By Kelly Faircloth 9/14/12 10:00am

All Your Tweets Are Belong to Us

(Photo: Scott Beale, Laughing Squid)

Report: Twitter Caves, Will Hand Over OWS Protestor’s Tweets

For months, Twitter has gone back and forth with the District Attorney’s office over one user’s tweets related to the Occupy Wall Street protests. That user, Malcolm Harris, is being charged with disorderly conduct, and the tweets in question may help cement the case against him. Twitter originally appealed the subpoena to provide them, but earlier this week Judge Matthew A. Sciarrino Jr. told the company it had until today to cooperate or face a fine for contempt of court.

Now the Post says that Twitter will cooperate, and a report from Reuters seems to corroborate. Read More

By Jessica Roy 8/27/12 3:53pm

All Your Tweets Are Belong to Us

(Photo: Scott Beale, Laughing Squid)

Twitter Officially Appeals New York Judge’s Ruling to Provide Tweets of Occupy Wall Street Protester

As promised, today Twitter officially appealed the ruling of Judge Matthew A. Sciarrino Jr. that required the company to provide tweets by Occupy Wall Street protestor Malcom Harris published during an October 2011 demonstration. Last month, Twitter’s legal counsel Ben Lee announced the company would be appealing, but the document was officially filed today. Read More

By Steve Huff 8/22/12 4:34pm

Occupy the Internet

Tartan Metrics (Screen grab)

Does Tartan Tie TrapWire to Surveillance of Occupy Wall Street?

Russian news outlet RT.com has been excitedly suggesting that the TrapWire surveillance system marks the advent of an American police state. Now RT is suggesting a fairly direct connection between the shady ex-CIA types behind TrapWire and something called Tartan Metrics.

Tartan certainly uses dense doublespeak to describe itself, stating on its site landing page that it “quantifies key influencers and hidden connections in social networks using mathematical algorithms” for “un-biased output.” RT doesn’t note that Tartan is so secretive those interested in its services can try them for free over the web, but maybe they have more important information to impart–Tartan expressly mentions using its software and services to analyze Occupy Wall Street and related movements: Read More

By Jessica Roy 7/26/12 1:09pm

99 AMAs

(Photo: Magnetic Productions)

NYPD Officer Does Reddit Q&A, Further Confuses Us About Legal Implications of Jay-Z’s ’99 Problems’

If Law and Order doesn’t provide you with sufficient insight into those who protect and serve our fine city, perhaps this Reddit thread can help. A user named 10-13 decided to initiate an “Ask Me Anything” post last night about his experience as a NYPD officer.

Perhaps because the Occupy Wall Street fervor has ebbed, or because 10-13 is a well-respected member of the r/NYC subreddit, the questions weren’t as pointed or aggressive as we anticipated. Maybe anonymous user names don’t automatically engender bad behavior, after all. Read More

By Jessica Roy 7/19/12 12:19pm

All Your Tweets Are Belong to Us

(Photo: Scott Beale, Laughing Squid)

Twitter Appeals New York Judge’s Ruling That the Company Hand Over Occupy Wall Street Tweets

The legal battle between Twitter and the Manhattan Criminal Court is heating up. Just a few weeks ago, we reported that Judge Matthew A. Sciarrino Jr. struck down Twitter’s protest of a subpoena requiring it to hand over tweets by Malcolm Harris, an Occupy Wall Street protestor who was arrested for disorderly conduct during the Brooklyn Bridge protests.

Today, Twitter counsel Ben Lee announced–via Twitter, natch–that the company will be appealing Judge Sicarrino’s decision, stating that, “It doesn’t strike the right balance between the rights of users and the interests of law enforcement.” Read More

By Jessica Roy 7/02/12 3:41pm

All Your Tweets Are Belong to Us

(Photo: Scott Beale, Laughing Squid)

New York Judge Overrules Twitter: Tweets Broadcast to the Public ‘Belong to the Public’

Things are not looking very good for Malcolm Harris, the Occupy Wall Street protestor who was arrested for disorderly conduct for taking place in the 2011 protest march across the Brooklyn Bridge. Back in April, a Judge ruled that your tweets are not your own, striking down a motion from Mr. Harris’s lawyer to block the courts from subpoenaing his tweets.

