was just struck down. Link

California law also requires a reasonable expectation of privacy, which doesn't occur in public places.

That was the expected outcome for Illinois's wiretape law. Good.

LEOs have a funny definition of "reasonable expectation of privacy". Seems they think issuing a beat-down on some poor schmuck is a private matter to them.

Using somebody else's private property for free for your convenience then claiming ownership of said property. #firstworld problems

The_Six_Fingered_Man: barefoot in the head: The_Six_Fingered_Man: barefoot in the head: Actual Farking: Weaver95: so the courts are ok with me compiling a database of everything the cops and court officers say or tweet about...?

I don't think any court has a problem with anyone keeping track of anyone else's public statements or tweets. I'm pretty sure people do this all the time anyway. Save your rage for the real privacy violations.

Why do public records require a subpoena?

In this case, because the defendant had deleted them. Therefore, the subpoena was needed to get Twitter to go into their archives and compile them.

Then they are not public, and access should not be granted.

They were, however, public at one time.

This is akin to putting up flyers around town, then deciding to lock them away in a safety deposit box to which you do not have the key.

The materials still exist, but they are not under your control. They were once public, but are now out of the public eye.

In short, I don't know how I feel about this.

I liken Twitter to having your own live segment on a local community TV channel. Once it's been broadcast to the public (which you do when using Twitter), anything you said over the air is no longer private, and thus, you cannot claim a right to privacy about something you broadcast to the public.

That ^

poisonpill: Isn't this slightly more complicated than shouting out a window?

It's not that he tweeted, it's that he deleted said tweet and now the judge wants Twitter to reproduce it. So it almost *is* like a private email that a judge wants revealed. Which is fine with a warrant.

I mean I totally agree a tweet is completely public. But how does that make it mandatory that Twitter overturns the tweets? Doesn't it still require a court order? Isn't the court ordering it?

I guess my beef is with the analogy, as with most, it oversimplifies things.

It's like if I post a Yard Sale sign on some telephone poles, then take them down after the yard sale. They're not public messages anymore.

phyrkrakr: Now, this is the part that baffles me. The judge didn't actually get to the argument about whether the request was overbroad or reasonably likely to turn up admissible evidence, because he just said that the guy who DID fight the subpoena didn't have the capability to object. Twitter hasn't done anything to set up a fight over the relevance of the subpoena, but they have standing to make a fight out of it if t ...

If they're trying to prove that protesters knew ahead of time they were not allowed to do something, which the article seems to indicate, I can understand wanting records from prior to the event itself. Just because the action happened on one day doesn't mean it was not planned in advance.

So if I wrote an article about your yard sale you could force me to remove said article because you had taken down your signs afterwards?

OriginalGamer: So if I wrote an article about your yard sale you could force me to remove said article because you had taken down your signs afterwards?

No, but I don't have to give you one of the signs, or recreate one if they don't exist anymore, to help you write the article.

Loreweaver: I liken Twitter to having your own live segment on a local community TV channel. Once it's been broadcast to the public (which you do when using Twitter), anything you said over the air is no longer private, and thus, you cannot claim a right to privacy about something you broadcast to the public.

But this situation is like the broadcast station having a tape of your live segment and the judge is ordering that the station turn over a copy of the tape.

Maybe it's no so much people have an expectation of privacy, but more of an expectation of obscurity. They know what they say can be heard by those around them, they just don't expect it to go viral or be immortalized.

I've gotta side with the judge on this one. If one screams out a window and a neighbor hears it, then the neighbor can be called as a witness to testify about what was screamed.
If one sends a twitter message , then the archive acts must like the witness. It remembers was was publicly stated and can provide that information to the court.
In both cases, a public declaration was made. The only difference is that a twitter message can be deleted but the scream cannot be un-screamed. Well, that and the twitter archive is a lot more reliable than the neighbor witness.

stonicus: Maybe it's no so much people have an expectation of privacy, but more of an expectation of obscurity. They know what they say can be heard by those around them, they just don't expect it to go viral or be immortalized.

Which is something valuable to think about in the various Right To Privacy laws being mooted now... but isn't currently codified or part of law anywhere in the US, so it has nothing to do with this situation.

ArkAngel: California

California is a two-party consent state for audio. Video does not fall under any wiretapping laws except Illinois' struck down one. They specifically cannot because of the sheer number of no-audio security cameras out there. Some states do allow private property owners to ban someone who attempts to videotape on premises without consent, or allow anyone in the video to have an automatic "performance right" to proceeds from the taping, unless signed away.

kindms: This wasn't about keeping tweets private

The police were asking for like 6 months of twitter activity for a case that took place in a single day event in NYC. They weren't fighting about the tweets, they were fighting about the IP logs, the private conversation tweets, the location data etc etc

So framing this as they were just asking for tweets is BS. They wanted 6 months of data on everything this guy did, said, logged on, spoke to etc on twitter.

So when the police are investigating a potential "disturbing the peace" charge that took place on a single day or 2 in NYC they can have 6 months of location data, ip logs, private conversations etc etc

Other than being completely hypothetical (and wrong in at least one way: it's 3 months, not 6), the signal to noise ratio of that kind of investigation would be so low it'd be pointless. For every ten people who excitedly promise they'll be there, you're always lucky if even one shows up. Twitter can't even get your GPS location unless you turn that feature on (or post it), and if you do, it's not secret at all, it's a public part of the tweet. What good would it even do? They aren't the NSA, correlating activities of millions of associates, they already know he was there and just want evidence that he knew he wasn't supposed to be so they can fine him.

But seriously, I want some of what you're smoking.