Court in OWS Twitter Case Gets it Wrong AgainHanni Fakhoury Weve been following the case of Malcolm Harris arrested in connection with the OWS Brooklyn Bridge protest in October 2011 very closely. Charged with disorderly conduct, New York City prosecutors sent a broad subpoena to Twitter, seeking to obtain any and all information it had on Harris tweets, subscriber information, email addresses. From the very beginning, we suspected that the government was really after location information. And sure enough, after Harris challenged the subpoena, the NYC prosecutors admitted they wanted the information to show he was on the bridge at the time of his arrest. In April, the court denied Harris motion to quash, writing an opinion filled with troubling legal conclusions, finding Harris had no legal standing to challenge the subpoena since he didnt own his tweets, and allowing the government to access content and location data without a search warrant. Thankfully, Twitter stepped up to challenge the subpoena since the court ruled Harris couldnt do it himself, and together with the ACLU and Public Knowledge, we filed an amicus brief in support of Twitters motion to quash. Weve repeatedly (and are continuing to) challenge this idea and have seen some courts slowly begin to recognize that the 4th Amendments right to privacy applies to information, like emails and cell site location information, turned over to third parties. Earlier this year, Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor noted in her concurring opinion in United States v. Jones that the elimination of privacy rights in information turned over to third parties is ill-suited for the digital age we live in today. While we may have lost this round of the fight, were positive that this will not be the end of this issue both in Harris case, and in similar cases throughout the country. As this case and issue work their way up through the appellate courts, EFF will be continuing the fight to keep this sensitive personal information out of the prying hands of the government unless they obtain a search warrant. Please visit Electronic Frontier Foundation to support Internet freedom and privacy. You can support this information by voting on Reddit HERE linkwithin_text=Related Articles: 