吃瓜直播

This morning, faced with the threat of criminal and civil contempt, Twitter turned over information about Occupy Wall Street protester Malcolm Harris to a New York criminal court judge. This development follows Twitter鈥檚 months-long effort to challenge the Manhattan District Attorney Office鈥檚 subpoena for Harris鈥檚 information, which was issued as part of the D.A.鈥檚 disorderly conduct prosecution of Harris stemming from his participation at an Occupy event last fall.

The D.A.鈥檚 subpoena seeks the content of Harris鈥檚 tweets over a three-and-half month period, which are no longer publicly available, and among other things, his private, never-public IP addresses, which can be used to reveal his locations and movements over this time period. Twitter has admirably challenged the subpoena in an attempt to protect Harris鈥檚 free speech and privacy rights, and the case is now on appeal. On Tuesday, though, Criminal Court Judge Matthew Sciarrino, whose original order upholding the validity of the subpoena is the subject of the appeal, demanded that the company turn over the subpoenaed user information, or else face contempt of court. An attorney for Twitter asked the court today to reconsider its order requiring that the company turn over the information. She decried the 鈥渦nfair Hobson鈥檚 choice鈥� Twitter faced, in which it must either potentially lose its right to appeal or be held in contempt. At the end of the hearing, the judge denied Twitter鈥檚 request, and Twitter was forced to hand over the subpoenaed information.

That Twitter has now handed over the information does not mean the case is over, however. The court agreed to keep the information in a sealed envelope for now, pending further proceedings.

While Twitter鈥檚 loss is disappointing, the bottom line is that Twitter should never have even had to get involved in this case at all鈥攁nd it wouldn鈥檛 have, if the court hadn鈥檛 ruled that Harris to protect his own constitutional rights. The court wrongly ruled that Harris forfeited those rights by using a third-party Internet service (i.e., Twitter). As we explained in our friend-of-the-court brief supporting Twitter鈥檚 appeal, that ruling is contradicted by decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court and countless courts around the country, which make clear that individuals whose constitutional rights are implicated by government requests to third parties have standing to challenge those requests.

As my colleague 吃瓜直播 staff attorney Aden Fine stated, this morning鈥檚 events show 鈥渆xactly why individual Internet users like Malcolm Harris need to be given an opportunity to defend their constitutional rights in court when the government asks an Internet service to hand over information about a user鈥檚 activities.鈥� Internet companies just don鈥檛 have the capacity鈥攐r the incentives鈥攖o go to bat against the government each time there is a challenge to one of their user鈥檚 rights.

Twitter currently has a hearing pending in appellate court. Malcolm Harris, for his part, has filed his own separate proceeding to challenge the court鈥檚 orders. Stay tuned to see whether they succeed in establishing that Internet users do in fact have standing to protect their own constitutional rights on the Internet.