This seems fine to me. It's a public tweet so the government could have easily captured a copy initially. Asking Twitter to produce the message with a court order seems better than the government having their own database of public tweets.
I see a few other problems.
The first is wasting so much money on prosecuting someone who was walking on the street instead of sidewalk. Yes, they blocked the Brooklyn Bridge. But there is the Manhattan Bridge, Queensboro Bridge, Midtown Tunnel, and many other alternate routes from Manhattan to Long Island. The net impact was probably nothing. The sidewalk on the Brooklyn Bridge is woefully inadequate for everything anyway so I don't really blame them for using the road. Better to block cars that can divert at 60mph than bikes that have to divert at 3mph :)
The second issue I see is with the prosecution proving that a chain of custody was maintained for the messages that Twitter produced. If any Twitter employee has write access to the data store, the messages and timestamps could easily have been altered. How can the prosecution prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that this did not happen?
Finally, how can one prove a tweet conveyed actual intent rather than mere interest? I often tweet about things like, "I should go get 5000 of my closest friends to block the Brooklyn Bridge." If I did that on the day of the protest, that would look bad for me. But I might have been posturing rather than organizing, which is my right to do without interference from the government.
Anyway, this is all a huge waste. It seems like New York City is being pressured to keep working on this bullshit case when they should have just cleared the bridge, issued fines, and moved on. Or maybe, you know, provide adequate pedestrian capacity so people can peaceably assemble without having to block traffic!
(Incidentally, the exact lane that the protesters blocked is closed every night for construction...)
The subpoena wasn't just for the public contents of tweets; it was also for any and all user information for the account, including email address and an anything else twitter might have collected, including IP addresses, physical location, browser type, etc.
In addition, the court ruled (yet again) that the defendant had zero standing to challenge (or even know about) the subpoena since it was directed at Twitter not him. Which is kind of terrifying given the push to cloud storage for everything.
Most of this fruitless discussion seems to be between people who have just read the TPM article (or scanned to the pull-quote from the judge), and those who are more familiar with the case. Here's an ArsTechnica article that communicates the issues quite clearly: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/ny-judge-compels-...
The subpoena is for all public and private information Twitter has for a period of three months and a half. The charge is for disorderly conduct at one point during this period. The EFF and Twitter are pointing out that the prosecutor is going on a fishing expedition. The “shouting from a window” analogy the judge made is irrelevant.
Whether the case should be prosecuted or not - let's leave that alone.
Chain of custody - fair point, but realize that's the case with every piece of evidence. It only becomes very important, as I understand it, once it is in the hands of the prosecution/law enforcement. Before that, it is what it is. Evidence tampering is illegal of course, and we like to think it's hard to prove digital stuff, without crypto sigs and all that, were not altered - but it's nothing new.
The defence would have to have some kind of evidence, even he-said-she-said (defendant says that's not what he wrote) in order to open that door - it's not a freebie. And perjury is a crime.
As to how one can prove what a tweet conveyed - that's what the trial and jury are for.
It is your right to speak. The actions of your words, however, can have consequences - if you started and organized a riot (like, you really did) then society has a vested interest in investigating that. If you did that, you need to be dealt with - it's wrong (no inference implied to the current case, just an example).
And the constitution doesn't say "freedom of speech" - it says something like "Congress shall make no law..(snip) or abridging the freedom of speech.... (and more)
It doesn't say they can't investigate your role in things, which may include your speech.
>> "I should go get 5000 of my closest friends to block the Brooklyn Bridge."
Anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law.
It is disappointing that the Government will go to great length to arrest and prosecute hundreds of citizens exercising their constitutional rights. But, it does not have balls to go after any of the greedy wall street bankers who robbed the country.
It's your constitutional right to assemble. If you get a million people, for example, assembling, you cannot keep the same rules of traffic as usual. (It would be impossible (and the attempt dangerous) to try to keep a million people on the sidewalk.) [Edit: In other words, your constitutional right to turn out and assemble is independent of whether there will be enough space for you on the sidewalk.]
As for the Wall Street bankers, who do you want to prosecute for what?
Those that committed it, for fraud. It's an open-and-shut case if the power existed to prosecute it.
As a counter-point, New Hampshire has a Right to Revolution granted in its constitution. It has been used to successfully defend a protestor who cut down a power line at a nuclear plant, and was recently brought up in an OWS case. https://inzanetimes.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/lawyer-for-occu...
> It's an open-and-shut case if the power existed to prosecute it.
if that were true, why are their customers not suing them for fraud? seems like they'd win a lot of money pretty easily if it were an open and shut case.
There are a several videos on interwebs of police arresting people who were not blocking streets (other than the Brooklyn Bridge incident). Moreover, the court has ruled that the Brooklyn Bridge incident was police's fault and arrests were unreasonable.
As for the Wall Street bankers, who do you want to prosecute for what?
Executives of banks and mortgage companies engaged in fraudulent practices that led to the financial crisis. Instead of pressing criminal charges, they were rewarded by the Government.
> Executives of banks and mortgage companies engaged in fraudulent practices that led to the financial crisis.
At least some of these practices were "encouraged" if not mandated by govt regulators. Are you planning to punish them? If not, what's the justification for punishing the folks following their orders?
I see a few other problems.
The first is wasting so much money on prosecuting someone who was walking on the street instead of sidewalk. Yes, they blocked the Brooklyn Bridge. But there is the Manhattan Bridge, Queensboro Bridge, Midtown Tunnel, and many other alternate routes from Manhattan to Long Island. The net impact was probably nothing. The sidewalk on the Brooklyn Bridge is woefully inadequate for everything anyway so I don't really blame them for using the road. Better to block cars that can divert at 60mph than bikes that have to divert at 3mph :)
The second issue I see is with the prosecution proving that a chain of custody was maintained for the messages that Twitter produced. If any Twitter employee has write access to the data store, the messages and timestamps could easily have been altered. How can the prosecution prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that this did not happen?
Finally, how can one prove a tweet conveyed actual intent rather than mere interest? I often tweet about things like, "I should go get 5000 of my closest friends to block the Brooklyn Bridge." If I did that on the day of the protest, that would look bad for me. But I might have been posturing rather than organizing, which is my right to do without interference from the government.
Anyway, this is all a huge waste. It seems like New York City is being pressured to keep working on this bullshit case when they should have just cleared the bridge, issued fines, and moved on. Or maybe, you know, provide adequate pedestrian capacity so people can peaceably assemble without having to block traffic!
(Incidentally, the exact lane that the protesters blocked is closed every night for construction...)