NY Judge ruled 'Public' Tweets are subject to D.A.'s subpoena.
Twitter Inc. must produce tweets and user information of an Occupy Wall Street protester, a judge has ruled, discounting objections from the social media website in a case of first impression.
"The Constitution gives you the right to post, but as numerous people have learned, there are still consequences for your public posts. What you give to the public belongs to the public. What you keep to yourself belongs only to you," Criminal Court Judge Matthew Sciarrino Jr. (See Profile), sitting in Manhattan, wrote in People v. Harris, 2011NY080152.
Prosecutors expect to use the material to counter an anticipated defense argument that police intentionally led marchers onto a non-pedestrian part of the bridge, where they were arrested. Harris knew the police instructions not to block traffic but still did so, prosecutors argued in support of the subpoena.
Sciarrino's latest ruling follows an April 20 decision blocking Harris' own attempts to quash the subpoena. There, the judge held Harris lacked standing, as Harris had no proprietary interest in his account's user information (NYLJ, April 23).
Saying he "partially based" his April ruling on Twitter's terms of service at the time, Sciarrino noted that on May 17 Twitter included a "newly added portion" of the terms stating, "You Retain Your Right to Any Content You Submit, Post or Display on or Through the Service."
Twitter filed court papers on May 7 seeking to quash the subpoena.
Civil liberties groups also filed as amicus curiae in support of Harris, calling the April 20 decision contrary to case law and in violation of Harris' First and Fourth amendment rights.
The amicus brief—filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, New York Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Citizen—added that disclosure of an individual's location when saying something, how long it takes to say something or what tools they choose to use for communication "are private, intimate details about individuals' communications and communication habits. None of this information is the government's business, and the D.A. cannot simply obtain it without first satisfying constitutional scrutiny."
Sciarrino again rejected the constitutional claims.
"If you post a tweet, just like if you scream it out the window, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. There is no proprietary interest in your tweets, which you have now gifted to the world," the judge said, pointing out that Twitter agreed in 2010 to supply the Library of Congress with every tweet since the site's start.
The judge emphasized that the public postings in question were different from private e-mails, direct messages, chats or other ways to have a private conversation via the Internet.
"Those private dialogues would require a warrant based on probable cause in order to access the relevant information," he observed.
Sciarrino likened the relevance of the prosecution's request to a case where a passerby overheard a man yell 'I'm sorry I hit you, please come back upstairs.'"
At trial, that passerby could be compelled to testify what the man said.
"Well today, the street is an online, information superhighway, and the witnesses can be the third party providers like Twitter, Facebook, Instragram, Pinterest, or the next hot social media application," said Sciarrino.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/07/twitter-ordered-to-hand-over-occupy-protesters-tweets/1
http://www.newyorklawjournal.com/PubArticleNY.jsp?id=1202561602402&Judge_Finds_No_Constitutional_Violation_in_Producing_Tweets&slreturn=1
Twitter transparency report 1/1/12 - 6/1/12
This initial Twitter Transparency Report includes data from January 1, 2012 through June 30, 2012. We'll be updating this information twice a year.
This data includes government requests we’ve received for user account information, typically in connection with criminal investigations or cases.
We notify affected users of requests for their account info unless we’re prohibited by law.
More information is available in our Guidelines for Law Enforcement.
To minimize potential risk to ongoing investigations, we're not including specific numbers for countries where we've received fewer than 10 requests; instead you’ll see '<10' in the relevant cells.
Same holds true for number of 'Users/Accounts specified' – to minimize potential risk to our users, we’re not including specific numbers where fewer than 10 'Users/Accounts specified' are affected; instead you’ll see ‘<10’ in the relevant cells.
'Users/Accounts Specified' includes the accounts identified in government requests we’ve received, and may include the same account being requested more than once or requests for accounts that do not exist or were misidentified.
We may not comply with every request for a variety of reasons. For example:
We do not comply with requests that fail to identify a Twitter user account.
We may seek to narrow requests that are overly broad.
In other cases, users may have challenged the requests after we've notified them.
This data includes formal government requests we've received to remove or withhold content on Twitter. Governments generally make removal requests for content that may be illegal in their respective jurisdictions. For example, a government agency may obtain a court order requiring the removal of defamatory statements or law enforcement may request us to remove prohibited content.
The data does not include reports of Rules violations submitted through our Help Center, informal requests submitted via email, or copyright-related requests.
Each request may identify multiple items to be removed.
For example, a single request may ask us to remove individual Tweets or an entire user account.
'Users/Accounts Specified' includes the number of accounts identified in the government requests we’ve received.
To minimize potential risk to our users, we’re not including specific numbers where fewer than 10 'Users/Accounts specified' are affected; instead you’ll see ‘<10’ in the relevant cells.
We may not comply with every request for a variety of reasons. For example:
We do not comply with requests that fail to identify content on Twitter.
Twitter app. posts pictures of people's debit/credit cards.
If you've found your way to this site, you're probably savvy enough to know that it's a very, very poor idea to snap cell phone pics of your debit card and post them to the public photo-sharing service Instagram. We would have thought that would be common sense for anyone intelligent enough to own both money and a functioning smartphone. We were wrong. You see, the NeedADebitCard Twitter bot retweets photos that people post publicly online of their credit and debit cards, often with the numbers in full view. It always seems to have fresh material, but those featured do often take their photos down. The rest remain, with names and numbers in full view.
"Please quit posting pictures of your debit cards, people," is the feed's Twitter profile and its simple plea. Offenders come from all over the world, but skew young. Young enough to just be obtaining their first debit cards, clearly.
There's not a lot that criminals can do without the CVV card on the back, or the computer chip embedded in many foreign cards. But that doesn't make posting images of your cards online is at all safe, or even close to being a good idea. Those who have breached themselves should probably get new cards. And not snap pictures of them, this time.
https://twitter.com/#!/NeedADebitCard
'Need A Debit Card' Twitter account proves infinite stupidity of humans.
Tweeting out photos of the front of your debit card with none of the numbers blacked out.
This idiotic practice is being highlighted on a new Twitter account called @NeedADebitCard, which is actively retweeting the posts of the unfortunate dullards who tweet out photos of their unobscured debit cards. @NeedADebitCard's Twitter bio is also its mission statement and -- perhaps! -- the best advice you'll hear all week: "Please quit posting pictures of your debit cards, people."
@NeedADebitCard's feed is populated by posts like this (photos not included because, come on):
- "Gave the birthday girl my credit card her for bday, go nuts bbgirl! [PHOTO OF DEBIT CARD]"
- "NO MORE WAITING IN LINE WHEN I DON'T HAVE MY DEBIT CARD [PHOTO OF DEBIT CARD]"
- "Just found my credit card :) Haha [MIND-BLOWINGLY READABLE PHOTO OF DEBIT CARD]"
The @NeedADebitCard Twitter sounds cruel, but it's also something of a public service: If you don't think thieves are already trawling Twitter and other social networks for this information, you're wrong. You shouldn't publicly share pictures of your debit cards on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, just like you shouldn't publicly share when you are going to be away from your home on vacation (as the site PleaseRobMe.com made clear).
So, if you have the urge to create and post a tweet that contains a photograph of your debit card, my advice to you is to take a breath, eat a Twizzler and tweet something that would be less cataclysmically stupid to make public. Unlike a tweet with your credit card information in plain view, there is very little that most thieves can do with an Instagram photo of your lunch meat that could directly lead to your bankruptcy and financial ruin.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/03/need-a-debit-card-twitter_n_1645892.html