EXTRA ETHER: Twitter’s Occupational Hazard

Twitter handed over tweets from an Occupy Wall Street protester to a New York criminal judge on Friday after months of fighting a subpoena from prosecutors.

Joseph Ax’s straightforward account of the matter for Reuters — Twitter surrenders Occupy protestor’s tweets — is a good place to start, and not just because Reuters was the first to carry the word.

Writes Ax:

The company surrendered the micro-blogging posts to Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Matthew Sciarrino but they will remain under seal until another appeal by the protestor, Malcolm Harris, is argued next week.

That’s about as far as you can go in this story without some sort of emotional current beginning to swirl around the ankles of your consideration.

Malcolm Harris / Photo: The New Inquiry

Are we standing on good, solid ground here? Or is something — as the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protestor Malcolm Harris maintains — being eroded?

Harris is a senior editor with the non-profit non-partisan The New Inquiry, which characterizes itself as “a space for discussion that aspires to enrich cultural and public life.”

Writes NetworkWorld freelancer “Ms. Smith” in Punch to user privacy as Twitter surrenders Occupy protester’s tweets:

Although Harris is only charged with disorderly conduct in connection with an October 2011 Occupy Wall Street protest on the Brooklyn Bridge, it’s a battle about constitutional rights.

That’s a workable description of the case from “street level,” if you will. Andy It’s certainly in line with how Harris seems to see it.

Andy Greenberg / Forbes

Forbes’ Andy Greenberg, in Twitter Forced To Hand Over Occupy Protestor’s Tweets It Sought To Protect, writes:

Harris told me earlier in the week that he hopes to set a legal precedent with his case “about the way law enforcement is able to use social media – either as a dependable source of intelligence or not. I want not,” he wrote. ”Part of the nature of the medium is that not everyone is who they say they are, not everything is literal…I don’t think Twitter is a good place to find legal evidence of anything.”

First, the background on the charge, People v. Harris, 2011NY080152.

Paloma Esquivel

Paloma Esquivel writes it up for the Los Angeles Times in As Occupy anniversary nears, Twitter gives up info on protester. (The Occupy Wall Street movement has its anniversary today, Monday, September 17.)

Harris was charged with disorderly conduct after his arrest at an Occupy protest last year on the Brooklyn Bridge, and prosecutors say his Twitter messages could show whether he was aware of police orders to stay on a pedestrian path.

Harris and other protesters — almost 700 were arrested in the bridge protest — said they believed they were allowed to use the roadway.

A New York Times account without byline puts a tighter spin on the interest of prosecutors in seeing Harris’ tweets. In Twitter Turns Over User’s Messages in Occupy Wall Street Protest Case, the Times’ piece says:

Manhattan prosecutors subpoenaed the records in January, because the messages could show that the police did not lead protesters off the bridge’s pedestrian path and then arrest them, an argument that the protester, Malcolm Harris, of Brooklyn, is expected to make at trial.

Jeff Roberts / Photo: GigaOM

Jeff Roberts at GigaOM picks up the narrative in Twitter turns over OWS tweets after threat from judge:

The case became a media sensation after Twitter notified Harris about prosecutors’ demands for his account. Harris then challenged the demand but, in a remarkable decision, Judge Matthew Sciarrino Jr., ruled that he had no standing because the tweets did not belong to him.

After Twitter stepped in on Harris’ behalf, Sciarrino issued another unusual decision that suggested people have little or no constitutional rights in what they publish on social media.

And then Roberts gets us to one of the most difficult parts of this issue, emphasis mine:

The case is significant because it is helping to define privacy and free speech in the age of social media. While tweets are by their nature public statements, Harris had deleted them. The issue of whether or not they are still public documents is an open question but the more pressing legal issue is over who owns them in the first place.

RT @Handmade Memories: Poems and Essays, 1997-2011.

Images: iStockphoto / Eduardo Luzotti