Twitter sides with Occupy protester in NY court battle over tweet history

Source: The Guardian

Twitter has moved to quash a court order issued by the New York district attorney which would require it to hand over the tweets of a writer and Occupy Wall Street protester arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge last October.

In a motion filed in the criminal court in New York on Monday Twitter argued that it should not be forced to give the prosecutor three months worth of tweets by Malcolm Harris, who was arrested on the bridge along with 700 other activists.

Harris had issued his own motion in a bid to quash the subpoena in February, contending that there was "no justification" for New York prosecutors to seek "such a broad swath of electronic data". The motion was rejected by Judge Matthew A Sciarrino Jr on 20 April, in an order ruling that Harris did not have the legal standing to challenge the subpoena because Twitter owned the rights to his tweets.

Twitter filed a ten-page memorandum against Sciarrino's order on Monday, writing that its terms of service "make absolutely clear that its users own their content", giving users the right to move to quash subpoenas themselves.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/may/08/twitter-occupy-new-york-court