Twitter Subpoena Reveals Law Enforcement Monitoring OWS Via Social Media

[Huey P. Long]

Twitter Subpoena Reveals Law Enforcement Monitoring OWS Via Social Media
By CONNOR ADAMS SHEETS
December 27, 2011 7:53 PM EST

Twitter has been subpoenaed for information related to Occupy supporters' accounts, proving that law enforcement agencies have been monitoring OWS supporters' activity on social media. The Suffolk County District Attorney's Office in Massachusetts is fed up with being mocked, ridiculed, and criticized by faceless Tweeters, so it's taking matters into its own hands.

Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Benjamin A. Goldberger sent a subpoena on Dec. 14 to Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco requesting information on a number of accounts and hashtags associated with the Occupy Boston protest movement to assist authorities with an "official criminal investigation."

After receiving the subpoena, Twitter released it to a user listed in the subpoena per company policy, despite the fact that the D.A.'s office requested that "in order to protect the confidentiality and integrity of the ongoing criminal investigation, this office asks that you not disclose the existence of this request to the subscriber."

The user, who calls himself Guido Fawkes, is a popular conspiracy blogger whose Twitter handle is @P0isAn0N. He promptly posted the subpoena on Scribd, and it has since gone viral, casting a spotlight on the explosive issue.

Goldberger's move is just one more step in the lengthy tarring and feathering of the Occupy Wall Street movement's supporters sure to come now that winter has arrived and the media are focused on other matters.

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http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/273273/20111227/twitter-subpoena-reveals-law-enforcement-monitoring-ows.htm



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The Prince of Twitter
Saudi royal AlWaleed bin Talal just bought $300 million worth of everyone's favorite microblogging site. Here's why that might be a good thing.

BY FAISAL J. ABBAS | DECEMBER 28, 2011

When most people want to become involved in Twitter, they open an account. Leave it to Prince AlWaleed bin Talal, the Saudi media mogul who is King Abdullah's nephew, to buy a chunk of the microblogging site. The prince's company announced on Dec. 19 that it was investing $300 million in Twitter, officially bringing the site into the mainstream of the Saudi media scene.


Rightly or wrongly, social media is perceived as a revolutionary tool in Saudi Arabia -- one of the many factors that contributed to the Arab Spring. The association was so strong that a few days following the Egyptian uprising that brought down Hosni Mubarak, a Saudi official had to deny a rumor that the Saudi king had offered Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg $150 billion to buy his social networking site -- a bargain, the thinking went, if it helped him ward off further revolutions. And indeed, sites like Twitter and Facebook are rapidly growing in the kingdom, precisely because they allow voices that otherwise would not have been able to find an outlet to flourish.

For example, the hashtag #AlwaleedTwitter was quickly formed after the news of the prince's investment broke. Saudis commented, asked critical questions, and even poked fun -- imagining what would happen if the purchase of this "strategic stake" meant that the kingdom's religious police (officially known as The Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Promotion of Vice) would now be allowed to rule the Twittersphere.
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http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/12/28/the_prince_of_twitter

[Enthusiast]

1. They hate us for our freedoms.

[Huey P. Long]

2. Secret Subpoena For Twitter User Account Info Allowed to Proceed

Secret Subpoena For Twitter User Account Info Allowed to Proceed
CARL FRANZEN DECEMBER 29, 2011, 4:30 PM
Twitter must comply with a formerly secretive subpoena and hand user account information over to the Boston Police Department as part of a criminal investigation, according to a Massachusetts superior court judge’s ruling in a closed hearing on Thursday, the Boston Globe’s Metrodesk reported.

The ruling from the Suffolk Superior Court judge was a blow to one of the Twitter users named in the subpoena, @p0isAn0N, aka Guido Fawkes, and his lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union in Massachusetts, who filed a motion to overturn the subpoena originally served by the Suffolk District Attorney on December 14.

In the subpoena, the Suffolk DA requests that Twitter hand over all of @p0isAn0N’s account information and the account information of other users no later than December 28 as part of an unspecified criminal investigation by the Boston Police Department. Specifically, the subpoena requests “all available subscriber information, for the account or accounts associated with the following information, including IP address logs for account creation and for the period December 8, 2011 to December 13, 2011: Guido Fawkes, @p0isAn0N, @OccupyBoston, #BostonPD, #d0xcak3.”
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http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/12/secret-subpoena-for-twitter-user-account-info-allowed-to-proceed.php


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Secret subpoena aimed at Twitter user not so secret anymore
by Josh Lowensohn December 29, 2011 10:10 AM PST

Massachusetts authorities apparently thought that asking nicely would suffice to keep secret their subpoena for information on a Twitter user involved with Occupy Wall Street. They thought wrong.
So when the Suffolk County District Attorney's office sent its request to Twitter, its subpoena ended up in the inbox of the DA's target, following a decision by Twitter to share it as part of its privacy policy.

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In a statement issued alongside the posting of the subpoena, @p0isAn0N wrote: "subpoenas will not shake me. So do whatever you think you can to try and stop Anonymous, but you will learn fast. One of us is not nearly as harsh as all of us. You cannot arrest an idea. You cannot subpoena a hashtag."
It remains unclear whether Twitter provided the Suffolk D.A.'s office with the IP addresses from the accounts. The company, however, has done that in the past, such as last month when it complied with a grand jury probe by the Department of Justice seeking information about account owners allegedly tied to the creation and distribution of documents shared on Wikileaks.
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http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57349732-83/secret-subpoena-aimed-at-twitter-user-not-so-secret-anymore/