Thoughts may be ephemeral, but a tweet, apparently, is forever. 
 
 A Criminal Court judge in Manhattan ruled on Monday that Twitter must turn over to prosecutors messages sent by a Brooklyn writer during the Occupy Wall Street protests last fall. In doing so, the judge, Matthew A. Sciarrino Jr., indicated that although private speech was protected, the same did not apply to public comments on Twitter. 
 
 “The Constitution gives you the right to post, but as numerous people have learned, there are still consequences for your public posts,” Judge Sciarrino wrote. “What you give to the public belongs to the public. What you keep to yourself belongs only to you.” 
 
 The writer, Malcolm Harris, was one of about 700 protesters arrested in October while walking on the roadway of the Brooklyn Bridge. He was charged with disorderly conduct, a violation. In January, the Manhattan district attorney’s office subpoenaed all messages that he had posted to Twitter from two days before the Occupy Wall Street protests began in September through the end of 2011. 
 
 Mr. Harris’s messages, which are no longer publicly available, are of interest to prosecutors because they may contradict an argument they expect him to make at trial: that the police led or escorted protesters off the pedestrian paths and into the bridge’s roadway. 
 
 His lawyer, Martin R. Stolar, filed a motion to quash the subpoena, saying it had not been delivered properly, was overly broad and was issued for an improper purpose. 
 
 Judge Sciarrino dismissed the motion in April, writing that Mr. Harris lacked the standing to oppose the subpoena because under Twitter’s policies, he had granted the company the “worldwide, nonexclusive, royalty-free” right to distribute his messages, which were all publicly available. 
 
 Twitter itself then sought to quash the subpoena. But in the decision released on Monday, Judge Sciarrino ordered it to turn over Mr. Harris’s messages. While noting that laws regarding social media were evolving, he held that public speech, regardless of the forum, did not enjoy the same protections as private speech. 
 
 The case over a minor criminal charge raises significant issues in the still-new area of social media. 
 
 As is becoming more common, prosecutors requested Mr. Harris’s postings and member information directly from Twitter, which then notified Mr. Harris. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, arguing that prosecutors should be required to obtain a search warrant from a judge for each request and that the person whose posts were being sought should have an opportunity to oppose the demand in court. 
 
 For law enforcement, social-media postings that document a person’s immediate thoughts and precise location provide a potent tool. 
 
 “We are pleased that the court has ruled for a second time that the tweets at issue must be turned over,” said Daniel R. Alonso, the chief assistant district attorney in Manhattan. “We look forward to Twitter’s complying and to moving forward with the trial.” 
 
 Twitter had argued that demands for postings and account information placed it under an undue burden of either turning over the information or fighting each request on behalf of its users. 
 
 In a statement, the company said it was “disappointed” with the ruling and was considering its options. 
 
 “Twitter’s terms of service have long made it absolutely clear that its users own their content,” the statement said. “We continue to have a steadfast commitment to our users and their rights.” ||||| Twitter Chief Executive Dick Costolo speaks in Cannes, France. The widespread data generated by social media is becoming a tool for police surveillance. (Sebastian Nogier / European Pressphoto Agency / ) 
 
 Everything is evidence. You might want to remember that the next time you log on. 
 
 According to new data released by Twitter on Monday, American police are leading the charge to get users’ info from the popular San Francisco-based microblogging service. Overall, from Jan. 1 through June, the company received 849 law enforcement requests for individual users’ information, granting 63% of those requests. 
 
 American law enforcement accounted for 80% of those information requests compared to other nations, just as Americans are thought to make up a dominant share of the service’s users. U.S. officials made 679 requests, getting what they wanted 75% of the time. 
 
 What’s more, the company reported, “We’ve received more government requests in the first half of 2012, as outlined in this initial dataset, than in the entirety of 2011.” 
 
 The widespread data generated by social media use represents one of the next frontiers of privacy’s collision with police surveillance. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security monitors public posts on social media for potential threats; on Monday, the Manhattan district attorney’s office won a court ruling forcing Twitter to turn over three months’ worth of tweets for an Occupy Wall Street protester charged with disorderly conduct. 
 
 The numbers released by Twitter on Monday show requests for “user information.” According to the company’s privacy policy, that can include your location, IP addresses, search terms, pages visited and also data from when you visit third-party websites with Twitter buttons on them — which would seem to include the one you’re reading right now. 
 
 Some of this data is deleted after 18 months, according to the company’s privacy disclosure, if not sooner. The company accepts requests from law enforcement to preserve information for longer periods of time. 
 
 Twitter is one of the more transparent social-media sites out there, with a standing policy to notify users of requests for their information, unless barred by a statute or a court order; in the case of the Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York, prosecutors had told the company not to tell the protester they were requesting his information. Twitter ignored this directive and told the protester anyway; he’s been fighting the subpoena ever since. 
 
 Twitter’s openness policies contrast a bit with Facebook’s, which released its law-enforcement guidelines only after Anonymous Antisec hackers pried them out of the company’s fingers illegally. Facebook later posted its policy online as Twitter has done, but its policies on notifying users are noticeably less firm. 
 
 In May, according to the Associated Press, Facebook cooperated with Pakistani authorities trying to block users participating in an inflammatory competition to post pictures of the prophet Muhammad, which is forbidden under Islamic law; Twitter, however, refused to cooperate and saw its services briefly blocked in Pakistan as a result. 
 
 According to the data released Monday, Twitter received six requests from foreign governments and courts in France, Greece, Pakistan, Turkey and the United Kingdom over the past six months and complied with none of them. 
 
 The company also received 3,378 copyright takedown requests in that time span and complied with 38% of them, removing 5,275 tweets. 
 
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 nation@latimes.com
– Freewheeling speech on Twitter isn't the same as protected speech, a judge has ruled. In a decision with major repercussions for social media communication, a Manhattan criminal court judge has ordered Twitter to turn over tweets sent by a New York writer during Occupy Wall Street protests last fall. Judge Matthew Sciarrino said that while private speech is protected, the writer's communication doesn't merit the same treatment because his tweets were public, reports the New York Times. The case involves writer Malcolm Harris, who was busted while Occupiers marched across the Brooklyn Bridge. Prosecutors demanded two days of Harris' tweets in a bid to contradict his expected defense that it was police who led protesters off the bridge walkway and into the road. Twitter fought the request, and the ACLU filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that prosecutors should be required to obtain a search warrant in such a case, and that the process shouldn't skip over the writer of a tweet to go directly to Twitter. While the prosecution was delighted with the ruling, a Twitter statement expressed "disappointment," adding: "Twitter’s terms of service make it absolutely clear that its users own their content. We continue to have a steadfast commitment to our users and their rights." That's a surprise, given that Twitter itself has just revealed that it complied with 63% of 849 requests from law enforcement authorities to turn over tweets in the first six months of this year, reports the Los Angeles Times. American law enforcement made up 80% of those requests.