Twitter Fights Court Request to Submit Tweet History of OWS Protester

By

In a move with far-reaching ramifications, Twitter has denied the request of prosecutors to disclose the tweet history of an activist involved in the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests.

The micro-blogging site filed a motion with a New York State court on Monday to reverse a judge's court order demanding Twitter provide months of now-deleted tweets from the account of Malcolm Harris, an activist charged with disorderly conduct after marching across the Brooklyn Bridge as a form of protest, according to the Associated Press.

Prosecutors are looking for evidence that Harris was aware of the police order banning the march.

In its filing, Twitter argues against Judge Matthew Sciarrino's claim that Harris does not own the rights to his tweets. Sciarrino compared a user's social media history to a set bank records.

"Twitter's Terms of Service make absolutely clear that its users own their content. The Terms of Service expressly state: You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services," Twitter argued in its filing.

Attorneys from Twitter referenced protections afforded under the First Amendment and the Stored Communications Act, which requires a search warrant for content that is less than 180 days old. Twitter also pushed back on Sciarrino's claim that the Fourth Amendment provides protection over our physical homes, but not our "home on the Internet."

Twitter acknowledged that if it were forced to hand over the data records, the site would surely be setting a dangerous precedent for future cases.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) praised Twitter for its actions, calling the motion a "very big deal."

"Law enforcement agencies – both the federal government and state and city entities – are becoming increasingly aggressive in their attempts to obtain information about what people are doing on the Internet," the ACLU statement read. "If Internet users cannot protect their own constitutional rights, the only hope is that Internet companies do so."

In a tweet, Harris expressed his gratitude to Twitter and said the motion "bodes well for my request currently in to Twitter PR to borrow one of their giant blue birds and ride it into court."




Edited by Braden Becker
Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. [Free eNews Subscription]

TechZone360 Contributor

SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Related Articles

How Is AI Bringing Intelligence to Traditionally Manual Inspection Workflows?

By: Contributing Writer    10/16/2026

For insurers, rental companies, fleet operators, and remarketing businesses, vehicle inspections are a part of everyday operations. Much of that proce…

Read More

3 Factors That Can Dramatically Impact Your Microsoft Intune Spend

By: Contributing Writer    10/13/2026

With remote and dispersed work here to stay for the long term, secure endpoint management has become a big headache for IT and cybersecurity teams. Th…

Read More

Why Threat Modeling Fails Without an Attacker's Perspective

By: Contributing Writer    10/13/2026

A security team might spend weeks mapping attack paths and planning defenses, only to be breached through a web application nobody remembered was stil…

Read More

From AI Experiment to Enterprise Strategy: Making Claude Work at Scale

By: Contributing Writer    10/12/2026

Artificial intelligence often enters an organization through experimentation. One employee discovers a useful prompt, another tests document analysis,…

Read More

SIEM needs exposure context to keep pace with AI-era threats

By: Contributing Writer    10/6/2026

Security information and event management (SIEM) platforms give security operations center (SOC) teams a central place to collect and analyze security…

Read More