Judge Rules that Tweets are Permissible in Court

On Monday, a New York judge made a ruling that warrants were not needed to subpoena a Twitter account since the information is shared publicly through a third-party service. Occupy Wall Street protestor Malcolm Harris found out about his account being subpoenaed from Twitter. In response to the move, he tried to stave off the subpoena by claiming the unorthodox way in which it was delivered; via fax to the company’s San Francisco HQ. The case in question is for an Occupy Wall Street mass protest held last year on the Brooklyn Bridge and if found guilty, Harris would be facing up to 15 days in prison; he pleaded not guilty to the charge.

Judge Matthew Sciarrino Jr said, “New York courts have yet to specifically address whether a criminal defendant has standing to quash a subpoena issued to a third-party online social networking service seeking to obtain the defendant’s user information and postings. Nonetheless, an analogy may be drawn to the bank record cases where courts have consistently held than an individual has no right to challenge a subpoena issued against a third-party bank. Twitter’s license to use the defendant’s tweets means that the tweets the defendant posted were not his.”

With the above mentioned explanation the judge proceeded to deny Harris’ bid to quash the subpoena with a witty statement (not to Malcolm Harris probably) that included several Twitter-related symbols that read, “The New York County District Attorney’s Office seeks to obtain the #Twitter records of @destructuremal using a #subpoena. The defendant is alleged to have participated in a #OWS protest march on October 1, 2011. The defendant, Malcolm Harris, along with several hundred other protesters, were charged with Disorderly Conduct after allegedly marching on to the roadway of the Brooklyn Bridge. The defendant moved to #quash that subpoena. That motion is #denied.”

Although the Judge proved to be creative in his assigning of judgement and punishment, the case clearly states that until something changes with regards to ownership of internet or intellectual property, information that we upload online via basically any service or application can be used against us. Malcolm Harris learnt this bitter lesson, the hard way even though he will only be spending 15 days in prison.

Pradeep Chandrasekaran
Categories: Web
Tags: Legal, Twitter