Twitter stood up for Mr. Harris in May, protesting the subpoena on several grounds, including the fact that the company’s terms of service explicitly state that all users own their content. Twitter’s Legal counsel, Ben Lee, told Betabeat, “As we said in our brief, ‘Twitter’s Terms of Service make absolutely clear that its users *own* their content.’ Our filing with the court reaffirms our steadfast commitment to defending those rights for our users.”

Unfortunately for Twitter, the company’s motion was overturned today by Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Matthew A. Sciarrino Jr., who demanded that Twitter furnish Mr. Harris’s tweets. “While noting that laws regarding social media are evolving, [the judge] held that public speech, regardless of the forum, does not enjoy the protections of private speech,” reports the New York Times. Read More

By Kelly Faircloth 5/08/12 4:18pm

Legal Eagles

(Photo: Scott Beale, Laughing Squid)

Twitter Apparently Not Handing Over Jack Without A Search Warrant

When last we checked in with the legal struggle over Occupy Wall Street and Twitter accounts, it didn’t look great for anyone looking to keep their DMs out of court. At issue: The state wants data associated with a protestor charged with disorderly conduct. A judge ruled the defense can’t fight a subpoena, because–as the legal thinking went–the information on Twitter belongs to the company, not to the individual user. And Twitter’s policies seem to suggest they’ll hand material over in the event of a subpoena.

But it appears it won’t be quite that simple for the DA’s office. Rather than complying with the order, Twitter just filed a motion to quash it.

We reached out to Twitter for comment and received a statement from Legal Counsel Ben Lee: “As we said in our brief, “Twitter’s Terms of Service make absolutely clear that its users *own* their content.” Our filing with the court reaffirms our steadfast commitment to defending those rights for our users.” Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 5/03/12 7:28am

The Revolution Will Be Tweeted

The off-message tweets happened between 3:39 a.m. and 4:02 a.m. EST on May 2.

Occupy Wall Street Twitter Hacked by Spammers, Followers Confused by Tweets About Credit Scores

Demonstrations broke out all over New York City Monday for what was billed as a day of resurgence for the Occupy Wall Street movement. The May 1 protests were months in the planning and drew 15,000 people at one point to Union Square, according to Mother Jones. As in the fall, the protesters used Twitter to communicate. The official Twitter account of occupywallst.org, @OccupyWallSt, has 159,281 followers. It usually tweets about assemblies and the revolution, but anyone who was logged on early this morning got treated to a few off-color remarks. Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 4/30/12 10:58am

##occupywallstreet

Vibes at the Occupy Wall Street protest.

Vibe, the Anonymous Twitter for Activists, Releases New Version for Big Occupy Wall Street Protest

Vibe, the anonymous microblogging service used during the Occupy Wall Street protests in the fall, is back. The app has a new release for iPhone and, later today, Android as well. The releases are timed to the citywide Occupy Wall Street protests planned for tomorrow.

Vibe works like Twitter, but users don’t have to register their names. Instead, a message is pinned to a specific location and shown only to users within the designated radius. Vibe also allows users to set an expiration date on their messages. Activists can use the service to coordinate in real-time, creator Hazem Sayed told Betabeat, and recently it’s been discovered by users in the Middle East.

The new features should make Vibe even more appealing to protesters. ”The main thing that’s been added is this idea of a double hashtag,” Mr. Sayed said. “Unlike the standard hashtag, where you put it in and it’s vis to everyone, a double hashtag makes that thread invisible. So if you do ##newyorkcity, it doesn’t show up in the public stream. The only way to find it is to search for it explicitly.” Read More