Anti-Wall Street protester's Twitter posts subpoenaed by NYC prosecutors

As of right now NYC prosecutors have asked Twitter to hand over all tweets spanning a 3 month period, emails, and other information from a Twitter user and OWS protester Malcolm Harris. Malcolm was one of the protesters among the 700 arrested during the Brooklyn bridge incident. But Malcolm, nor his lawyer, know what it is exactly NYC prosecutors are looking for but he suspects it's from that day on the bridge.

Anti-Wall Street protester's Twitter posts subpoenaed | Reuters

(Reuters) - Prosecutors have subpoenaed the Twitter records of an Occupy Wall Street protester who was arrested in October during a mass protest on the Brooklyn Bridge.

The January 26 subpoena from the Manhattan District Attorney's Office seeks "user information, including email address," along with three months' worth of tweets from @destructuremal, the Twitter handle for Malcolm Harris.

Harris, 23, a freelance writer and editor who lives in the New York borough of Brooklyn, said Tuesday that Twitter sent a copy of the subpoena to him on Monday. He posted it -- where else? -- on Twitter.

Shockingly Twitter is currently refusing to comply with the NYC prosecutors. This surprises me because Twitter announced recently they will work with Gov'ts to help censor tweets. So I figured Twitter would be all about handing over any and all information about Mr. Harris.

Good on you Twitter. Keep up the good fight, and fix that censorship thing.

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On a side note, how hard could it possibly be for them see and read his tweets? I don't use Twitter, I've been to the site and checked it out but I don't follow it, anyway, can't anyone read anyone's tweets or are they private unless you're a follower?

I'm unsure exactly how his Twitter stuff has anything to do with the case. My guess is that they're just trying to grab whatever they can so that they can stack more charges onto him for making them work.

But, yes, my understanding of having used Twitter is that you can just read people's tweets most of the time. Could be that anything they found would be inadmissible, though, because they didn't go through proper channels.

reply to post by AnIntellectualRedneck


So anyone can read anyone's tweets, I guess. Maybe the problem is they wanna read the tweets from Sept/Oct time period but are unable because Twitter might not allow users to backlog tweets like that. Or, like you say, they can only use the tweets in court if they officially get them from Twitter. That would be interesting.

Provided he doesn't have his account set to private where only his followers can read his Tweets. If it's set to that, then they would need to subpoena him.