Twitter has asked a New York state judge to throw out a court order
requiring it to turn over three months worth of messages posted by an
Occupy Wall Street protester being prosecuted for disorderly conduct.
In a motion (PDF)
filed on Monday in New York City Criminal Court, Twitter lawyers argued
the city’s district attorney’s office is overstepping its authority in
ordering the tweets and other subscriber info of Malcolm Harris, whose
handle on the microblogging site is @destructuremal.
Prosecutors seeking the data failed to get a court warrant based on
probable cause, making an order they obtained earlier a violation of
federal law and the Constitution’s prohibition against unreasonable
searches and seizures, the Twitter brief argued.
“If the order stands, Twitter will be put in the untenable position
of either providing user communications and account information in
response to all subpoenas or attempting to vindicate its users’ rights
by moving to quash these subpoenas itself—even though Twitter will often
know little or nothing about the underlying facts necessary to support
their users’ argument that the subpoenas may be improper,” Twitter’s
attorneys argued.
