Better watch out if you plan to break the law and have a twitter account that you use to tweet. A recent court ruling lets prosecutors subpoena your tweets without a court order. The case centers on Occupy Wall Street protester Malcolm Harris who is facing trial for his role in a protest on the Brooklyn Bridge.
The Manhattan District Attorney prosecutor in the case subpoenaed Twitter and asked for three months of tweets and Harris’s account information. The judge ruled Harris does not have standing to challenge this third-party subpoena and writes in his decision, “Twitter’s license to use the defendant’s Tweets means that the Tweets the defendant posted were not his.” Harris is represented by Martin Stolar of the National Lawyers Guild, who plants to file a motion to re-argue this case. Stolar believes the judge is incorrect in his understanding of the law.